New Mac tower build

jozi

My cousin has asked me to look into building him a MAC (Hackintosh) tower, being out of the loop and no experience what so ever with mac's I'm looking for some suggestions to get me started.

He's looking for quite a power full silent machine from what I can gather these are some requirements he has:
- Stylish non fussy case - we both thought the silverstone TJ09b was a nice looking case
- Intel cpu - possible six cores (very pricey compared to quad) - Noctua NH-D14 heatsink?
- Min 16gigs of ram (I had a look and found some 24gig tripple channel for ok-ihs money, not sure if it would work with which ever mobo is chosen)
- SSD drive & probably 2x 2tb in RAID (I've suggested something like a Seagate or WD Sata3 "Green" drive which should be plenty and fast enough)
- GFX I'm not sure what to go for, the few mac related site I've looked at all seem to use nVidia cards so possible a 560ti if there's a decent cooler available for them (or a decently quiet stock card)
- Mobo, not sure on either, something compatible with a 4/6core intel cpu and tripple channel ram (if I want to use 24gigs)
- Fans depending on what the case needs, no idea what brands are good these days. I'm running a Noctua or Nexus in my solo which I'm happy with.
PSU - not sure what to pick, anything powerfull enough and as silent as possible.

His intended use will be for photography editing, he does a lot of timelapse and started getting into video editing as well. He basically wants a very good machine which is better than is macbook.

I'm also thinking if it's possible to build something with enough room for 2x additional harddrives if he choses to add more and still fit in to a midi tower or something smaller than the above case, maybe even a m-atx board?

Have also just found a site with suggested hardware here and it looks like ati gfx cards are just as compatible, just need to be a little cautious as not everything is.

Also, if it matters, he will be using his tv as a monitor via a hdmi port.

jozi

I don't like it much He might though! i'm a bit unsure on the mini-itx form factor though, not sure how compatible it is with a Mac OS and what drawbacks there's to it? It's nicely packaged though that case.

uncle_sam_ie

jozi wrote: »

I don't like it much He might though! i'm a bit unsure on the mini-itx form factor though, not sure how compatible it is with a Mac OS and what drawbacks there's to it? It's nicely packaged though that case.

See what you of it think after this review(it's a long review but good). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mOi_vbyKLik

frozenfrozen

3930k if you want 6 cores. But you won't get speedstepping, not a drawback, I've turned it off my my build.
560ti won't help for video editing etc, at least 580 required, but still not needed. A much better raid config would be more use than a gfx card for what he wants.

Go Raid5, with 5 1tb WD greens. and ~128gb ssd.

Get 32gb of ram, if he's serious about video editing and photo editing he needs more than 16 gb. It's cheap, and makes a huge difference. Get a H100 cooler on push pull with quiet fans. Typhoons would be good. You're going to need good cooling for a 3930k.

For a motherboard I went with a sabertooth, I've had no problems, it's cheap(er) has 8dimm slots, has enough sata ports etc etc.


I originally wanted to go hackintosh, but I see no point now, I can edit much more efficiently with the programs available on windows.

jozi

That case looks much better black! I'll check out the reviews later one, it looks like a neat package just not gone on the white one.

I'm not sure how serious he is about the video editing bit but I have heard him talk about it, he definitely uses it for processing photo's and he's gotten into timelapse also lately.

Is a RAID 5 setup not over kill for a amateur photographer? I'm not to clued up on raid but I would assume RAID 5 to be very fast, and all drives hold the same data? Something for him as a main backup drive and for storing files other than those from photography.

I think he's dead set on a MAC os, although he might dualboot with win7 or ubuntu, I'm not sure if Lightroom is available on mac but I would assume it is.

H100 - I google this quickly, it's a water cooled cpu heatsink? How is water cooling for computer noobs? Can he easily manage without me having to call over to sort out issues with this? With the cost different from 4 to 6 cores we're prob going for a 4 core cpu.

frozenfrozen

Raid is a little bit more complicated than just bigger number being faster, but in essence, raid 5 is as fast as raid 0, but if you have 1 harddrive die, you can replace it and the whole storage structure will rebuild it's self, so unless you lose two drives in quick succession, your data is completely safe. It's very worth it if the information you're working with is worth a lot of money, and you simply can't afford to lose it.

If he's not serious, then there's no point in going all out. The H100 would only be needed for the really hot sandybride-e chips (which is what the 6 core 3930k would fall under). But if you do want to go with the h100 as a cooling solution for whatever cpu, to get a good overclock, it's great. You can't really call it watercooling because you never actually have to mess with filling it up, or changing the liquid or anything, just fit it like you would any cpu cooler and you're set.

Lightroom is available on mac. I would suggest that since you're not going with a 6 core, or anything too fancy, that you just head over to http://tonymacx86.com/ and follow some of the great advice they have there for hackintosh builds. You can just choose a build that someone wanting the same thing has done. Just buy through hardwareversand, as they're much cheaper than the links they will give on tonymac. Also if he's set on mac, then don't bother getting a windows license, it would be a waste of 100 quid if he just wants osx.

challengemaster

Lightroom, Aperture, Photoshop, and more all available on mac. If anything it's the one section that nearly has more (better) choice of programs than windows

frozenfrozen

aperture is awful though :P

only real upside to mac is final cut, and final cut X is awful too. Oh and prores, but cineform easily out-performs it.

lots of tradeoffs between the two platforms for video production. super high end, pc wins, straight off the shelf mac wins, people who know what they're doing: always win.


but a client will always prefer to see a mac :[

jozi

I was looking on that TonyMac site, he has't any guides that are up-to date but lots of forum posts, I'll go through some during the week and post up a parts list.

Tea_Bag

he cant be that serious if he's using a TV as a monitor.

whats his budget?

frozenfrozen

Oh I didn't see the part about the tv as a monitor. :P

jozi

Hehe, I was wondering how long it would take for someone to notice

I'm not sure on his budget, he hasnt decided yet. I was going to do up a list and see what it comes to and what he thinks then. I'll include a monitor if someone wants to recommend something?

frozenfrozen

Dell U2410 and get the M one if he doesn't like the price of that one. Just tell him that he'll have a lot of problems if he is colouring pictures and video on a monitor that isn't calibrated properly

Supermensch

In regards choosing a motherboard, I would advise you to pick one with a developed dsdt, so you you don't need to be messing around with patches for audio, network, etc.

http://www.tonymacx86.com/dsdt.php

(I think you need to be a member)

Also, make sure you do your research on graphics cards. Most of the problems I had with my hackintosh were related to my card, the gts450. A friend had good experiences with the 6870 (specifically, the Sapphire 6870). It worked OOTB for him.