Canon 7D editing machine - hackintosh $900 = $2500 mac pro

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It's just an operating system when it comes down to it. Once mac had crossed over to PC hardware (intel processors) then the difference between the two just came down to looks and the operating system.
Except with building your own mac, you can select quality components that in themselves have lifetime warranties and if something goes wrong then you'll be able to just go down to the local pc shop and get a replacement. Its not recommended for anyone who doesn't know anything about hardware and can diagnose problems. The only two hardware faults I get all the time from friends and family are either a harddrive failure or a faulty power supply. Everything else rarely breaks down if you get quality components.
 
NoxNoctus said:
Why go through that trouble? Build an even more powerful PC that wont have hardware issues, or shut down when an OS update comes through? Hackintoshes are cool projects for netbooks and the like for a personal computer, but for critical work, I wouldnt trust it.
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Have you used an intel hackintosh before? Did you read the article I linked to? The reason to go through all that trouble of a 2 hour install job is price vs performance. I will get a faster machine than most for less than most. I currently have 3 Mac computers and 2 that I bought for work. I am very familiar with the cost and stability. Nobody is going to see this machine it will be in a closet. At $900 I have to atleast try it right? That is a potential $1600 savings! And I can always put Windows 7 on it.

From article.

In short, my $900 "Hack Pro" sports nearly as good or better hardware than any Mac that Apple sells short of the $3,300 8-Core Mac Pro (which can, incidentally, get more expensive, but it won't get much better).
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You can hot rod a Volkswagen to look like a Bentley too
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I wish non-car related discussion boards would filter out car names instead of swear words. Enough with the car analogies already! :-)

On a more on-topic subject:

I'm good with hardware, and I wouldn't have problems diagnosing/replacing bad components if I had a dud. What I find intimidating with building a hackintosh is the insane amount of parts available on the market.

Googling for "start here" threads usually lead to gamer machines or super low-end machines for people who want something between a Mac mini and iMac.

Anyone can point me to a parts list that could get me started on a box suited for video editing/compositing? Octo-core, 12 GB RAM, 5 drive bays (or more), decent graphics.

I especially at loss regarding motherboards.

Anyone who has a sucessful hackintosh care to share their detailed specs?

-X
 
Sure, I wouldn't mind sharing my specs:

- Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550 (2.8ghz)
- 4GB Corsair Dominator DDR2 RAM
- 500GB Seagate HDD @ 7200rpm
- Gigabyte GA-EP45-UD3P Mobo
- NVIDIA 9500GT 1GB
- 700w OCZ Fatality Power Supply

Dual-booted running Windows 7 and OS X 10.5.6 - looking to do a fresh install with SL on another drive to test stability and add another 4GB of RAM.

Great place to start for parts:

http://wiki.osx86project.org/wiki/index.php/Main_Page

OR

check the forums if you want to find rigs that already work together and have guides already made up:

http://www.insanelymac.com/

Any questions, shoot me a PM or ask in the thread.

Kegan
 
xbourque said:
I wish non-car related discussion boards would filter out car names instead of swear words. Enough with the car analogies already! :-)

On a more on-topic subject:

I'm good with hardware, and I wouldn't have problems diagnosing/replacing bad components if I had a dud. What I find intimidating with building a hackintosh is the insane amount of parts available on the market.

Googling for "start here" threads usually lead to gamer machines or super low-end machines for people who want something between a Mac mini and iMac.

Anyone can point me to a parts list that could get me started on a box suited for video editing/compositing? Octo-core, 12 GB RAM, 5 drive bays (or more), decent graphics.

I especially at loss regarding motherboards.

Anyone who has a sucessful hackintosh care to share their detailed specs?

-X
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There's a good reason why gaming machines are a good description for good editing machine. There are million more hardcore gamers than editors and they want just as fast and stable computer as anyone else out there. And there are plenty of them out there to tell you whether a component will be a dud or not.

A good quality PC motherboard will never die. They are basically covered excessively in heatsinks to keep them cool because all the good ones are built for overclocking. That's a whole nother advantage to building your own right there and then. But your motherboard is the starting block and then you simply add compatible parts to it and put it together like a lego set. The fastest processor you can afford, as many hard-drives as you need, plenty of cheap corsair ram, videocard, a quality power supply and case. Keyboard, monitor, operating system and you now have a working computer. It's childs play really I could teach my 9 year old nephew how to do it.
 
NoahK said:
Yeah it kind of is what it is- you get the lower price point of a PC along with all of the tech/hacking/instability updates of a PC as well. You can hot rod a Volkswagen to look like a Bentley too, but you won't get much help from a Bentley service center when it craps the bed lol.

Noah
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You definitely have no idea what you are talking about, and I mean that not in an insulting way but in a blunt and factual sense :grin:.

All the hardware Apple uses in their computers is readily available in some form (usually exactly the same part number) on the big parts websites like Newegg. If you run a system made up of Apple supported hardware, it is no more or less stable than running OSX on the original Apple branded hardware. Hell, it took me less time to upgrade to SL on my Hackintosh than it did my MPB :smile:

I download OS point updates, apple software updates, etc. with no problem because I basically built a Mac Pro sans the EFI hardware built in to the Mac Pro.
 
I guess "The Hack"s gotten more safe to do, apparently. I've heard many a horror story about a Hack that got updated and everything crapped out.

