Mac Pro vs. Hackintosh

mcnallym · Dec 31, 2012

musio said:
Is there such thing in the hackintosh world yet as building a system with listed parts so you don't need any special software mods to run OSX? (no ktext, modding, hacking, terminal, i mean working like an official apple product)

I was thinking of building a Mac Pro hackintosh but i wanted a high end system with minimal tinkering and max stability (for future updates)

Nearest you will find at the moment is the asem efi-x dongle. I used one as too lazy to do the neccessary work with Chameleon and other boot loaders. I have used mine since 10.5, 10.6 and 10.7. With 10.5 and 10.6 then with the EFi-X dongle installed then literally was insert standard retail OSX DVD into the Optical Drive and boot the machine. Installed 10.5 and 10.6 without a hitch. Can even install off a 10.7 USB Thumb Drive. Installs OSX as if on a Mac basically just select the DVD / USB drive in the selection of what disk to boot from.

I have a 1.1 but the 4.0 is compatible with 10.8.

Support is direct with developers via skype. The forum is user to user, not ASEM support. HCL isn't always listed as that great, mainly Giagbyte and Asus boards now but check on the forum if anyone else used.

Is best to wait for support to be announced ( or someone else to confirm ) before blindly updating with OSX updates etc, and timescales for updates / patches can be annoying.

Isn't quite as seemless as Apple experience has been however. In general same rules as for other methods, use a list of parts that someone else used first and stick with that.

El Awesome · Dec 31, 2012

musio said:
Is there such thing in the hackintosh world yet as building a system with listed parts so you don't need any special software mods to run OSX? (no ktext, modding, hacking, terminal, i mean working like an official apple product)

I was thinking of building a Mac Pro hackintosh but i wanted a high end system with minimal tinkering and max stability (for future updates)

http://tonymacx86.blogspot.ch/search/label/CustoMac

Get the hardware that is listed there. There will be minimal (almost no) fiddling required.

GermanyChris · Dec 31, 2012

musio said:
Is there such thing in the hackintosh world yet as building a system with listed parts so you don't need any special software mods to run OSX? (no ktext, modding, hacking, terminal, i mean working like an official apple product)

I was thinking of building a Mac Pro hackintosh but i wanted a high end system with minimal tinkering and max stability (for future updates)

Yes check out tonymac..

Having said that though hack are not MP's and that is my problem with them thay are just not emotionally appealing like my MP that why I just sold my last one. But after conversing with ElAwesome and sharing his excitement I have an itch to build a socket 2011 6 core

I'm just to much of a nerd to put these things to bed and the worst part is I have a loose MP case and the guy who makes mod stuff will ship to me.

mslide · Dec 31, 2012

musio said:
Is there such thing in the hackintosh world yet as building a system with listed parts so you don't need any special software mods to run OSX? (no ktext, modding, hacking, terminal, i mean working like an official apple product)

No, and it probably will never be that easy. Using parts listed on tonymac's site is a great start but it's still not fool proof. There's still a learning curve even when you pick parts that people have used before. Time learning things like how to build the USB install key, use MultiBeast, redoing the install several times so you know exactly what steps to take to reproduce a clean install, what to update after doing a software update (e.g. if audio stops working), etc.

None of this is hard. Hackintoshes run really well these days. Mine runs just as good as my MBP. However, you still need to spend time reading/learning. If you don't want to ever have to play around or fiddle to get everything working, then the only way is to buy a real Mac.

zarf2007 · Dec 31, 2012

El Awesome said:
I'm sitting here next to my new hackintosh.
It tookme about 1.5 days to get it working 100% - you can be much faster than that.

It was actually pretty easy, I just ran into a problem that took me several hours to solve. But I must say, setting up a hackintosh is really easy!

Specs:
ASUS Sabertooth Z77
Intel i7 3770k @ stoc 3.5 (until my water cooling arrives)
EVGA GTX680 Superclocked
16GB Corsair Dominator 1600Mhz RAM (another 16 to come)
Samsung 830 SSD from my Mac Pro

It's pretty fast (GB-Score: ~13500)
Until now it didn't KP once!

