Thinking about selling my rMBP and building a computer

[renosausage]

Hey everyone,

I love my rMBP, but for the last 8 months I've had it connected to my 24inch display.

So i though about building a Hackintosh to replace it.

Some benefits I though of was a more powerful GPU and the ability to expand storage.

Has anyone else had any ideas like this?

Is it a waste of my time?

Would a Hackintosh be more powerful than my rMBP?

 

[tekmoe]

I was using my MBP in the same fashion for about the past 3 years, rarely ever taking it anywhere with me like I used to when I first purchased it. I decided why not just use a desktop instead. Ultimately I bought a 27" iMac to replace it with and have been very satisfied. I have built a Hackintosh in the past but have to be honest and say I really like Apple's computers. They make nice stuff.

 

[Dekard]

lol, I did this exact same thing last year but went PC, built a nice gaming rig, but after 11 months I scraped it and upgraded my mac and using that again full time for me it's a clean desk and quiet office again, the fans I had on my beastly machine where always whirring and it took up too much room and I had a small desk.

Now I'm back to a 15 inch rMBP and a 27 inch Thunderbolt display.. use Windows in bootcamp for most of my gaming.

for me the issue was portability, i needed an office machine but wanted to have it on the couch with me or on the go..

Good luck no matter which way you go! I'd have liked the hackintosh if I would have went that way, but I love the portability.

 

[PDFierro]

Probably a waste of your time for the modifications you want to make. And perhaps more frustrating.

 

[Gav Mack]

Yes a hackintosh will be more powerful than your MBP.

PITA to manage though for the inexperienced.

Alternative is a used Mac Pro, you can fit up to 4 SATA 2 drives, have dual cpu's and run a gtx 680 2gb. SATA 3 via PCIe add on card.

My used early 2008 3,1 with 32gb ram and twin quad core harpertown 3.2 CPUs cost me $640 which was rather a bargain but bargains can be had if you look hard and long enough!

 

[GoingDark]

A good resource for building your own computer:
http://pcpartpicker.com/

Their forums are very helpful and they can alert you to any OS X incompatibilities. You can also view other hackintosh builds and parts lists.

What exactly do you want a more powerful GPU for? If it's gaming, I would suggest just building a Windows gaming PC as Windows games simply perform better than their OS X equivalents.

If you only use your rMBP in one spot hooked up to an external monitor and games aren't important to you, why not save yourself a bunch of money and just buy a Mac Mini?

 

[walkie]

I tried to use a regular laptop as a hackintosh machine and I ended up throwing in the towel, too much hassle: I couldn't get it to work, MacOSX froze up when installing, not to mention the hardware incompatibilities and drivers not working properly you may find if you get to install it succesfully, if you really want to have a powerful MAC desktop computer, sell everything you have now and buy a MacPro which can be expanded over time.

 

[old-wiz]

If you are comfortable troubleshooting and replacing parts and monkeying around with system kexts, you can probably do it.

That being said, if you are not experienced you will be wasting time and money.

 

[scbond]

Hackintosh is fine if you just want to toy around but you'll hate it when coming from an actual Mac. I did an install on my PC with 2009 specs that have all been supported (even the exact combination of CPU, motherboard and graphics card have been done) just to play around and it was pretty damn poor. It was certainly powerful but messing around with boot loaders and drivers, getting everything supported and then you find it has issues like crashing and so on. Not worth it for serious usage.

 

[old-wiz]

Hackintosh is fine if you just want to toy around but you'll hate it when coming from an actual Mac. I did an install on my PC with 2009 specs that have all been supported (even the exact combination of CPU, motherboard and graphics card have been done) just to play around and it was pretty damn poor. It was certainly powerful but messing around with boot loaders and drivers, getting everything supported and then you find it has issues like crashing and so on. Not worth it for serious usage.

and not worth it if it's for your business.

 

[hipnetic]

Why not get a Mac Mini? You can get a refurb for about $500 (obviously, a more powerful model will cost more). You won't have to worry about software updates that way. Plus, it's a beautiful little machine. Of course, it's using laptop-variations of the Intel i-series chips, so it's not going to be as powerful as a big desktop. If you need something more powerful, maybe a refurb Mac Pro?

Edit: The Mac Pro's seem to be super-expensive. If you need something more powerful than a Mini, then I can see why you'd be considering a Hackintosh. But, really, what are you doing that requires more power than a Mac Mini? And that requires OSX? Some hard-core video editing?

 

[Mr Pink57]

Save the money and buy a nice dock for your MBP.