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

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From experience I want to say do lots and lots of research on forums and reviews. For example do a search for the motherboard and add the words "overheating" etc, etc.. I was going to go the "get it for as little as possible route" too.
In fact my first build was going to be a Hackintosh to edit Red footage. I stayed with Windows 7 thought because of how CS4 performs.
Now to sell my computer it is only worth $600 Canadian.
I am upgrading as we write but that original build is as follows:
Core2Quad Q6600 OC'd to 3.4 Ghz
8GB Ram
2x 500 GB Sata II drives running in Raid 0
Intel 975XBX2
Corsair 650w PCU
Antec Mid Tower 900 Case
DL DVD Burner
8800GT Nvidia Video Card which I soft mod to a Quadro
 
xbourque said:
No. To be fully legit you need to buy the 169$ "Mac Box Set" that includes iWork and iLife. Really bizarre strategy. Since SL is Intel only, and that Intel boxes shipped with Tiger for only a "short" time, I guess they figure that not many people would have bought the full version anyways.


-X
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Huh.
 
My current build I did more research, and learned a lot about PCU's. I can't remember the site, but I found some great reviews where they literally take the PCU apart and examine the quality of the internal parts.

Based on that I went for the Corsair Professional HX850W 850W. This baby's a dream. Need clean stable power to keep your system running stable. Especially now that I will be using the EVGA X58 Classified.
 
1dog Studios said:
My current build I did more research, and learned a lot about PCU's. I can't remember the site, but I found some great reviews where they literally take the PCU apart and examine the quality of the internal parts.

Based on that I went for the Corsair Professional HX850W 850W. This baby's a dream. Need clean stable power to keep your system running stable. Especially now that I will be using the EVGA X58 Classified.
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your right, nothing beats research. theres so many pc freaks out there now that you can do a search on any component and get hundreds of opinions. If a product is dud, it isn't hard to find out.

I use to fix peoples computers as a side wage and the problem seemed to always be the psu. With one of my friends he got a pc technician from the local pc store to look at it. He said the motherboard was fried and that needed replacement along with everything else because they don't make that model anymore. Strangely when I replaced the psu in it, it started up as if nothing ever happened. His psu blew again a few months later and I got him a power surge protector and since then, no problems. It depends alot on the quality of power and electrical system in your house or unit.
If your sharing power with other tenants, you should get a power surge protector or the top of the line psu. The more watts you get the more efficient it runs. Plus if you are going to need more space you can plug in 4 or six hard-drives without worrying about power.
 
i see that a lot of people use or recommend the geforce 9500, but i'd like to mention again that for proapps the ati 4870 is the fastest, and it's also natively supported by the os, and is an option if you buy a mac pro. i got one with 1gb and 3 ports, which isn't fully compatible with the native driver, but with a custom injector string it works perfectly. my xbench score for graphics beats the real mac pros, and i've never seen motion snappier. color seems to be optimized for the x1900 still but that's likely to change. i haven't upgraded to studio 3 yet.
 
mattsand said:
i see that a lot of people use or recommend the geforce 9500, but i'd like to mention again that for proapps the ati 4870 is the fastest, and it's also natively supported by the os, and is an option if you buy a mac pro. i got one with 1gb and 3 ports, which isn't fully compatible with the native driver, but with a custom injector string it works perfectly. my xbench score for graphics beats the real mac pros, and i've never seen motion snappier. color seems to be optimized for the x1900 still but that's likely to change. i haven't upgraded to studio 3 yet.
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Yeah, for the video card I would recommend doing research and buying based on what you need. Few applications actually take advantage of the video card, so unless you are a heavy user of those specific applications, or unless you want to game a lot on your Hackintosh, a fancy video card is just not worthwhile. The GeForce 9500 GT is the same card as the GeForce GT 120, which is found in the baseline Mac Pro configurations (quad-core and octo-core).
 
ydgmdlu said:
The Snow Leopard upgrade is only $30. It's technically an upgrade-only license, so you're not supposed to install it on a machine that doesn't already have a legal copy of Leopard. But hey, it's better than pirating the OS from torrents!
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I'm still not clear on this, you can buy the $30 SL upgrade and that would install the full OS on a blank HDD? If so, that's a good deal.
 
Apple doesn't release OS "upgrade" discs that search for are current install like MS does, they sell one disc that can be used to do a fresh install or upgrade. So yes, the $30 SL package is the complete OS and has no need for a previous install to be on the HDD.
 
Well Well saga continues!

Hackintosh update to 10.6.1 with no problems. This is great news! http://lifehacker.com/5356864/hackintosh-upgrades-without-problems-to-1061

If you happened to follow along with my guide to building a Hackintosh with Snow Leopard, start to finish, you may be curious as to whether you need to do anything special to upgrade to yesterday's Snow Leopard 10.6.1 release. In short: You don't. Just upgrade like normal; your Hackintosh should handle it like a charm. (Mine did.) If you were intrigued by the guide but were a little intimidated by all the command-line work, stick around—next week, I'll show you how to install Snow Leopard on my Hackintosh build without any of that tedious command-line hacking.
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Thinking about doing this myself. How are my specs for this build. Any issues there.

Intel Core 2 Quad Q9400
Asus p5q mobo
8GB Corsair XMS2 8500 memory
Ocz 650 Watt PSU
Geforce 9800GT Graphics Card

Let me know what you guys think. Anyone have similar to this up and running?


from the lifehacker site:
NOTE: Just like the last post, this guide is focused specifically on the hardware I suggested in the previous guide—specifically the motherboard. If you try following this guide on other hardware, there's a very good chance it won't work as advertised.
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research tip

research tip

http://www.insanelymac.com/forum is your friend when it comes to building a hackintosh; base your hardware on success stories in those forums and it should go fine
but is still only for those comfortable with PC/Apple tech and installation/maintenance

i am currently running:

Intel Q6600 @2.4Ghz
8Gb Ram
Gigabte GA-P35-DQ6 Mobo (onboard sound)
2 x 1Tb Samsung HDD (don't try raid config, too many issues)
nVidia 8800 GTS 320Mb Video

it is rock solid and silky smooth fast :)
make full use of the time machine functionality of course

i will soon upgrade the video card to something fast as the new tech in snow leopard will start to unleash that power soon for number crunching tasks
 
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