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Any opinions on the SuperMaX hackintosh?

M

mrhick01

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Sep 22, 2008
562
426
Here is the link to their website and the primary system that they offer.

Essentially, they offer a dual Westmere X5680 Xeon 3.33 Ghz overclocked to 4.2 Ghz, with a dual 100 GB OCZ SSD for a boot drive and dual 2 TB platter drives for a 4 GB RAID on a EVGA Classified SR-2 motherboard.

Macintouch review link: http://www.macintouch.com/reviews/supermax/

SuperMaX link: http://www.supermax.me/

M. Hicks
Louisville, KY
 
Given that it seems to be priced in excess of 7 grand, why not just buy a mac pro?

A hackintosh is a viable alternative but I believe you get the most benefit, if you build one yourself. You save money on the components, and you pick/choose exactly what components, from the cpu, motherboard, down to the power supply.
 
If you're spending 7000$ on a computer, you want good support for it so I would never get a Hackintosh. What if an update kills it or you get driven into other problems? Who is going to help you? If it's main OS will be Windows and OS X is just for fun, then it's okay. Either get a real Mac Pro or other workstation from Dell for example, gives you some real support for the $
 
The interesting thing about this system is that it is the fastest workstation that you can purchase to run MacOS X BAR NONE.

Overclocked to 4.4 Ghz, up to 48 GB of RAM, dual SSD boot with 7 PCI-E slots...that is a ridiculous amount of power and speed.

Frankly, it seems that Apple ought to provide a board like the EVGA Classified SR-2. Even if you would not provide the overclocking option, you would do the target audience for the Mac Pro a favor with 7 slots and 64 lanes.

I can only hope that the 2011 (or 2012) Mac Pro would provide a board with more PCI-E lanes and 12 memory slots, at least for their highest-end models.
 
mrhick01 said:
The interesting thing about this system is that it is the fastest workstation that you can purchase to run MacOS X BAR NONE.

Overclocked to 4.4 Ghz, up to 48 GB of RAM, dual SSD boot with 7 PCI-E slots...that is a ridiculous amount of power and speed.

Frankly, it seems that Apple ought to provide a board like the EVGA Classified SR-2. Even if you would not provide the overclocking option, you would do the target audience for the Mac Pro a favor with 7 slots and 64 lanes.

I can only hope that the 2011 (or 2012) Mac Pro would provide a board with more PCI-E lanes and 12 memory slots, at least for their highest-end models.
Click to expand...

Where would you need all those PCIe slots? OS X doesn't support CrossFire nor SLI so forget multiple GPUs right away, they are useless unless you will run more than 3 displays (i.e. not many of us). Even if you added eSATA and USB 3.0 card, you would have one free slot left. For the majority, even 4 PCIe slots can be overkill as they simply don't need it. You can have over 10TB of HD capacity without a need for PCIe cards.

Besides, more slots would make Mac Pro bigger and only very few people would actually use the extra expandability. You will have hard time finding a 12-core workstation which is as small as Mac Pro but still so quiet and relatively cheap.
 
The extra slots would be used for custom audio/video peripherals that professionals use, it would reduce the need to buy Magma or Cyclone enclosures.

RAID cards? eSATA 6.0 Gb cards? 10 Gb Ethernet port cards? FibreChannel? USB 3.0 cards? There are plenty of examples where the multiple expansion comes into play.
 
Apple could continue to use their existing form factor and case for their four-, six-, and eight-core models...but the bigger, larger board (such as one with the featureset of an eVGA Classified SR-2, less the overclocking option) would be an option for their most premium systems. They may only sell 10,000 to 50,000 of these types of systems, but that's where they could charge and justify a $7,000-$9,000 price for such a workstation.
 
Rather have a Mac Pro to be honest.

It's not all about speed with the Mac Pro, it's about stability and reliability.

Crock of **** to be honest. No professional in their right mind would buy that to run OS X on it.
 
I could care less about geek bench scores ?

I would want it tested with the aps I use ? in my case would want to see say the retouch artist and digilloyd PS test results ? then make sure it does what I need cause even those are not my workflow ?


its cool :) but how cool ? or is it kinda like putting so much money into your honda that you could have bought a Porsche ! cause in the end one is just a fixed up Honda that you will never get any money out of ! the other is still a Porsche !
 
mrhick01 said:
Apple could continue to use their existing form factor and case for their four-, six-, and eight-core models...but the bigger, larger board (such as one with the featureset of an eVGA Classified SR-2, less the overclocking option) would be an option for their most premium systems. They may only sell 10,000 to 50,000 of these types of systems, but that's where they could charge and justify a $7,000-$9,000 price for such a workstation.
Click to expand...

If you haven't noticed yet, Apple is not after the most extreme users. Their lineup is very narrow and limited so I can't see Apple releasing even more expensive Mac Pro with even smaller market share. You have to remember that they have to be designed and manufactured etc and that ain't free.

