Need advice for purchasing a new PC : Very peculiar case

Z

Zero Cool

Adept
Hi,First of all big thanks to all those who shall be providing me with useful information by replying to this thread. I appreciate the kind gesture that you've made for a fellow TE member.

Now getting to business, I need to buy a pc for around 50k but it must be used as a 100% operable hackintosh (zero gaming, God made PS3 and X360 for that). This is necessary as I must use Final Cut Pro on it ( which is my bread and butter) along with Adobe After Effects I have excellent knowledge of setting up osx86 machines so the software and installation bit is not a problem. On the hardware front I'm looking at an i5 2500 processor with a decent graphics card and at least 16gb of ram.

Secondly, I DO NOT overclock my machines so i think that perhaps getting a i5 2500k is overkill, so I should settle with the regular i5 2500 (if I'm not mistaken the only thing missing is the unlocked multiplier, right?). Since I won't be overclocking I think that getting a p67 motherboard also makes no sense when a decent h67 based motherboard could do the job at a much cheaper price.

Im looking for a motherboard that has at least 4 RAM slots and support for 32GB of ram, has SATA 3 and USB 3.0 slots as well. I have been recommended an Asus P8H67-M motherboard which has all of these features and would cost around the price range of Rs. 6700. I need your help in suggesting me with some other motherboards that will have the same specs and are easily available in the market.

Can you recommend me graphics cards that would do a decent job within the budget of 7K to 10K as well as a decent PSU that won't brake my wallet. Please keep in mind that I have to purchase the LCD monitor, speakers, keyboard and Mouse etc. out of the remaining budget as well

Please help me out of this predicament and I shall be one happy camper.
 
What version of FCP are you planning to run? 7? It doesn't use the GPU at all, so you can get something cheap and Hackintosh-friendly. The Mac mini is awfully slow but still fast enough if all you are planning to edit is 1080p footage transcoded to ProRes. To be frank, its no good for much else anyway. However, if you are using FCP X, that will require a different approach.
 
red dragon said:
How much does the new mac mini cost?
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Suffice to say it'll break OP's bank [although for us students it is offered @47000/- +].

This is what I'll propose you get Sire [Zero Cool] --
Core i5 2500 / 2400 ~ 9800/- OR 8800/-

ASUS P8H67-M PRO ~ 7000/- [ASUSTeK Computer Inc. - Motherboards- ASUS P8H67-M PRO, I hope this is the board you are referring to] OR Intel DH67 BL ~ 5200/- [all features of the ASUS board apart from the all solid capacitors and HDMI-out]

G.Skill RIPJAWS / Corsair XMS3 1600MHz 4GB x 1 ~ 1550/- [these are indicative prices of 4GB modules add as much RAM as you want]

Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 1TB ~ 2750/- [indicative price of 1TB hard-disk add as much storage as you want]

AMD HD 6670 ~ 5500/- [to run HD movies stutter free as well as play most indie games @high settings and AAA titles@low settings in case you slide, Intel HD 2000 IGP sucks at anything over HD playback]

Corsair VX 450W ~ 3500/- OR Seasonic S12II 430W ~ 3000/-

NZXT Gamma ~ 2100/- + 2x 120mm fans [to set-up a good airflow]

Dell ST2220M ~ 8800/- [comes with a native HDMI port, so covered there]

APC BR-650VA-IN ~ 2600/- [back-up ~10 / 15 minutes for your RIG in case of power outages]

[audio equipment I'm not aware so no recommends]

By the way out of curiosity, what is your line of profession, Sire? If it is too personal I apologize and no need to answer.

Hope this helps.
 
He must be a video editor.

BTW, there's no DXVA or UVD support on Mac OS X, so HD 6670 isn't going to help with any acceleration of movies. As for gaming on Mac OS X, forget it. But within the budget, I guess HD 6670 is a good choice anyway.

Also, to the OP, any particular reason you must use FCP? Most editors worldwide are moving away from FCP.
 
For a Hackintosh go with a Gigabyte board not ASUS I recently made a hackintosh i7 + Z68 board everything works great, even sleep FCPX everything, I also own a iMac but use this Hackintosh basically for video work as it is way faster than the iMac I have, I think so a gigabyte H67 board is more than good enough do not go for the latest graphic cards on the hackintosh no point as not many games are there and also there are issues with the high end graphic cards I personally am using the nvdia 240 card see this video of the hackintosh I made My New i7 Computer a Hackintosh - YouTube
 
ALPHA17 said:
Suffice to say it'll break OP's bank [although for us students it is offered @47000/- +].

