Just something I need to clear up before someone goes up in arms about my rants - in general many of these Youtubers and other reviewers produce acceptable content most of the time. It is just sometimes that they fall of the cliff edge like lemmings when they speak about a subject that they do not have sufficient expertise in, but claim they do.
Just like I would never try and teach other people how to put nitrous oxide in your car to make it go really fast (as I have no clue how to do that), people should stop proffering advice on topics they have inadequate knowledge of. When that happens and come across my way (and knowledge domain), I'll speak up.
For this one, please review the following five videos: Video 1/5, Video 2/5, Video 3/5, Video 4/5 and Video 5/5. Sorry, this is a very long one but there is a lot of content to go over. There is also one other, related video I'd like you to review - specifically where he speaks about the Mac Pro being the 2nd most overpriced tech.
First some background. A Hackintosh is simply a normal custom built PC, albeit with specific compatible PC parts, and installing Mac OS X using special hacking tools to get the drivers and BIOS to properly boot the OS and recognize the system devices. People do this because they want the slick UI of Mac OS X but the freedom of choice in parts that you get from a PC. This is not legal - but the enthusiast community has been doing it for a long time now.
So here are some claims / comments he made throughout the videos where I feel he missed the ball. Remember, the intent is to create a "beast of a video editing machine" as per his own words.
This is the Intel Core i7-3930K. It is a 6-Core processor with multithreading so thanks to Intel it will perform like a 12 core.
First, it is not called Multithreading, it is called Hyper-Threading. Just like his Digital to Audio Converter nomenclature mistake, this clearly shows he is not technically inclined. Sure, Intel's Hyper-Threading makes use of SMT (Simultaneous Multithreading) - but it is not called that. Secondly, hyper-threading allows each core to execute two threads concurrently (sharing some key resources but having separate state), but that is a very far cry from his assertion that "it will perform like a 12 core". It may boost performance in some workloads, but a 6-Core hyper threaded CPU is not similar to a 12 core CPU. For starters, the 12 core CPU will probably have hyper threading too, making it a "24 core" as per his own words. Secondly, only some applications can make proper use of hyper threading. Thirdly, this idealized benchmark (idealized in the sense that this is about as good as it gets for Hyper-Threading), it is clear that the benefit of HT over non-HT is about 42%, not 100% as he claimed. Comparing 2 physical cores to 4 physical cores at the same clock speed yielded 100% improvement, as expected. But HT vs non HT was only 42%, less than half.
It is a socket 2011 CPU which means that there will be no SpeedStep so it will basically be running full blast all the time
This is complete and utter nonsense. Looking at Intel's ARK, it is clear that this CPU on its socket 2011 platform supports Intel Enhanced SpeedStep 2.0.
But it is made with really tough components, very durable. Military grade stuff inside. I do not know what that means in terms of durability for a motherboard but hey, better just works for me.
Not a false fact per se, but just a crap comment when you are promoting some hardware. If you have no clue what the benefit of something is, but still use that to justify your decision then it implies you are easily led by marketing schemes and are not not an unbiased, objective reviewer. If the box is pink and you like pink you will promote it, because it is PINK.
Our power supply is a fully modular Fractal Design Newton. This is their highest end 1000W power supply, fully modular. Now a lot of people immediately will assume that a 1000W is way more than you need and it probably is but the thing is I'd rather have way more power than I need than just barely more than I need and the reason for that is expansion. Part of the reason I am doing this over a Mac Pro is if I want to put more storage in it later, if I want to add graphics cards later, if I want to change out the CPU, if I want to add higher power drawing components I won't have to change this part. This part is pretty much going to stay in it for as long as I use this build or until it fails basically.
He is making an assertion about the Mac Pro's power supply without knowing anything about it. I wonder how he must feel if I told him that the Mac Pro 2012 had a 980W power supply - just as powerful as this PSU he is claiming as an advantage over the Mac Pro. Therefore he can expand the Mac Pro just as much in regards to power draw than his Hackintosh.