I must say I'm pretty pleased with this machine!

And it sounds like a plane taking off, looks as elegant as a garbage can, resale value is jack and it is just a poor mans wannabe Mac Pro....either buy genuine apple or go play with the windows bloatware losers.....

No matter how you dress it up, it's mouthwash ain't makin' it.

76ShovelHead · Dec 31, 2012

Cindori said:
Sure, a brand new Mac Pro is worth the cash.

But after 2 years, the cost of parts in the Mac Pro go down several hundred dollars.

The Mac Pro price does not reflect this. Even when you want replacement parts, you actually pay more then what the part cost when it was brand new. (excluding the repair service fee).

Of course people are going to turn to the hackintosh scene, provided they don't need Xeons, ECC, and can handle tweaking the system etc.

A friend of mine basically has no OSX system experience, he's a graphics/photoshop dude. Recently he bought a gaming PC with Intel 2600k, GTX 580 etc. I gave him the tip go hackintosh it, as he uses OSX on his Macbook and likes it. He said it was probably too troublesome.

Eventually I persuaded him, and gave him one single link to a brief guide on TonyMac x86. Within a couple of hours he logged back in, "hey, I'm in osx now and everything works great ".

Hackintoshing has really come a long way, it's actually easier to install OSX on a PC (with compatible parts) then it is to install Windows.

Installing OS X was far easier than Windows on my Core 2 Duo Hackintosh.

Honestly, I thought my motherboard or something was faulty because the Windows installation was taking well over 2 hours.

Its funny, you'd think Windows is supposed to work on PCs, It doesn't. OS X installed much faster, runs much faster, and to this day whenever I boot into Windows (Now using Windows 8, which also took a ridiculous amount of time to upgrade) it hangs and freezes at something as simple as Outlook. I experience no such hiccups running OS X.

76ShovelHead · Dec 31, 2012

zarf2007 said:
And it sounds like a plane taking off, looks as elegant as a garbage can, resale value is jack and it is just a poor mans wannabe Mac Pro....either buy genuine apple or go play with the windows bloatware losers.....

No matter how you dress it up, it's mouthwash ain't makin' it.

Haha.

And what makes an actual Macintosh so much more special (in terms of hardware) ? OS X and the physical appeal of the Macintosh are what make a Mac. Inside, they're equally as beautiful, but it is not like Apple is manufacturing their own superior board or CPU. They use Foxconn (which makes PC boards, too) and intel.

Many of us hackintoshers mod our systems into G5/Mac Pro cases. They're are also great case designers like Lian Li.

Mine is a Mercedes-Benz

At the end of the day, it is still a Core i7. And the *ability* to run OS X is a bonus at time of resale.

Mackilroy · Dec 31, 2012

zarf2007 said:
And it sounds like a plane taking off, looks as elegant as a garbage can, resale value is jack and it is just a poor mans wannabe Mac Pro....either buy genuine apple or go play with the windows bloatware losers.....

No matter how you dress it up, it's mouthwash ain't makin' it.

The first is an absolute liemy hackintosh is just as quiet as my Mac Pro ever was. Elegant? Sure, the MP case is elegant, but it isn't the only one that is. That's much more subjective. Resale value? Depends on the hardware used. Wannabe Mac Pro? Doesn't mean anything at all. You can easily build a hackintosh (or a PC) with more power than any Mac Pro anywhere.