This is what I'll propose you get Sire [Zero Cool] --
Core i5 2500 / 2400 ~ 9800/- OR 8800/-

ASUS P8H67-M PRO ~ 7000/- [ASUSTeK Computer Inc. - Motherboards- ASUS P8H67-M PRO, I hope this is the board you are referring to] OR Intel DH67 BL ~ 5200/- [all features of the ASUS board apart from the all solid capacitors and HDMI-out]

G.Skill RIPJAWS / Corsair XMS3 1600MHz 4GB x 1 ~ 1550/- [these are indicative prices of 4GB modules add as much RAM as you want]

Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 1TB ~ 2750/- [indicative price of 1TB hard-disk add as much storage as you want]

AMD HD 6670 ~ 5500/- [to run HD movies stutter free as well as play most indie games @high settings and AAA titles@low settings in case you slide, Intel HD 2000 IGP sucks at anything over HD playback]

Corsair VX 450W ~ 3500/- OR Seasonic S12II 430W ~ 3000/-

NZXT Gamma ~ 2100/- + 2x 120mm fans [to set-up a good airflow]

Dell ST2220M ~ 8800/- [comes with a native HDMI port, so covered there]

APC BR-650VA-IN ~ 2600/- [back-up ~10 / 15 minutes for your RIG in case of power outages]

[audio equipment I'm not aware so no recommends]

By the way out of curiosity, what is your line of profession, Sire? If it is too personal I apologize and no need to answer.

Hope this helps.
Click to expand...

Firstly, thanks for the info. I am a video editor/ visual effects technician by profession. I've started doing a bit of freelance of late & working on a hack at home in my free time seems to be the right choice.

I seem to have missed a very important point in my original post. I shall also be using Adobe After Effects on the hackintosh that has to be built. And that is a very RAM hungry software. I was also wondering what kind of GFX cards I can get for a budget of 7k-10k (might just buy one, FCPX can make some serious use for it in the future).

--- Updated Post - Automerged ---
Sub said:
Most editors worldwide are moving away from FCP.
Click to expand...

The thing is that while many are moving away from FCP (mainly because of a blunder called FCPX), FCP7 is still a very solid editing platform. None of my clients has even thought of moving away from it yet as everybody wants to wait for 6 odd months or so to see how FCPX evolves.

--- Updated Post - Automerged ---
funtoon said:
For a Hackintosh go with a Gigabyte board not ASUS I recently made a hackintosh i7 + Z68 board everything works great, even sleep FCPX everything, I also own a iMac but use this Hackintosh basically for video work as it is way faster than the iMac I have, I think so a gigabyte H67 board is more than good enough do not go for the latest graphic cards on the hackintosh no point as not many games are there and also there are issues with the high end graphic cards I personally am using the nvdia 240 card see this video of the hackintosh I made My New i7 Computer a Hackintosh - YouTube
Click to expand...

Thanks for the info. In my experience with hackintoshes (been using em for the last 3 years on different builds) , it would be unfair to single out Asus or Gigabyte as the better or more compatible motherboard manufacturer. I've used Mobos from both the companies & both seem to do the job very well. Its a matter of getting the right kexts & keeping it as vanilla as possible.
 
Yeah I believe you can make it even with Asus board I had my earlier test hackinotsh machine on a ASUS board but till date I have problems with sleep (power management) it's a Asus deluxe board also had Wifi built on the board and till date I could not enable the WiFi on the Asus board but apart from that everything else works great.

But this time when making a hackintosh for work basically (Video editing) I specifically went with a gigabyte board as everyone was saying it works beautifully with a hackinotsh and I was able to set up every thing very easily and everything just works out of the box deep-sleep, intel speedstep etc....... it's like a perfect Mac :) It's my personal experience that I had with both the boards that I wanted to share...... yeah but if you have the time and effort to put up and search of various ktext and edit some config files and the will you should be able to make it work with other boards.
 
Okay this is too freaky...

I just saw this page: Bundle Offer

and within 5 mins, I came across your thread :p.

