Ok, that's true. I'm assembling "Hackintoshes" for about 15 years now, so installing and tweaking is ok for me. If you just want to buy and use it without knowing anything about hardware and coding at all, just buy a Mac. I just wanted to describe what is possible for less money.

The other point is that a 12 years old Xeon Mac Pro like yours is big, heavy, very power consuming and has just about half the processing power of the 400,- build I described in my post, CPUs and RAM have improved very much over the years. It also lacks AVX instructions AND needs tweaking like exchanging the graphics card and patching the kernel to run newer versions of macOS. So that also requires knowledge and is not for the faint of heart, just as with a "Hackintosh". Or you have to stick to an old version of MacOS, and so also of Logic Pro.

On the other hand, the ability to still use PCIe cards is a big advantage of Mac Pros or "Hackintoshes", as long as drivers exist. I'm still using an RME HDSPe and a UAD2 card.

The "PCIe Virus card" you mentioned is a TC PowerCore I assume. You won't be able to get it up and running unless you install a very old macOS version as the plugins are 32 bit only and the development of the PowerCore platform stopped in 2011. I also used the Virus PowerCore and other TC plugins about 15-20 years ago when DSP cards were a good choice to improve processing power.

 

Yep@myfanwy. The idea of the Cheesegrater is simply a ton of tracks in RAM way more than I would pay for on a current Mac. The idea is just STABILITY. My 828ES does not like Ventura yet. So I'm going to use a fully loaded 2017 MBP inside AudioGridder for my CPU Speed needs; and it will run anything I want Falcon2, Omnisphere 2.8, the Hydrasynth Editor, and anything else. I always add " Aside from Kontakt!", not because it can't handle these things either; but because I do not want to pay for them when I do not need them. Im not making movies.

I haven't tried the TC POCO stuff still, but the Pro is on an older OS indeed. High Sierra and it will run 32bit plugins without problems at all! Easier than Mojave. So it would run things like the old Sonnox, Soothe and other releases for early Intel machines. These have indeed become very difficult to get running on even Mojave. Jbridge and all those solutions' days are absolutely numbered. But again, a more modern machines such as my mbp can run anything 64bit. I'm not concerned with the Virus Emus on either of them as I have a TI2 KB on my desk or on the A-Frame should I decide to put the S49 on the desk instead. There are a ton of " Hardware Used" sample packs out there, which do not state Which Hardware was used. Think 808s. I didn't mean to imply that *you* specifically make any of them. I really wouldn't care if anyone did do this stuff, but it is weasel wording and I am sure if you haven't noticed it; it's only because you haven't bothered to encounter it.

The Poco was 10 bucks. Brand new in B Stock state. lol. The Cheese Grater was 350 or 400, I forget. But I do remember shipping charges were very high. Many printing companies and Graphics designers/Ad Agencies give these things to employees to get rid of them for free! Because they get these things dictated to them in that field. They need to have the newest and compatible with everything* machines. They are heavy as hell. Like a big bulletproof Tank.

Air Force One is about 20 years older and "important" people fly on it all the time. I know this solution does not work for everyone. But they are easy to work on, you can get into the case without a screwdriver even, I still have many bays for other internal SSDs. And I can stack up as many little M1 minis or whatever else as AudioGridder will allow me to.

Another interesting thing is Connectivity! Damn. It is both specs of Firewire I/o, 4 or 6xUSB 1, and Thunderbolt 2, 2 Optical ports (ADAT connectivity direct), and RCA style spdif as well. Stock and immediately available to user; not MOTU or RME solution for these. Both would exceed the price of the server itself.

Someone considering this option should really try to look a little harder and find one with a METAL compliant GPU as to install Mojave, etc more easily. People know the cards which work best for this, and so they can be pricey on eBay, etc. Personally I don't care, but I will air gap it.

 

Last edited: Nov 26, 2022

Up until Monterey, many old AMD cards are working OOB without patching, so SIP can be left enabled which makes things far more easy and compatible, even old models like HD7xxx or HD8xxx work like a charm if you don't need h.265 video hardware codec. Unfortunately, Apple decided to remove support for these cards in Ventura.

Let's not get too off topic, the thread is about building a hackintosh in 2023. And that depends on what you need and what you want to invest. If you have absolutely no clue about hard- and software, don't do it.

If you're a bit into coding and hardware, it should be no problem to build a machine that is fast and reliable and has enough power for big Logic projects for example. Still the main advantage is that everything is replaceable. Although compatible hardware ist getting less available and more expensive.

One more budget option is to look for a used (gaming) PC with 9th or 10th generation Intel CPU, 3xx, 4xx or 5xx mainboard and a compatible AMD GPU like RX 460. You should get something like this for under 500 bucks, as gamers tend to buy new hardware often.