It's your machine, do with it as you please. I'd just naturally be cautious about the whole thing. I like my data :-p
 
Well, I have all my non system data on a separate drive (well, two drives in a raid 1 array) so it isn't an issue. You are no more likely to FUBAR a Hackintosh that is completely vanilla than an original Apple machine. With either of them you should always wait for the putzes who immediately download updates to be the bug testers before you do ;)
 
NoxNoctus said:
I guess "The Hack"s gotten more safe to do, apparently. I've heard many a horror story about a Hack that got updated and everything crapped out.

It's your machine, do with it as you please. I'd just naturally be cautious about the whole thing. I like my data :-p
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Please if you are interested in a hackintosh read the article before commenting on stability and difficulty everyone.

http://lifehacker.com/5351485/how-t...snow-leopard-start-to-finish?skyline=true&s=x

If anyone here is worried about losing there data because they are using a hackintosh should simply backup there data. Everything else is easy to replace.

My Canon 7D = $1650 (tigerdirect 15% off)
Hackintosh = $900

Mac Pro = $2850 configured to match the Hackintosh.

I was able to squeeze in a whole Canon 7D because I am going the Hack route. LOL
 
NoxNoctus said:
I guess "The Hack"s gotten more safe to do, apparently.
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As I understand it, that EFI-X device means that no "hacking" is done whatsoever.

In the early days of the "hackintosh" people had to go muck around with the OSX code and patch it to jump over the hardware verification step, or something like that, and when an update would come out, oops-- it'd blow your "hacked" OS.

But with the EFI-X device, you don't hack anything. You install a 100% full regular copy of OSX. If an update comes out, you update. Reportedly, no problems like used to occur.
 
Barry_Green said:
As I understand it, that EFI-X device means that no "hacking" is done whatsoever.

In the early days of the "hackintosh" people had to go muck around with the OSX code and patch it to jump over the hardware verification step, or something like that, and when an update would come out, oops-- it'd blow your "hacked" OS.
.
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Thats the version I was familiar with. I was going to build a Hackinsystem then decided against it, and settled in with a cozy high-end pc. Now that its stable I might just build a supercomputer. I miss Final Cut every now and then!
 
Hunter007 said:
- Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550 (2.8ghz)
- 4GB Corsair Dominator DDR2 RAM
- 500GB Seagate HDD @ 7200rpm
- Gigabyte GA-EP45-UD3P Mobo
- NVIDIA 9500GT 1GB
- 700w OCZ Fatality Power Supply
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wow, i have the exact same box, down to the brand and model names, except i use a gigabyte ati 4700 which i heard was better for the proapps, and man it flies. i honestly wouldn't trust it either without a backup, but with everything on an external sata drive (plus daily backups of it) that also has fw800 i can just move to one of my "real" macs if needed, even if it's not as fast. it's not that i expect the hardware to fail, but all of a sudden an extension is required for something and it doesn't boot anymore. of course never upgrading or installing anything mid project takes care of that too.
 
Yeah, it definitely flies. I want to try SL on another drive, because it seems that all SL installs have to be on a fresh drive...

Plus, I don't want to screw up my 10.5.6 + Windows 7 that's already working fine.

Kegan
 
Here's the best quad-core Hackintosh that you can build at the lowest price:

Total system cost, shipped and after mail-in rebates, is only ~$1682. I went soft on the CPU because I think that it should be overclocked (it can do 3.6 GHz easily), and the higher-end chips don't provide much more overclocking headroom.

Here's the cheapest build to match Mac Pro specs as closely as possible:

Total system cost, shipped and before mail-in rebates, is only $901. Mail-in rebates take off another $30. Every one of those components, except for the last one, is equivalent to or slightly better than what's found in the $2499 Mac Pro. The case is not as pretty, and the power supply probably has a lower wattage capacity. But there's no need for a high-wattage power supply, as today's modest computer systems don't even consume much more than 300W at peak usage. You can still safely overclock the CPU to 3.2 GHz.

All of the components that I've listed should be completely compatible. Even if you include the cost of a fancy keyboard, mouse, speakers, and 24" LCD, the price for either system should still be below the entry price for a quad-core Mac Pro.

And if you buy a "legitimate" copy of Snow Leopard, the added expense is only ~$30.
 
Will Hackintosh work on Dell XPS Studios?

Btw, i7 quads 920 w/ gb ram and blu ray burners can be had for 800 bucks now.
 
As stated before I will build the exact hackintosh posted on lifehacker and I will return with feedback for the community.
 
Lucian said:
Btw, i7 quads 920 w/ gb ram and blu ray burners can be had for 800 bucks now.
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This is not true. I just configured the cheapest possible iBUYPOWER (which offers the least expensive systems) i7 920 system, with 3 GB RAM and a single Blu-ray burner, for no less than $913. I think that it's literally not possible because the components can't be found for lower prices, even for OEM. For example, a Blu-ray burner alone is about $200, and the CPU is a little under $300. And just because you can buy such a low-cost system does not mean that it would even be fully compatible with OS X, at least not without a bunch of tweaks, hacks, and workarounds. I chose all of those parts carefully with an eye for compatibility, performance, and price.
 
ydgmdlu said:
This is not true. I just configured the cheapest possible iBUYPOWER (which offers the least expensive systems) i7 920 system,
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Actually it is true, I ordered just before the labor day. Look in the Dell outlet store, mine came in a sealed box, it'd never been opened. I can post the invoice if you want proof. Free upgrade to windows 7, and even a 19 in 1 media card reader.

Dunno if the Hackintosh dongle will work together though.
 
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