Apple is concentrating on mobile market at the moment. They haven't cared about pros for years as the biggest money is made elsewhere
 
No HH, I've noticed.

I'm happy with my 2008 2.8 Ghz Octo Harpertown and my GTX285. It's given me power and efficiency and then some. High-level workstations are already a niche market within Apple and I understand that.

I just wanted to generate some dialogue on what seems like an interesting option to run MacOS X. Apple will probably soon sue them into the Stone Age, but I wonder if they will ignore them and let them serve a niche of a niche that Apple has not bothered with.
 
mrhick01 said:
The extra slots would be used for custom audio/video peripherals that professionals use, it would reduce the need to buy Magma or Cyclone enclosures.
Click to expand...

The number of audio pros who need 7 pci slots is extremely low. That's pretty much just pro tools users, and it looks like Avid is revamping the product line to probably use fewer cards. While this definitely has some wow factor, the people in the market for this are likely the ones willing to build their own machine and get specifically what they need (for a lot less money than this).
 
milo said:
The number of audio pros who need 7 pci slots is extremely low. That's pretty much just pro tools users, and it looks like Avid is revamping the product line to probably use fewer cards. While this definitely has some wow factor, the people in the market for this are likely the ones willing to build their own machine and get specifically what they need (for a lot less money than this).
Click to expand...
That sort of slot count is also usable for attaching a workstation to SANs and clusters (i.e. FC, 10G Ethernet, or Infiniband cards) as well as a fast graphics card without bandwidth loss per card (i.e. sticking an 8 or 16 lane card in a 16x phyisical slot wired up for 4x lanes).
 
Cindori said:
you want to create advertisement. you're affliated with that site/company.
Click to expand...

No I do not. I have no personal interest in that company, they are not giving me dime one.

I can understand you being cynical in these days and times, but next time, drink the decaf okay?

I brought it up as a subject of interest because I was casually browsing Ric Ford's Macintouch site yesterday and came on a link to a review of the box. It was cautiously recommended and it's obviously an extreme box.

I haven't posted much here, but I wanted to start a topic of interest because it indirectly concerns the Mac Pro.
 
nanofrog said:
That sort of slot count is also usable for attaching a workstation to SANs and clusters (i.e. FC, 10G Ethernet, or Infiniband cards) as well as a fast graphics card without bandwidth loss per card (i.e. sticking an 8 or 16 lane card in a 16x phyisical slot wired up for 4x lanes).
Click to expand...

Yes, there definitely are a few uses for that many slots. I was just disagreeing with the notion that many audio users need that many.
 
Is this going to be a production machine? I'm assuming it will be.

I'm with HH in that you need to consider the risks of updates and lack of support. What happens if an update klobbers your system (which it can being a hackintosh) or you run into issues.

With apple, you get both the software and hardware working tightly together and a good warranty.

Don't get me wrong, I'm actually using a hackintosh but I'm not relying on the machine to make money for me.

Its a balance of risks vs. rewards. Are you getting enough features for a better price over the risk of using OSX on a non-apple computer which could be problematic from time to time.
 
maflynn said:
Is this going to be a production machine? I'm assuming it will be.

I'm with HH in that you need to consider the risks of updates and lack of support. What happens if an update klobbers your system (which it can being a hackintosh) or you run into issues.

With apple, you get both the software and hardware working tightly together and a good warranty.

Don't get me wrong, I'm actually using a hackintosh but I'm not relying on the machine to make money for me.

Its a balance of risks vs. rewards. Are you getting enough features for a better price over the risk of using OSX on a non-apple computer which could be problematic from time to time.
Click to expand...

If you are running a production machine, you aren't going to run system updates right when they come out. You're going to make sure everything is backed up and do it when you have some down time. There may be slightly more risk with a hackintosh, but there's still enough risk with an Apple machine to not update in the middle of a paid job.
 
True, but the risks are even higher becuase a normal update that is very safe on a macintosh could cause an issue with the hackintosh. Even if you don't have a pressing deadline, it still take time to rebuild/fix the machine so its back to running.
 
Some hackintosh builds are able to handle software updates with no problem. And even on the ones that require a little manual tweaking, it's usually just one or two files.

Either way, if you are smart you will wait until others do the upgrade and can get specific instructions about what exactly needs to be done, if anything. And even if you do go ahead and update and it breaks something, you can just revert with time machine.

And unless you need the specific fixes, you can always just skip OS updates (which many people do even with official macs).
 
Of course.

My desktop seems to be this, but I'll be getting a dell 10" mini and from what I've read so far, this is by far more sensitive to osx updates.

Either way, I make a carbon copy clone of my drive before updating the OS, and things go south, I'll restore the backup.
 
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