Hack Pro or Mac Pro?

[DoFoT9]

=> Triple-channel RAM doesn't yield a huge power-plus.

this, of course, depends on what you are doing. scientific sorts of applications will massively benefit.

PC3-17600 DDR3-SDRAM (dual channel 128-bit) 281.6 Gbit/s 35.2 GB/s 2,200MHz DDR3-2200
PC3-17600 DDR3-SDRAM (triple channel 192-bit) 422.4 Gbit/s 52.8 GB/s 2,200MHz DDR3-2200

 

[Quash]

What i always miss in discussions like this is the resale value.

Yes a mac pro is a lot more expensive. But if you have used it for 3 years, you get anywhere between 1000$-1500$ back even for the base quad core.

While a 3 year old home build pc is more like a stray cat. You're lucky if someone is willing to pick it up for free 😉 . Best case scenario you get a couple 100$. That makes the price difference small if you look longer term. (if you get student discount it's almost non existent)

Next to that a mac pro does use server grade hardware. Cooling & Xeons & ECC memory whether this is important to you or not is up to you of course.

Not starting a holy war on pc's, i own a self build pc next to my macs it runs windows 7 and it works fine.

 

[Cave Man]

I would love to build a high-end hackintosh to replace my 06 Mac Pro, I have looked into it many times over the past year but it seems every time there is a update you have the potential to run into problems with hardware etc.

Hackintoshes are about risk and reward. The risk will always be that the next update will brick your system. The reward is that you'll get a custom OS X mid-tower or tower and a variety of video cards that Apple will never offer at a very reasonable price.

I don't know how true that is now but it seems from reading on hackintosh user boards that they are always trying to tweak drivers to get things to work right etc.

I've been doing hackintoshes for a couple of years now. It is more easy today than ever and the p55 boards are pretty sound.

What i always miss in discussions like this is the resale value.

The only thing I buy with resale value in mind is stocks.

While a 3 year old home build pc is more like a stray cat. You're lucky if someone is willing to pick it up for free 😉 . Best case scenario you get a couple 100$. That makes the price difference small if you look longer term. (if you get student discount it's almost non existent).

Except that you don't have sell your PC. Just pull the parts you want to replace. I just replaced my mobo, cpu (i7) and RAM for about US$600 and kept using my case, power supply, video card (NVidia 9800gtx), DVD drive, FW800 PCI card and Bluetooth module.

Next to that a mac pro does use server grade hardware. Cooling & Xeons & ECC memory whether this is important to you or not is up to you of course.

Who needs a server-grade personal computer?

Not starting a holy war on pc's, i own a self build pc next to my macs it runs windows 7 and it works fine.

That's fine if it suits you. However, you don't make a compelling argument as far as I'm concerned.

 

[CampDavid]

So is robbing the 7-eleven, by your logic thats okay as well?
Both activities will have a minuscule effect on the global revenue, neither cause physical harm to anybody and the likeness of getting caught for either is very small unless you do something really stupid.

The law is the law. There is no choosing which ones you like and which ones are okay to break, they all must be obeyed. Just because you can get away with it doesn't mean its acceptable.

Using a piece of software on a machine it wasn't intended for are rather different things. It's like comparing the bloke who nudged me a bit on the way into the tube this morning with a mass murderer.

To me the Hackintosh is ideal for the hobbiest who wants to have a play and a tinker or get great performance without the need for total reliability, I used to do this with PCs back in the day (The Celeron2 300mhz - best processor ever)

I doubt you could ever build a machine to the same reliability standard as a Mac and one of the main benifits of the Mac to me is not having to deal with all of the crap you get when Microsoft sends out an update (as a sys admin I seem to spend half my life swearing at this) therefore I'll stick with spending my money on slower but solid "proper" Macs instead of trying to build a Hack.

If I didn't work in IT though I'd build one for the see hell of it (I know, my girlfriend tells me I'm too outrageously hardcore too.)

 

[iRobertM]

These battles will never end, same with Jailbreaking. People get so passionate about their side and will battle their case over and over in many threads. Human nature I guess.

Bottom line is you need to make the choice for yourself, just like everything else.

 

[sotiredofsoup]

I spent two nights this week getting a HackPro up and running in my spare time after work (working off my MBP for help). I'm pretty impressed with how relatively easy it was and the flexibility for future upgrades is awesome. I used tonymac's iBoot + MultiBeast method.

I had planned on getting a MacPro, but with priorities changing and the fact I don't use it for my job, I couldn't justify spending that much on a desktop.

Good luck in your decision and let us know what you decide!

 

[parakiet]

there aren't that much mac pros on the second hand market

i guess it's also personal but resell value doesn't matter for me. if it works, i keep using it

 

[grame]

Hey, that's the same board I use! 😉
As for overclocking, set the Vcore to [NORMAL], all advanced CPU features to [ENABLED] and BCLK to 160. You'll end up with 3.2GHz, SpeedStep and Turbo Boost (-> up to 3.84GHz on one core) enabled, Geekbench 64-bit ~9,200 at stock voltage.

For native AirPort have a look at this. I did that myself and it's super-easy.

wow - thanks for that. much faster. bit warmer on the cores - any suggestions for cooling? at the moment i'm on the stock fan and am hitting round 60.

ordered the apple wifi card and pci adaptor so should be on airport soon. cool.

 

[flatfoot]

wow - thanks for that. much faster. bit warmer on the cores - any suggestions for cooling? at the moment i'm on the stock fan and am hitting round 60.

ordered the apple wifi card and pci adaptor so should be on airport soon. cool.

I love my Scythe Mugen 2 Rev. B. Very quiet, very good cooling performance, low price.