So this is 1000W power supply and basically when I am idling I am probably going to be using less than 500W...
According to Apple, the Mac Pro 2010 8 Core draws about 162W at idle. His build will draw no more than 500W at full load. The CPU is rated at 130W, and since he is overclocking it it will typically hit a limit of about 165W at 4.2GHz, his GV-N670OC-2GD GPU has a peak power draw of 160W, his SSDs draw 2.5W power each at max load and the rest of the system combined will consume less than 50W. So at max load, overclocked, his system will not exceed 400W. His statement is accurate if he did not state "at idle". At idle, his system should be using no more than 100W. Sure, that is less than 500W so technically not incorrect, but the way he stated it made it sound like it is just below half of his 1000W power supply at idle.
Inside the box of course you get the pump and reservoir which is the main unit [Corsair H80i cooler]
There is no reservoir in the Corsair H80i closed loop water cooling system. There is a CPU block, a pump, tubes and a radiator with a fan. He confused the radiator for a reservoir, though he did refer to the radiator by its correct name later.
I can tell you that from experience there is a lot similar between a Mac Pro and a Hack Pro and there is also a lot different. First of all on the hardware side there are a lot of differences. I'll start with upgradability. when you are going with a Hackintosh Pro you have far more upgradability than any Apple desktop, so with a Hackintosh you can change your power supply any time, you can change your RAM, you can change your CPU, motherboard, whatever you put in that Hack Pro you can switch out for whatever part you want and get it working. The Mac Pro you don't really see people replacing their motherboard or replacing their power supply those things really don't just happen. Usually the only things you'll replace in a Mac Pro are the graphics card, the RAM, and occasionally the, uhhh, actually yeah, that isn pretty much it. Hard drives I guess.
So WTF? Let me start with the PSU. He clearly stated earlier that he went with a 1000W PSU so that he can upgrade to his liking and never need to replace the PSU as it will be capable to handle all future upgrades. That said, why would you then want the PSU to be replaceable? It is a contradictory statement. The Mac Pro already has a 980W PSU - so it is by definition also never needed to upgrade the PSU - thus removing it from his equation.
As to the CPU and motherboard, unless you upgrade within the same platform you originally bought in to, when it comes time to upgrade your CPU, you will have to also upgrade your motherboard and possibly your RAM. There was LGA1156 in 2010, LGA1155 in 2011, LGA1150 in 2013, LGA2011 in 2011 and LGA2011-v3 in 2014 - all mutually incompatible with each other, so if you want a CPU on that chipset you need to replace the motherboard too. Usually when that time comes, you would also replace your GPU and other components as by that time the GPU would be obsolete too. Yes it is true you cannot upgrade the motherboard in a Mac Pro, but you can upgrade from a lower core CPU to a higher core CPU in a Mac Pro while keeping the motherboard (this is not officially supported by Apple but can easily be done by any enthusiast).
In a Mac Pro 2012 you can easily upgrade the RAM up to 128GB, the GPU, and since there are four 3.5" hard drive bays you can easily upgrade your hard drives too. I have done all three these upgrades on my Mac Pro without issue. There are also 4 x PCIe 2.0 x16 slots, with one occupied by the GPU, leaving three slots for adding any PCIe card you want. The Mac Pro 2012 was really as upgradable as anyone could ask for. The Mac Pro 2013 is another story, but that is not what his video is about.
So another big difference between the Hack Pro and the Mac Pro is the I/O, the inputs and outputs you get thanks to the motherboard. And there is a huge difference you won't get nearly as much I/O on the Mac Pro as you do on the Hack Pro. If you look at the back of the Mac Pro you are gonna get some USB ports but not very many, you get some ethernets, firewire you don't get Thunderbolt on the new Mac Pro it is weird that they still don't have that yet but hopefully we will see a new model of the Mac Pro but right now it's really really limited. You flip it around to the front and you still only have two more USB ports and some firewire and it is very limited and then you have your headphone jack and your microphone jack. On the Hack Pro you have a load of I/O ... basically you have way more USB ports, you have way more ethernet you have firewire you could get a Hackintosh Pro and use a motherboard with Thunderbolt support but I didn't but that is an option for you if you want it, but other than that you get the point. You also have the front I/O on the front of the Fractal R4 case so you have not only the power button but you have 4 more USB ports at least and you have your headphone jack, microphone jack and reset button so there are way more I/O options available with the Hackintosh.
Phew, lets break this one down. Mac Pro 2012 total Ports:
2 x 1Gbps Ethernet
4 x 800Mbps Firewire (two in front, two in rear)
5 x USB 2.0 (Two in front)
2 x USB 2.0 (on included Mac Keyboard)
802.11 a/b/g/n WiFi (not a port but an I/O nonetheless)
2.1+EDR Bluetooth
1 x Mic
2 x Headphone (one in rear, one in front)
1 x Optical digital audio I/O TOSLINK (in)
1 x Optical digital audio I/O TOSLINK (out)
His Hackintosh Pro:
1 x 1Gbps Ethernet
1 x 400Mbps Firewire
2 x eSATA
6 x USB 3.1 Gen 1 (two in front)
8 x USB 2.0 (Two in front)
1 x Optical S/PDIF audio out
1 x PS/2 Keyboard / mouse connector
2 x Mic (one in front, one in rear)
8 Channel Audio Out
1 x Headphone (front)
Let's look at this comment:
you have way more ethernet
LOL 2 > 1 so I guess it is true, just that he had his Mac Pro and Hackintosh Pro swopped around. The Mac Pro has twice the ethernet ports than the Hackintosh Pro.
Let's compare the rest:
6 USB 3.1 Gen 1 + 8 USB 2.0 = 14 Hackintosh Pro USB Ports vs Mac Pro 7 USB 2.0. Sure, the Mac Pro has 7 fewer USB ports, and no USB 3.0 ports. How many people need more than 7 USB ports? If you do, you can easily get a USB hub for the Mac Pro so this is not a deal breaker. USB 3.0 support would be nice, but in Mac Pro's defence - at the time it was making use of Firewire 800 which was much faster than USB 2.0, though not as fast as USB 3.0.
1 Firewire 400Mbps on Hackintosh Pro vs 4 x Firewrite 800Mbps on Mac Pro. Mac Pro wins.
Audio - the Mac Pro has both an optical input and optical output - the Hackintosh Pro only has an optical output. The Hackintosh has multi channel out but AFAIK the Mac Pro can output multichannel sound through the optical audio out as well as over an DisplayPort to HDMI adapter.
eSATA is a dead standard - nobody uses it so it is irrelevant. The PS/2 connector is ancient. So spend $50 and get a USB hub and you have more USB ports - problem solved. I do not consider his comparison even remotely accurate where it comes to I/O. And if you need USB 3.0, you can always add a PCIe card to the Mac Pro.
So processing power how does it stack up? Well you could say that that's one of the strengths of the Mac Pro it's not a weakness of the Hacintosh but the Mac Pro absolutely flies ahead of pretty much any of the competition on terms of processing power you can throw out dual Xeon's in your Mac Pro it will be very expensive but you can configure a very powerful Mac do out do it so it will crush benchmarks so it will get things like 18000 on Geekbench 19000 without even breaking a sweat. That being said the 6 core 3930K is a very powerful single CPU system and since we’re using a single CPU system with a single CPU motherboard this is a really good system I've been using it to video editing things like Premier and After Effects and it works wonders.
