Considering a hackintosh, budget $2k-3k.

[Supes]

Hey guys, so I recently purchased the highest end imac, the 27" 5k with the 4.0ghz 6700k skylake cpu and the m395x gpu and 512 mb ssd. As a professional photographer this unit is glorious and does everything I need and more for work, just not going to be doing much gaming with that gpu. A friend of mine has fallout 4 and is barely able to outperform the ps4 and for 3 thousand dollars, I'd like to do better.

So, what are my alternatives? From the little I know about the dark necromancy of Hackintoshing, you need very specific hardware, is there a spot I can go to that already has pre selected a ultra high end rig? I'm not looking for budget anything, I spent 3200 on this imac and would of course like to spend less but this computer is a business expense so I can justify up to 3 grand. If anyone has any reccomendation or spot I can go to that would be awesome! Thanks guys!!

[Hangten]

Well if your looking to have gaming at @4k a GTX 980ti variety card would be my 2 cents but not sure that your 3 grand is enough all things considered.

Are you keeping your iMac? 

 

Lets be honest a 5K monitor(are you using the iMac as the monitor) itself adds a lot to the price. 

How fast and how much storage you need? NVME doesn't seem to be in the Hackintosh arena yet 

Do you need more than a quad core cpu? OS X milage will vary depending on versions 

At this point that black trash can doesn't seem overpriced at all (food for thought) 

Its the GPU that matters most of all here. Even an i3 overclocked can game with the best of them. 

[Supes]

Oh doesn't have to be at 4k, I'm not that crazy. I'd be happy with 1440p and high settings for most things.

I would really like to still have a fast quad core processor. I do a lot of work in lightroom and photoshop and right now this current setup is fantasticly fast and I want things to stay that way.

A 5k monitor isn't that big of a deal, going to 4k would be just fine (and to my understanding, a lot cheaper!). I don't need to game anywhere near that resolution!

An internal ssd of 512gb would be ideal for me (that's what I have now on the imac). 150 gig partition for windows and a game or two, and the rest for osx, my software, and my general working space. I have a mutli harddrive enclosure bay with 5tb harddrives in sync that I keep my bulk data on (raw photo files, video, ect).

 

By black trash can do you mean mac pro? From what I've seen of benchmarks on barefeats, the RiMac does just as well gaming. Perahps I missunderstood.

Yeah I know for gaming the gpu is the main thing. For my work though I NEED that kick butt fast processor that can tear through 500+ cr2 to jpg file exports really fast.

If it's not feasable then that's ok, I'm looking for options. On the mac forums the guys always suggest making a hackintosh for the best of both words for less money so I wanted to see how realistic it is. Hope this makes sense!

[Hangten]

The Mac Pro can run an eGPU but if its official and at the bandwidth NO, does it work yes. This is what I meant about the black trash can.

 

Well thats easier with the info you provided. 

If you basically want a clone Hackintosh of your iMac, you might just be getting the ideal situation of running something like this http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/308707-fresh-install-from-usb-installer-el-capitan-10111-beta-build-15b38b-on-skylake-i7-6700-gigabyte-z170-hd3/

 

The key factor being that you can run the GPU with some real kick. If you give it sometime I'm sure the bugs will ironed out on these z170 builds. 

 

I would suggest you read http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/298027-guide-aio-guides-for-hackintosh/?do=findComment&comment=2020598

 

If your willing to by a little older stuff then something like this I agree with https://www.reddit.com/r/hackintosh/comments/2bvggr/hack_complete_4790k_z97_780ti_a_bit_of_a/

 

Honorable mention would be to run a much older x79 but waiting it out for z170 seems the most sensible IMO.

[Supes]

Thank you very much for the info, I'm opening all the links in new tabs right now!

[Supes]

One follow up question. How mix and match are these setups? Example, can I do everything from that first link you sent (the one with the 6700k), then get a better gpu? The one that guy has is only sligherly better than the m395x that's in my current imac according to game-debate. That reddit link is running a gtx 780 ti and is much more powerful, I'm just thinking that since it's two years old there will be better things on the market now? If not thats ok. Thanks!!

[Hangten]

Very mix and match, Yes (limited to some support for the kernel. You can't stick a skylake with Mavericks)

 

GPU might not clock as high as in windows, stock on my own is like 900mhz in windows but in OS X it does not go higher than 750mhz. Yet you can stick it in a Mac Pro 5.1 its EFI Flashed. Yes you can pick with in reason a variety of GPU's AMD or Nvidia some may be less or more when benching.

 

From what I have read on the iMac it always seems to use a mobile GPU thats been castrated to hell from there desk top brothers, but thats changing now days.  

 

It helps tons to have a few members with the same or very similar builds here on Insanelymac... 

 

With the first link 6700k route all you need to do is carbon copy clone your drive off your iMac and use the same SMBIOS 17.2 is it and then install Clover add the edits, Kext's and config.plist and your system should be ready to boot thats what I would do.