Prime is running this Independence day combo deal:

Independence Day Special Offer

NZXT Source 210 Cabinet

Seasonic 500W SMPS

Asus p8h67–mle motherboard

Intel I5–2400 cpu

Gskill 4GB RAM

Asus DVDwriter 24X

Dell 23" LCD U2311H

Price:

Rs. 35,700.00

Rs. 34,200.00

You Save: Rs. 1,500.00
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Seems low on RAM (Just 4GB) for your requirements, but more sticks can always be added. HDD and GPU will have to be purchased separately though.

Just my 2c :D
 
Zero Cool said:
Firstly, thanks for the info. I am a video editor/ visual effects technician by profession. I've started doing a bit of freelance of late & working on a hack at home in my free time seems to be the right choice.

I seem to have missed a very important point in my original post. I shall also be using Adobe After Effects on the hackintosh that has to be built. And that is a very RAM hungry software. I was also wondering what kind of GFX cards I can get for a budget of 7k-10k (might just buy one, FCPX can make some serious use for it in the future).

The thing is that while many are moving away from FCP (mainly because of a blunder called FCPX), FCP7 is still a very solid editing platform. None of my clients has even thought of moving away from it yet as everybody wants to wait for 6 odd months or so to see how FCPX evolves.
Click to expand...

Hmmm... for your graphics card recommend you get the GTX 550 Ti ~ 9500/- [nVidia plug-ins are better optimized for productivity applications], CUDA Cores will help while menial tasks are to be enforced [audio / video encoding, though a word of caution on the output -- AnandTech - More Details on Elemental's GPU Accelerated H.264 Encoder / Maximum PC | GPU-Based Video Encoding is Here: Does That Mean Curtains For Your CPU?].

All said and done nVidia's architecture coupled with the CUDA cores offers a compelling reason to get this [nVidia] over the gaming optimized VLIW architecture used by AMD. Though AMD will also switch to a Compute based architecture with HD 8*** series cards, though it is speculated that high-end HD 7*** series cards will get the same treatment -- http://www.anandtech.com/show/4455/amds-graphics-core-next-preview-amd-architects-for-compute.

I'm an animation student and have trained on FCP 5.0 on a Mac-Pro so that is why I inquired about your line of work. Hope this helps, Sire.

boogeyman said:
ASUS P8H67-M LE
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^^ Only issue with this motherboard Sire is it offers RAM support of upto only 16 GB while OP has specified he wants expand-ability till 32GB. Cheers.
 
funtoon said:
For a Hackintosh go with a Gigabyte board not ASUS I recently made a hackintosh i7 + Z68 board everything works great, even sleep FCPX everything, I also own a iMac but use this Hackintosh basically for video work as it is way faster than the iMac I have, I think so a gigabyte H67 board is more than good enough do not go for the latest graphic cards on the hackintosh no point as not many games are there and also there are issues with the high end graphic cards I personally am using the nvdia 240 card see this video of the hackintosh I made My New i7 Computer a Hackintosh - YouTube
Click to expand...

BTW Ranjit, Which H67 based motherboard with USB3 , SATA3 & 32Gb RAM support would you recommend for easy installation.
 
Zero Cool said:
BTW Ranjit, Which H67 based motherboard with USB3 , SATA3 & 32Gb RAM support would you recommend for easy installation.
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Gigabyte GA-H67MA-UD2H-B3 see if you can get this board in India, last month I made my machine but I was in a hurry did not get this board so went with the gigabyte Z68 chipset.
 
Zero Cool said:
BTW Ranjit, Which H67 based motherboard with USB3 , SATA3 & 32Gb RAM support would you recommend for easy installation.
Click to expand...

Intel H67BL-3 - FIRST time in my life I assembled system with help of - 'chiragsthankur' our TE member- (he also help LOTS to finalized deal with PrimeABGB with lowest possible quotes) @ home & NO PROBLEM at ALL. I'm not in OverClocking & neither wish to do in future too.
 
Emperor the thread Starter 'Zero Cool' wants to make a Hackintosh not a normal machine with windows hence I quoted him the specific Gigabyte board.
 
Thanks for all the info guys :)

BTW, any advice on a good Graphics card between the budget of 7k-10k suitable for a hackintosh ? I have decided to hike my overall budget to 60k . Also any advise on a good SMPS shall be very useful.
 
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