His original reason for building the Hackintosh was to have a "beast of a video editing machine" that is cheaper than the Mac Pro (as it is way overpriced in his opinion) and allows him to pick the components he want as Apple has not updated the hardware in the Mac Pro for quite some time (I am paraphrasing but this is what it boils down to). So when he admits that a Mac Pro can crush his Hackintosh in performance, surely his whole argument about getting better components goes out of the door? If older hardware outperforms newer hardware, surely there is no reason to switch to the new hardware just because it is new?
The reason the Mac Pro performs so well even with older hardware is because it is based off server grade components. These components scale well and were designed to last long. A 12 core Mac Pro will outlast any desktop system for years to come simply because even with faster per clock speeds, the desktop parts STILL do not have a 12 core equivalent - even in 2017. Only now, with the i9, is Intel releasing a 12 core version for desktops. A 12 core Mac Pro from 2012 will probably be faster than a 8 core i7-5960X, which was released 4 years after the Xeon chip, simply because it has 4 more cores - when it comes to his video processing workload.
He is using emotional observations "and it works wonders" as opposed to realistic, objective comparisons. His Hackintosh is much slower than a top end Mac Pro 2012. So his whole argument about needing a beast of a video editing machine falls flat and half the reason for his video is moot.
And then there is the graphics. Uhm the Mac Pro has some outdated graphics I’m gonna be perfectly honest the 5870 is more than a year old and applications we’re using today are not that old and they need more power than they did when 5870 came out so when you're using a Hackintosh you get to pick exactly what graphics card you want I went with the Nvidia GeForce GTX 670 that is light years ahead of the Intel or the AMD Radeon HD 5870 that was in my Mac Pro.
This makes it sound like you need to build a Hackintosh to make use of the GTX 670. One can simply buy a 670 and install it in a Mac Pro 2012. Granted, this does not always work and sometimes there are driver issues, but in this case one could have done so. I do however agree that in general, the Mac Pro has inferior graphics to what is currently available on the PC market.
And the last major difference I'd say between the Mac Pro and a Hack Pro is the price per spec that you get. If I were to spec out, you know, this Hacintosh, … , the equivalent Mac Pro is more than $1000 more. In fact, you can’t get a Mac Pro for the price that I built the Hack Pro. The lowest Mac Pro starts at $2500 dollars and even then you only get I think 6 GB of RAM and a regular hard drive. It is just not the same. With this you're getting a 6 core 12 thread processor you're getting 32 gigs of RAM you getting a RAID0 array there is just no comparison you get way more for your money and that is probably the number one reason that people by a Hackintosh or at least build one over buying a Mac Pro.
I am not going to argue that one can potentially, for some Mac Pros, build a comparable Hackintosh Pro for cheaper than a Mac Pro with similar specifications; I am however going to expose the inaccuracy of his claim above. He is comparing a "6 Core processor" with the Mac Pro's 6 Core processor, but the former is an i7 and the latter is a Xeon. He is comparing much, much cheaper 32GB of non-ECC RAM with ECC RAM in the Mac Pro. ECC RAM is crucial for certain workstation related computing as it provides reliability that non-ECC RAM cannot. ECC RAM is significantly more expensive and you need a Xeon CPU to make use of ECC RAM. He is comparing RAID0 to the Mac Pro - but he has 256GB of storage in his RAID0 array, and the Mac Pro can be configured with a 512GB SSD - double the storage. Sure the RAID0 should be somewhat faster, but it is still only HALF of the storage capacity of the Mac Pro - an unfair comparison. His computer case is not half the quality of a Mac Pro's aluminium case - not functional, but nonetheless the Mac Pro has a much better designed case and costs more. The Mac Pro "just works" - no fiddling of drivers or anything. Apple spent a lot of time making sure that the hardware is compatible and works well together. With the Hackintosh Pro you will spend a lot of time with compatibility issues and wasting time trying to get it to work optimally. Since time is money, there is value in picking something off the shelf that just works as opposed to spending days or weeks performing research and building and testing.
