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Thunderbolt


sketchy
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Hello -

 

I'm new to the Hackintosh scene, and I'm strongly considering building a Hackintosh rig to replace my aging MacPro 1,1.

 

One of the enticing possiblities of this rig-to-be would be Thunderbolt capabilities, but after perusing the forums here for a while, I'm gettig the picture that TB performance isn't necessarily a slamdunk. I apologize if this has been talked about, but a couple of fairly thorough searches haven't yielded the information I'm looking for.

 

I did read that there are issues with connecting a TB display, but I'm not really interested in the display aspect of Thunderbolt (yet). I'm looking to the data throughput for storage usage. Can anyone chime in on whether they have any experience on Hackintosh builds with TB that have rock-solid attached storage performance? I'd be very interested in whether the Hackintosh has made that leap reliably, as it were.

 

Also, I'd be interested to hear if anyone has had any experiences in playing around with any of the TB docks that are hitting the market - for example, this one:

 

http://www.belkin.com/us/p/P-F4U055

 

and used it succesfully with a TB Hackintosh rig.

 

Thank you kindly in advance for any replies.

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Thanks for your speedy replies, Rampage Dev and tle88.

 

 

 

As long as the MB has thunderbolt it is compatible under Mac OS X. There is no hot plugging on hacks at this time.

 

That is good to hear. IINM, I was reading more entries in the forum last night that TB wasn't even working at all for people even a few short months ago?...

 

As long as it works for storage: that's the big motivator for me with this machine.

 

I'm having the odd client here and there walk in with TB drives now. Those drives have other interfaces too - but a couple of times that other interface has been USB2 and it slooooooows the process right down.

 

Haswell is coming. And 10.9 ...

 

Can You wait several month ?

 

T -.-

 

Here's my problem:

 

I work in video post production, and I've managed to squeak by with the machine I have for far too long already. I was ready to buy a new mac pro in 2012, but when the new releases didn't have TB and USB3, I decided to wait until the next cycle. Silly idea on my part. I should have bought then, and now I'm too close to the possibilty of a new revision to feel comfortable buying now. In all likelihood, I'll just get one of the new Apple boxes *if* they are released in the coming months with the arrival of Haswell and 10.9.

 

All of this doesn't change my desire to dabble in the Hackintosh world nonetheless. I could definitely use a second box to which I could offload renders and backups, and it certainly wouldn't hurt if it could run as a capable Windows system for the rare occasions that I could make better use of that OS than OSX (burning Blu-ray discs for clients comes to mind, for example).

 

If the general consensus here is that it's just a terrible time to jump in and try a build (ie. I really should just wait it out), I'd certainly follow that advice and just put off the project.

 

But if it's one of those "there's-something-better-just-around-the-corner" things that we poor computer users always seem to be chasing, I think I'm ok with plunking down some money to bridge the gap for now.

 

What do you folks think?

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If you need it now, then buy it now IMO. There would be something newer after the Haswell, would you agree to wait that long? :) Anyway, if you buy it now, you can always sell the parts later when something newer would come to market.

 

IMO there is no much point in having only the-latest-and-greatest, instead of having just a fresh (not the newest) hardware that is known to work and is supported RIGHT NOW. AFAIK the newest hardware is usually the most expensive one. It is also quite common for the newest hardware to have issues to-be-fixed.

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If you need it now, then buy it now IMO. There would be something newer after the Haswell, would you agree to wait that long? :) Anyway, if you buy it now, you can always sell the parts later when something newer would come to market.

 

IMO there is no much point in having only the-latest-and-greatest, instead of having just a fresh (not the newest) hardware that is known to work and is supported RIGHT NOW. AFAIK the newest hardware is usually the most expensive one. It is also quite common for the newest hardware to have issues to-be-fixed.

 

You have summed up my feelings on the issue perfectly.

 

As it stands right now, my gravitation towards the thin-edge-of-the-wedge TB tech has only been because I actually find a need for it from outside pressures; I haven't found the need to integrate it into my own workflows yet.

 

Heck, would you beleive my MacPro is still running Snow Leopard? I'm also still working in FinalCut 7, mostly because the people I work with still prefer it.

 

The thing is, this system's been stable as a rock (touch wood) and has met my needs so far satisfactorily - I just haven't found the need to upgrade the OS or editing package yet at all. I have a MBP that runs ML with which I do anything that needs me to be "current".