You can even get away with no discrete graphics card and using the iGPU UHD 630 only, which is absolutely sufficient for audio work. It can be a bit tricky to make all ports work, and it DOESN'T work with 5xx or newer mainboards.

A good starting point is this guide: https://dortania.github.io/OpenCore-Install-Guide/

 

f00l! you should have done what I did and locked down an Amiga X5000 before supply chain issues hit.

Plus they have a "Xena", it's a second CPU that plugs in via the PCI Express. All Amiga, but a modern day CPU, none of the hardware limitations on animating and so on . . . .

 

the thread is about money and what to do with it. vicarious shopping. I'm buying neither so I am just reading some things to learn. there are two discreet paths. expensive and power user machines or the normal user requests. they are wildly different.

the ti2 and the big cheese grater 5.1. work perfectly integrated with logic 10.4.4. with 0 work on it. I bet you could drill the cases and add axles. and wheels to the case. Like a mobile boat anchor for your other boat anchor. If you do not need Mojave then why bother with expensive x86? Now I am truly lost. If someone has a literally fixed dollar amount to buy something, you can easily do the comparison with just apple products first. Then compare against a same priced selected parts/components system.

 

Last edited: Nov 28, 2022

can you really afford and have so much money to throw away and waste on something like this, just get a good PC.

 

I can only describe my point of view and my own experiences. I want to run the latest Logic Pro to be compatible with clients and be at least a bit future proof, so I have to install macOS Monterey, also 16GB of RAM and 512GB SSD are a minimum as I work with sample libraries or instruments like Keyscape and Kontakt. As I described above, the cheapest new Apple hardware (Mac mini) starts at 1259,- Euros. For that price, you can build a really powerful system with 32 or 64 GB of RAM and several TB SSD space.

Of course, buying used Apple hardware is an option, and you can get a used several years old MacBook Pro for that price. I'm also using a MacBook Pro for mobile work, but that needs to be serviced soon, as the battery is starting to blow up (again). And that means I have to give it away for 2 weeks. The Apple shop tells me they have to order replacement parts and that can take some time but I have to leave my MacBook there before they can even order them. And that's another reason why I like to build my own machines, I don't have to rely on that customer "support".

 

And an M1 mini. Back to page 1. But how is anything in this thread "So Much Money"?
The difference is negligible in price. Up to the mini. After that are the big price swings.

 

Last edited: Nov 28, 2022

update on the topic, answer remains YES, even if we completely ignore purchase prices, running costs and futureproofness

 

That seems odd, the mini M1 handling 43% more tracks than the MBP M2. Throttling in the mini can also happen.
This ranking doesn't say the amount of ram that should make a difference IMO.

 

I don't trust Morgonaut since she pretended you could run hackintosh on Ryzen cpu ... without saying you will NEVER run ANY Adobe software on it, due to special function on Intel CPU only.

She pretended it worked ... without testing the non working functions, of course.
How many ppl followed this stupid advice ?

Some SERIOUS reading (and not Morgonaut "just do it" and see later):
https://www.reddit.com/r/hackintosh/comments/z2wc0t/any_ryzen_hackintosh_found_problems_other_than/

@jazzzz Throttling is THE problem on M1 mini/macbook and such limited space computers.
Look at my powerful M1 !
It is powerful at 100% ... for less than 1 minute ...

 

I run Mac OSX inside VMware, but only for some testing purposes not related to audio.

The only reason to run Mac OS X is if you MUST run Logic or some other Apple ONLY software.

There's zero reasons to run Mac OS X on non-Apple hardware otherwise. It will just generate issues and problems. Especially if you want to have the latest versions of Mac OS X and the latest versions of all your software. Do you want to make music or do you want to hassle with incompabilities and a non-supported platform??

Otherwise just run Windows 10 on a AMD Ryzen 5950x and get access more software AND killer performance AND for a very low price in comparison.

If you really love Apple and Mac OS X, buy Apple hardware. It's stable and just works. But you won't get as much performance as with Ryzen on Windows 10.

 

I'm producing on the 2010 5.1 Pro I got for 400$ still, instead of my 2017 MacBook Pro. The additional RAM (64 gig), ultra stable operation, cleaner bounces, additional support of 32bit plugins, fits TC Electronic PoCo PCIE card, Dual 2.4 ghz processors, and all the additional digital I/o connectivity make it a great production machine for me. It runs Serum, Falcon, Kontakt, and anything else I have thrown at it so far. (Mojave aside)
Rendering long bounces might be a tiny bit slower than the MacBook I normally use.

I'd take it over a Mini any day of the week, and it is a even still! cheaper solution if you just want a Mac. My vote has been a separate Mac and PC, if you want both. Using the 2010 for about a month has only confirmed it for me more. You can find great value with just an older Mac, and run your ilok r2r releases on a pc.

 

I two ran two seperate machines one running Mac for recording purposes and one beefy machine for mixing and mastering.

 

great coverage on the topic: