Anyone here use a Hackintosh?

thetvirus513

thetvirus513

Well-known member
Just curious if anyone has one or has had / knows of any experience with any. Looking at getting a new computer and would obviously like the most bang for my buck, but not if they aren't reliable, have short life spans, etc etc. I know a guy who sells :

One Core i7 2.93GHZ Quad-Core Nehalem processor
8GB of DDR3 memory
64GB OCZ Sandforce SSD drive
1TB hard drive
nVidia GTS 250 graphics card
22x Superdrive

assembled without monitor, keyboard, mouse for $1400 and am very tempted
 
Ignoring the legalities behind it (hey, we're not helping you get it installed, right?), I've tried it myself to no luck; my hardware is a tad older than current Mac offerings, and it differs a bit from the ones back in 2008 (when I built the PC) anyway.

On the other hand, I've heard great success stories when the hardware was planned out, kext files well chosen, etc. I love Final Cut myself, and wanted to offer compatibility with it on jobs, but getting OSX to run was a headache for me, so I abandoned the attempt(s). To me, Adobe's Suite has just become so good though, that I see little use in even bothering with osx86, if only for sheer experimentation.

The good news is that you can't really waste money because the system is cheaper than an Apple equivalent system anyway!
 
Yah these are built to order and seem to basically be a mac pro, with some upgrades, just not assembled through apple and no shiny silver casing :( All the parts are purchased new when you order so all those warranties apply. I guess I just wanted to know what some peoples experiences were with them and it its worth it. I would love to save some money, so basically I could go this route and buy this and two monitors or I could buy the 27" quad core imac. That is about what my budget is at the moment, i simply can't justify dropping like 3k+ for a mac pro.....
 
my advice--if you can't build it yourself, you should stick to a real one. If you're not experienced enough to hack it together yourself, you'll end up spending the money you saved on paying somebody else to support it if you have an issue, and if it goes down in the middle of a big project it could end up being a lot more expensive than a real one.

Example: Everybody was buying Dell Mini 10v netbooks and putting snow leopard on them. Apple didn't like that, so the next release of snow leopard removed atom processor support, breaking all the Dells. Of course, they ended up coming up with a workaround, but it's a cat and mouse game, and if you can't do it yourself you're better off saving yourself the headache and just buying a real apple.
 
Agreed with noworries, if you want to be any kind of professional, this will not be worth your time or money. And it's probably not worth risking your clients' projects. If you want to go with cheaper hardware get a Dell Precision Workstation and use Adobe or Vegas or whatever. If you're worried about the difference of $1500-$2000, are you really that much of a editor to care about which NLE you use?
 
I have built a few and use one full time with FCP and CS5 as my main machine. I agree with "noworries", if your not experienced with computers to the point of building and maintaining one yourself then a hackintosh might not be for you. The ones I have built have all used the "efix bootloader dongle" and is the easiest way to go if you choose to build your own. With a hackintosh you always have to do your homework with OS updates because they can be incompatible with your machine and not allow you to boot into the OS. At that point you have to reinstall everything making sure all software and hardware is compatible. Im not gonna lie though you can build a hackintosh for around 800 bucks thats comparable to a 4k MacPro.
 
I have one, it's my full time editing machine.

But if you aren't comfortable tinkering around with computers (both hardware and software/OS components), then you should stick to a Mac. I've "broken" my hackintosh more than once and had to spend hours and hours fixing it so I could get back to the hours and hours of video editing I needed to do :)
 
I have a netbook that dual boots OSX and Vista. It took three days of major tinkering by my brother and myself to get it to work. Had to install a sound driver to get the touchpad to work. It's super counter-intuitive. That's just one example. It's a little wonky still, it doesn't like waking from sleep all the time, it starts back up, but the pointer disappears and won't come back ever. I still haven't figured that issue out. But it does what I need it to do when I'm on the road. I would never consider doing any heavy computing on it though.
 
Starshine Video said:
Apple is a hardware company, the only reason they make any software at all is to sell the hardware they make.
Click to expand...

that is what sucks. we can get the hardware cheaper elsewhere, but people are forced to pay a markup if they want to use the software.
 
for 1400 you can get mac pros on ebay, then install windows if ya gotta have both. having screwed around with them, i'd say its a cool novelty, but not if you need to get any real work done. Don't tempt fate, because they'll work fine until you are 95% done then BOOM! error......
 
BLahey said:
for 1400... having screwed around with them, i'd say its a cool novelty, but not if you need to get any real work done. Don't tempt fate, because they'll work fine until you are 95% done then BOOM! error......
Click to expand...

Ahemm. Sounds like my ol' lady.
 
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