As a matter of fact, if you speced out a Mac Pro on Apple's website to the same specs as the Hackintosh that I have built for $2200 you'll end up giving Apple somewhere in the ballpark of $6000 which pretty much earns the #2 spot in this countdown. The Mac Pro is pretty overpriced.
His Hackintosh Pro:
Intel Core i7-3930K 6 Core CPU @ 3.2GHz (OC to 4.2GHz)
32GB Non-ECC DDR3 RAM
2 x 128GB SSD in 256GB RAID0, 1 x 128GB SSD
nVidia GTX670 2GB GPU
$2,200 (According to him - have not verified)
A "similarly speced" Mac Pro 2012:
Mac Pro Mid 2012
Intel Xeon W3680 6 Core @ 3.33GHz
32GB DDR3 ECC RAM
1 x 512GB SSD
ATI Radeon HD 5870 1GB GPU
$4,774
Do take note of my comment above that these two systems are NOT equivalent - ECC RAM, 512GB vs 256 RAID0 etc. Firstly, the Mac Pro is $4774, NOT $6000. It is also widely known Apple charges a lot for their RAM. What many people do is buying the configuration with the least amount of RAM then upgrading it from companies like OWC. That will shave off $630 off the price based on 2012 pricing. So you can have a Mac Pro 2012 for $4,144 vs his $2,200 (so just under double the price). Is that more expensive? Absolutely. But is it way overpriced? I do not think so if you are a professional that needs a top end workstation.
The Mac Pro lasts forever - they do not break down. They are quiet and thermally efficient. They are expandable and can reach much higher performance than his Hackintosh Pro can. You pay a premium for that like any enterprise grade equipment. Furthermore, you get a system warranty with the Mac Pro. If anything goes wrong with it, Apple will replace it. When you build a Hackintosh and pick the wrong parts or have issues, you are on your own. When you buy a Mac Pro you get software for free - the OS, and iLife apps. With a Hackintosh you need to steal the software.
Lastly, to conclude my point, it is illegal to do this. So there really is no option to build a Hackintosh if you want to respect Apple's IP and Terms and Conditions. So it cannot be overpriced because you cannot buy a comparable system with Mac OS X that is priced less as it does not exist, unless you want to break the law. It is like saying a $1.6mil Bugatti Veyron is overpriced. It is certainly expensive but it is not overpriced as there is nothing you can buy that performs similarly at a much lower price point.
If you really want to do this comparison fairly - compare a custom built Xeon system with ECC RAM and Windows as OS to the Mac Pro. You will find that the Mac might actually be cheaper:
According to Futurelooks, which has priced out each of the components in the Mac Pro, it would cost at least $11,500 (including a Windows 8 license) to build a Windows PC that is almost equivalent. Some parts cannot be matched like-for-like, as the Mac Pro features proprietary, custom-made logic boards, rather than off-the-shelf components. To build a top-end DIY PC that has almost equivalent specs to the $9,600 Mac Pro, you would need the following hardware: 12-core Intel Xeon E5-2697 V2 CPU ($2750), two AMD FirePro W9000 graphics cards ($3,400 each), Asus Rampage IV Gene micro ATX motherboard ($280), Silverstone FT03 and Strider 850W PSU ($360), 32GB of Corsair Vengeance DDR3 RAM ($360), and two 512GB Samsung 840 Pro SSDs ($450 each). Throw in a copy of Windows 8, and you’re looking at a total of $11,500.
And if it was "overpriced" - why would people create a whole community to create these Hackintoshes? Clearly there is something about the Apple Mac ecosystem that is highly alluring. It is more than just hardware, it is about the complete system. And that is what you pay for when you buy a Mac Pro.
My biggest gripe is that for someone who is widely watched and revered as this guy, he should be held to a higher standard before preaching to the masses. This is precisely how misinformation spreads. People consume information like it is candy, as they like being fed things as it is way easier than actually doing some good old fashioned research.