 

But it has become apparent that it is quite slow compared to what's "out there", and it's causing mild issues with clients. I need to step up and put this machine on less demanding tasks.

 

The only other "latest-and-greatest" tech I'd love to have is USB3, because it's now becoming ubiquitous and means fast storage for cheap cheap cheap. But even if the on-board MB controllers with a Hackintosh build have issues, that can be addressed with an expansion card, so I'm not worried about that. Right now I'm rolling with an eSATA6 card that has fit my needs fairly well.

 

Really, my biggest coup would be if I can build a box that can contain an absolute horde of internal drives. I find I'm always wishing I could stuff more storage into my current tower because I always have multiple projects on the go all the time. A Hackintosh that could functionally deal with (gasp) eight internal drives would be heaven to me. Especially if three of those could be RAID'ed together.

 

1 SSD system drive

3 drive RAID

4 massive WD black drives for non mission critical work

 

Add a Blu-ray burner and it might be more than a mere mortal like me could handle.

 

That would save me a LOT of drive juggling headaches.

 

Other than that, access to reasonably priced RAM and video cards are what else is really pulling me in. None of that needs to be bleeding-edge tech for me.

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There is no real raid supported from native chipsets. You will need to get a Mac Supported raid card such as RocketRaid SAS card.

Not to mention a better speed/reliability a true hardware PCI-E RAID card can offer. There are other options apart the RR SAS (not as many as with PCs+Windows/Linux though).
As it stands right now, my gravitation towards the thin-edge-of-the-wedge TB tech has only been because I actually find a need for it from outside pressures; I haven't found the need to integrate it into my own workflows yet.
Having it would not harm, for sure. AFAIK it's quite fast solution for data transfers to/from an external storage. Keep a thing seven years and you'll find a use for it! :)
Heck, would you beleive my MacPro is still running Snow Leopard?
Same here.

Really, my biggest coup would be if I can build a box that can contain an absolute horde of internal drives. I find I'm always wishing I could stuff more storage into my current tower because I always have multiple projects on the go all the time. A Hackintosh that could functionally deal with (gasp) eight internal drives would be heaven to me. Especially if three of those could be RAID'ed together.

With a PC case you should not have problem of placing all the 8 drives (provided the case has the HDD bay of needed size).
Other than that, access to reasonably priced RAM and video cards are what else is really pulling me in. None of that needs to be bleeding-edge tech for me.
For sure!
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>>

I work in video post production.

 

 

 

Hmm. I believe that You need then separate and quite strong video card.

 

That is obviously. So... Next is not knowledge, only my opinion:

You are right, You need Thunderbolt only in disk systems. And

new and expensive Haswell is then a little bit meaningless because

You need separate video card anyways.

 

Thunderbolt is not so fast. 10 gigabits in seconds / 8 = 1,25 gigabyte in

seconds. Good quality raid ssd sata-3 disk system use it all very easily.

 

There is no pure native thunderbolt

ssd disk yet. Inside is always

sata-3 disks. (should I say ssd units?)

 

 

 

 

 

Keep things simply and keep them separate from each others is

always good instruction.

 

 

Gigabyte dual thunderbolt motherboard (with most last bios) and

somelike Intel Xeon E3-1240 V2 and Asus GeForce GTX 670

Direct CU mini together constitute inexpensive mac pro like

systems, and short and tiny video card keeps lower front disk

places still available. (in old school atx style cases)

 

Is there any real reason to use thunderbolt limited capabilities

to move video signal ? I think that answer is no. Maybe later,

when thunderbolt style serial bus is much more faster than now.

 

I personally have like "Icy Box" and "Icy Dock" cassette systems.

This like:

 

Hands On: Icy Dock MB973SP-B Backplane Hot Swap Module - We Got Served

RaidSonic Icy Box IB-2226StS, USB 2.0 (20904) in Festplatten: Wechselrahmen | heise online Preisvergleich

 

Machine is solid packet with this, and I like that handling disk

is easy. Avoid cheap plastics made disk frame. All metal

is good choice.

 

There is no "this is the best solution". And there is no any

"final solution" too... 5 years and everything is old again.

Do not burn money excessively. Reuse and recycle what

You can. Buy enormous power supply, it is backbone

of the machine.

 

T -.-

 

 

Edit: If I have understand right, haswell style solution

miss new style ddr4 memory, which have very high

clock cycle.

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