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I was wanting to build something to possibly replace my primary workstation, but preferably a mainboard with 64gb support on i7 (supposedly possible, otherwise Xeon) since I normally live in a web browser and email client, plus charts.
For charts was looking at a virtual solution, nothing is latency sensitive.
I of course also prefer doing some work in a shell and running R locally for some work.
I was running a Hackintosh as my main trading PC for more then 2 years with up to 6 screens (3x30" 2560x1600, 3x21" 1200x1600) under VMWare Fusion.
It is possible and works BUT it needs a lot of time, since every few months with any minor OSX update (like 10.9.1, 10.9.2, 10.9.3. etc.) the multi-monitor support stopped working and had to spent days to find solutions in forums, of course it would be possible to stay on a older and working OSX release, but thats not my kind of thing.
It all depends what you wanna do, you wanna trade or you enjoy spending your time more with building a high-end PC and trying all kinds of hardware and software patches.
In the end I got a new Mac Pro and it's just perfect, small, QUIET, fast, up to 6x30" 2560x1600 screens.
With the Hackintosh I spent much more time on buidling and changing the PC then on trading.
I love building perfect PCs since over 20 years, but trading is about earning a living and I can't worry if my trading PC still works after I installed a minor security software update.
One last point about multiple screens: The Tunderbolt daisy chain is very fast and allows many screens with full
speed which is much better than the ancient connections on the former machines.
In the next OSX screen support will be even smoother - eg menus and docks on every screen or displaying one
big picture over all screens.
I am glad I subscribed to this thread. I am computer illiterate but enjoy reading what others have done. But a Mac Pro with (6) screens, thats sweet! Maybe my next trading computer right there, thanks for the information
edit - I am obviously behind in the Mac world, a quick google search and its no big deal lol
I share @khe91's sentiment, it's quite a lot of hassle and the Mac premium is about $300 to $500 over an equivalent Hackintosh nowadays. In addition, I have to say again that you're probably using the wrong OS if it's not your target platform (e.g. you need virtualization for your most-frequently-used application).
That seems very wrong. Please show me a Mac Pro with 64GB memory, 512GB SSD, and a card that supports multiple monitors (3-4 is fine) on a high end i7 or Xeon that is only $300-$500 more than a Hackintosh.
I'd like to see this as well. If you go to Apple and price out a Mac Pro with bare minimum's, you are looking at $3K for a Xeon quad-core, 256 GB SSD and 12GB of RAM. Bump that up to 64GB of RAM and 512GB SSD and you're already at $4600.
I can (and have) built hackintosh machines with much better specs for less than half that starting price and many times less than a third of that starting price.
All you're saying is that the FirePros are expensive cards. The Mac Pro already supports 6 monitors out of the box and comes with:
(1) A PCIe SSD, not a SATA SSD. A PCIe SSD outperforms a SATA SSD by far (PCIe bus has about 1/10 the latency, several times the number of NAND channels, dedicated/optimized controller). Sequential read/write throughput is about 3x on an average PCIe SSD over a SATA SSD, and random IOPS go as high as 6x over a SATA SSD.
(2) Socket LGA 2011 motherboard with ECC support. ECC memory and a supporting processor/motherboard has always commanded a premium, I think it's self-explanatory to you if you've built several Hackintoshes.
(3) A Xeon E5 processor, with twice the memory bandwidth of a regular i7 processor.
(4) A 450W power supply, you will need more if you used a traditional tower case.
Mac Pro complete build: $3,999 + tax
Hackintosh: $3,517 + tax + case + assembly work
1 x Xeon E5-1650v2, $580
1 x Socket LGA 2011 motherboard with 3x PCIe x16 slots and ECC support, $369
2 x 8 GB PC3-14900 ECC memory, $178
1 x Plextor M6e 256 GB PCIe SSD, $290
2 x GPU between AMD FirePro W7000 and AMD FirePro W8000, $2,050
1 x Corsair 500W power supply, $50
Those particular FirePro cards are a waste. I have a AMD W600 which has 6-mini displayport out and is more than enough for anything to do with running a normal desktop, charts, etc (not games, not CAD, no video encoding). When you look at the price difference between the W600 and the W7000, you'll save $1500 right there, now making the Hackintosh build $2000 vs the Mac Pro $4000.