No matter how elitist you attempt to be, it ain't gonna work.

cosmicjoke · Dec 31, 2012

every last component is in your control with a pc... you either buy junk components or you don't...the high end corsair chassis for example have an incredibly intelligent layout (check out the obsidian line) and a closed loop water cooler like the corsair h100 w/ quality fans like scythe gentle typhoon ap-15s and you have cooling exceeding quiet excellent cooling... it takes some research and money to build a great PC, that's all.

zarf2007 · Dec 31, 2012

Mackilroy said:
The first is an absolute lie–my hackintosh is just as quiet as my Mac Pro ever was. Elegant? Sure, the MP case is elegant, but it isn't the only one that is. That's much more subjective. Resale value? Depends on the hardware used. Wannabe Mac Pro? Doesn't mean anything at all. You can easily build a hackintosh (or a PC) with more power than any Mac Pro anywhere.

No matter how elitist you attempt to be, it ain't gonna work.

Yeah, and good luck getting support if one of the many components dies...not to mention the time spent diagnosing and money lost due to downtime.....your back to dealing with lame Taiwanese box shifters who don't give a toss. People buy apple because they want it to just 'work', and if you need the horse power of a Mac Pro the chances are you need it for work and therefore need stability.

Personally I would grab a six core Mac Pro from the refurb store, add a gtx680 card, add usb3 and a SSD as its main boot/osx drive and that would pretty much handle anything and be fully supported by apple and future osx updates.

You'd have the best of all worlds....

cosmicjoke · Dec 31, 2012

zarf2007 said:
Yeah, and good luck getting support if one of the many components dies...not to mention the time spent diagnosing and money lost due to downtime.....your back to dealing with lame Taiwanese box shifters who don't give a toss. People buy apple because they want it to just 'work', and if you need the horse power of a Mac Pro the chances are you need it for work and therefore need stability.

Personally I would grab a six core Mac Pro from the refurb store, add a gtx680 card, add usb3 and a SSD as its main boot/osx drive and that would pretty much handle anything and be fully supported by apple and future osx updates.

You'd have the best of all worlds....

i've had more positive results with corsair and evga's support for example than i have with apple and their "geniuses"... basically your support is as good as the vendors you go with.... the better tend to cost a bit more, but it's worth it... also i don't think a gtx 680 that operates at pci-e 1.0 in windows is exactly the best of both worlds.

GermanyChris · Dec 31, 2012

zarf2007 said:
Yeah, and good luck getting support if one of the many components dies...not to mention the time spent diagnosing and money lost due to downtime.....your back to dealing with lame Taiwanese box shifters who don't give a toss. People buy apple because they want it to just 'work', and if you need the horse power of a Mac Pro the chances are you need it for work and therefore need stability.

Personally I would grab a six core Mac Pro from the refurb store, add a gtx680 card, add usb3 and a SSD as its main boot/osx drive and that would pretty much handle anything and be fully supported by apple and future osx updates.

You'd have the best of all worlds....

really I just take my stuff back to the store I bought it. If its under 2 years they hand me a new part on the spot if more than that I have to wait on the RMA process. If I built the box I'll have no trouble diagnosing it because I built it. Computer building isn't complex or time consuming.

Mackilroy · Dec 31, 2012

GermanyChris said:
really I just take my stuff back to the store I bought it. If its under 2 years they hand me a new part on the spot if more than that I have to wait on the RMA process. If I built the box I'll have no trouble diagnosing it because I built it. Computer building isn't complex or time consuming.

Indeed. I've only had to RMA one part (GPU died on me) and the process was pretty simple.

As for building computers, you tend to learn a bit about them while putting them together.

As far as people needing a Mac Pro's power well, tell that to the people who build Linux boxes for server or render farms.

bearcatrp · Dec 31, 2012

Sounds like envy from folks who cannot build a computer that will crush any mac pro out there. If you know what your doing, its not that hard. Instead of bashing the folks who have done it, should be thanking them for pushing it to show how well OS X runs with the latest hardware. If apple would get off there arse and build an updated mac pro, which probably won't happen, and not ream folks on the price, maybe apple would sell more mac pro's instead of folks building hacks. Have thought about doing it myself with my new build but pretty sure apple is to busy with iOS to give a rats behind to build another mac pro. I've moved on to win7 to keep going instead of dreaming of a possible new mac pro.

torana355 · Dec 31, 2012

simsaladimbamba said:
Have you tried the following Hackintosh specific fora and websites yet?

tonymacx86 Blog - very good guides and quite good message board

InsanelyMac Forum

InsanelyMac Hardware Database

Hackintosh.com

OSx86 Project

While the entry Mac Pro is a bit overpriced, the higher models are worth their money and use higher quality components than an i7, they use server grade CPUs and RAM and chipsets. A similarly specced HP or Dell workstation sometimes even costs more than a Mac Pro and once the Mac Pro is using Sandy Bridge Xeons they will be up to date.

Just because you can build a tower with some consumer grade components, doesn't mean you build a Mac Pro.

This is exactly right, the high end Mac Pros are actually cheaper then a Dell or HP workstation. However if you just want to build a really fast Mac on the cheap then a Hackintosh can be a good avenue to explore.

TwoBytes · Jan 1, 2013

even the efix dongle requires some tinkering so it's not seamless. I would have thought if you get the exact same parts and throw them into a case it would be the same computer...

The advice about getting a 2nd hand mac pro seems best and upgrading that.

All Taken · Jan 1, 2013

zarf2007 said:
And it sounds like a plane taking off, looks as elegant as a garbage can, resale value is jack and it is just a poor mans wannabe Mac Pro....either buy genuine apple or go play with the windows bloatware losers.....

No matter how you dress it up, it's mouthwash ain't makin' it.

Are you okay?

El Awesome · Jan 1, 2013

zarf2007 said:
And it sounds like a plane taking off, looks as elegant as a garbage can, resale value is jack and it is just a poor mans wannabe Mac Pro....either buy genuine apple or go play with the windows bloatware losers.....

No matter how you dress it up, it's mouthwash ain't makin' it.

I'm gonna put a custom water loop on that thing, and that will be really silent. I had a Mac Pro, it was quiet, but nowhere near silent.
I agree - most PC cases look like crap. This is why I'm gonna build my own case, from scratch. Exactley how I want it to be.

Yep, resale value might be crap. I'm not gonna sell that thing for quite some time because it does everything I need it to do with lots of headroom. And yes again, it's just a poor mans Mac Pro because I simply can't afford a really good Mac Pro that suits my needs. I'm still a student, how the hell am I supposed to run 3k$ computer?? (that actually gets outperformed by a 1.5k$ 'Mac')
I am happy with all those disadvantages because as GermanyChris also said, if you build it yourself, you can fix it yourself. I actually never used Apples support for my Macs because I never could afford a brand new Mac with warranty. I'm used to troubleshoot stuff myself.

GermanyChris said:
Yes check out tonymac..

Having said that though hack are not MP's and that is my problem with them thay are just not emotionally appealing like my MP that why I just sold my last one. But after conversing with ElAwesome and sharing his excitement I have an itch to build a socket 2011 6 core

I'm just to much of a nerd to put these things to bed and the worst part is I have a loose MP case and the guy who makes mod stuff will ship to me.

Haha

I first wanted to build a LGA2011 hack, but I decided to switch to LGA1155 because I hardly need 6 cores and it costs twice as much than my i7 3770k.
And I can use native CPU power management with SpeedStep and everything.

TwoBytes · Jan 1, 2013

for new starters, this was a good overview
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pEW6d7m5Zc0

GermanyChris · Jan 1, 2013

El Awesome said:
I'm gonna put a custom water loop on that thing, and that will be really silent. I had a Mac Pro, it was quiet, but nowhere near silent.
I agree - most PC cases look like crap. This is why I'm gonna build my own case, from scratch. Exactley how I want it to be.

Yep, resale value might be crap. I'm not gonna sell that thing for quite some time because it does everything I need it to do with lots of headroom. And yes again, it's just a poor mans Mac Pro because I simply can't afford a really good Mac Pro that suits my needs. I'm still a student, how the hell am I supposed to run 3k$ computer?? (that actually gets outperformed by a 1.5k$ 'Mac')
I am happy with all those disadvantages because as GermanyChris also said, if you build it yourself, you can fix it yourself. I actually never used Apples support for my Macs because I never could afford a brand new Mac with warranty. I'm used to troubleshoot stuff myself.

Haha
I first wanted to build a LGA2011 hack, but I decided to switch to LGA1155 because I hardly need 6 cores and it costs twice as much than my i7 3770k.
And I can use native CPU power management with SpeedStep and everything.

Those are the only things holding me back, but I'm doing a bit or research

zarf2007 · Jan 1, 2013

All Taken said:
Are you okay?

Yes I'm fine, thanks for asking....I'm just not in denial like most hackintosh builders. I have built pc's in the past, including hackintoshes and tbh I don't have the time or the inclination for that crap anymore, in short, I have a life and value my time way too much to spend it getting an extra .5ghz out of the latest Gfx card......I buy a computer to do a job and don't want to jump through hoops to get it to work..,,

I can understand students being into building pc's as they have time on their hands, working for a living will soon fix that

All Taken · Jan 1, 2013

zarf2007 said:
Yes I'm fine, thanks for asking....I'm just not in denial like most hackintosh builders. I have built pc's in the past, including hackintoshes and tbh I don't have the time or the inclination for that crap anymore, in short, I have a life and value my time way too much to spend it getting an extra .5ghz out of the latest Gfx card......I buy a computer to do a job and don't want to jump through hoops to get it to work..,,

I can understand students being into building pc's as they have time on their hands, working for a living will soon fix that

Glad you're okay as you seemed overly passionate about something so vast and frankly time consuming. I have to say that many of my friends using hackintosh systems are 45 hour week guys that enjoy a dabble in that kind of thing. Add in that they 'need' the extra horsepower and OS X system that Apple simply doesn't have right now and i can see the appeal. If it saves you a couple of days a week in work hours then I say it's more than a student passion and has real use. I couldn't do with the break in compatibility myself as I rely on my machine as a work horse but then again if you know what you're doing I guess it's as easy as installing updates is?

GermanyChris · Jan 1, 2013

All Taken said:
Glad you're okay as you seemed overly passionate about something so vast and frankly time consuming. I have to say that many of my friends using hackintosh systems are 45 hour week guys that enjoy a dabble in that kind of thing. Add in that they 'need' the extra horsepower and OS X system that Apple simply doesn't have right now and i can see the appeal. If it saves you a couple of days a week in work hours then I say it's more than a student passion and has real use. I couldn't do with the break in compatibility myself as I rely on my machine as a work horse but then again if you know what you're doing I guess it's as easy as installing updates is?

Remember he/she has time to post on MR but not enough time to build a computer..

All Taken · Jan 1, 2013

GermanyChris said:
Remember he/she has time to post on MR but not enough time to build a computer..

I won't get into that as I feel it's subjective. I know you like the hackintosh scene and I say power to you, it's a great scene.

I understand this kids passion for work and his view on time scales also, it's tough being a worker for some and easy to stereotype certain things to particular groups, most easy is 'students'.

It's a great thing to be able to do, something I wouldn't mock anyone for as whether enthusiast or time saving Pro tool in a studio it's great to have options!

GermanyChris · Jan 1, 2013

All Taken said:
I won't get into that as I feel it's subjective. I know you like the hackintosh scene and I say power to you, it's a great scene.

I understand this kids passion for work and his view on time scales also, it's tough being a worker for some and easy to stereotype certain things to particular groups, most easy is 'students'.

It's a great thing to be able to do, something I wouldn't mock anyone for as whether enthusiast or time saving Pro tool in a studio it's great to have options!

I'm 35 with a Bachelors in Philosophy and an MBA. I have a wife and a 7 yo daughter..

Building a computer and installing an OS is a life skill no different than cooking, working on the car etc.

Time is the least subjective thing we're talking about simply put if you have time to post here you don't need the power of a modern hack.

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