Hey everyone!
Looking for some opinions/build help on this, at least in some aspects, quite special build I'm looking to make.
First my part list, followed by a general overview of what I am trying to achieve, closed by some reasoning and possibly questions for every decision I made.
Careful, long post.
PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant
| Type | Item | Price |
|---|---|---|
| CPU | Intel Core i7-4790K 4.0GHz Quad-Core Processor | €301.79 @ Home of Hardware DE |
| Motherboard | Gigabyte GA-Z87X-UD5H ATX LGA1150 Motherboard | €169.90 @ Caseking |
| Memory | Crucial Ballistix Sport XT 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR3-1600 Memory | €135.89 @ Home of Hardware DE |
| Memory | Crucial Ballistix Sport XT 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR3-1600 Memory | €135.89 @ Home of Hardware DE |
| Storage | 6x Samsung 840 EVO 120GB 2.5" Solid State Drive | €66.90 @ Caseking |
| Storage | 4x Seagate Barracuda 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive | €50.42 @ Amazon Deutschland |
| Video Card | Gigabyte GeForce GTX 760 4GB WINDFORCE Video Card (2-Way SLI) | €259.90 @ Caseking |
| Video Card | Gigabyte GeForce GTX 760 4GB WINDFORCE Video Card (2-Way SLI) | €259.90 @ Caseking |
| Case | Corsair 750D ATX Full Tower Case | €119.90 @ Caseking |
| Power Supply | Corsair 860W 80+ Platinum Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply | €159.90 @ Caseking |
| Monitor | Asus VG278HE 144Hz 27.0" Monitor | €349.00 @ Amazon Deutschland |
| Monitor | Asus PB287Q 60Hz 28.0" Monitor | €599.00 @ Amazon Deutschland |
| Monitor | Asus PB287Q 60Hz 28.0" Monitor | €599.00 @ Amazon Deutschland |
| Other | SATA cable x10 | €14.90 |
| Total | ||
| Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available | €3708.05 | |
| In USD at time of posting | $4.898.75 | |
| Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-09-13 09:37 CEST+0200 |
Overview
I am currently running a late 2012 iMac 27" fully upgraded (atleast at the time of order):
- Core i7 @4.0Ghz
- GTX 680MX 2GB
- 32 GB RAM (16 GB BTO, 16 GB aftermarket; working flawlessly)
I am currently rocking a three monitor setup (27" iMac Screen at 2560x1440, 29" Dell U2913WM Ultrawide 21:9 at 2560x1080 and a older ASUS 24.5" at 1920x1200) which I have connected up through the two Thunderbolt ports (using adapters). I generally don't like how inhomogeneous the different sizes and resolutions are, making the desk look cluttered.
In the future, I want to both get rid of the clutter and shoot for 4k monitors -- things that I can't achieve using the iMac. My only Apple-option would thus be the Mac Pro, which if we look at the total of the parts would be more expensive without the monitors than the above setup (but I don't have to reason as to why Hackintosh in this subreddit, do I? ;)).
So, let me list my overall goals with this build:
- Future proof -- I want this setup to last a good while, and rather upgrade parts than go for a full rebuy as I have to with the iMac.
- 4k Monitors -- I want to drive two 4k monitors. Important: I do not want to use 4k for gaming, but rather for desktop work/coding/etc. For gaming, I am looking at a 144Hz monitor at 1080p (I know that this introduces a bit of resolution clutter, but at least the aspect ratios are the same and the monitors look very very similar from what I have seen in pictures). 144Hz should work under OS X, any information on that point is highly appreciated!
- Flawless OS X support -- Well, at least as flawless (and painless) as it can get. I have been running a Hackintosh before (where the compatibility of the hardware was more luck than anything), so I know my way around some of the kinks, but if I can avoid them, perfect!
- Dualboot -- I want to be able to dualboot into Windows.
- Decent graphics -- I'm not a hardcore PC gamer, amongst others because I own a PS4, but First-Person-Shooters belong on a PC. Thus, the graphics card(s) of choice should be future proof and should handle current games decently (not necessarily on Ultra-High). What the card has to support are the three monitors mentioned above (two at 4k, one at 1080p) for desktop work!
- Not watercooled, quite silent -- I am not looking for a watercooled solution, at least not at first. As for the volume of the build, it does not have to be terribly silent, although if you can recommend good and silent fans as replacements, let me know.
In the hope that I have not forgotten any big points, let me move to my individual reasonings on the parts I have chosen.
CPU
I chose the Intel Core i7 4790K because I want a Core i7 Chip, and the smallest model on PCPartPicker was just 30 € cheaper -- not a number to sweat about with this build. If you want to recommend a different CPU (like an i5), keep in mind that 4 cores/8 threads should be supported, as well as VT-d (see here for VT-d support).
Additionally, I would pick up the cheapest Intel Celeron with a LGA1150 socket I can get to be able to update the motherboard, but for that see the next part.
Motherboard
For the motherboard I picked the Gigabyte GA-Z87X-UD5H (this decision is not final, see below) as per tonymacx86 buyer's guide August 2014 (I generally followed this guide for picking the parts). I stuck with the 8 series, given that support for the 9 series is still experimental. This causes the issue, that the 8 series does not support the Haswell refresh-series without a BIOS update -- but you can't update the BIOS without a processor, can you? Therefore, I would go and grab the cheapest Intel Celeron LGA1150 I can get (as mentioned above already).
Are the above points correct? Do you have any other recommendations?
As for why the UD5H, I looked at the UD7 TH with it's Thunderbolt ports, came to the conclusion that I both do not need them and don't want to pay about 130 € more. The thing I am considering though, is "downgrading" to a UD4h or even UD3H. This, though, highly depends on the storage I choose (see next section) as I might need more than eight SATA ports. Otherwise, I believe, a downgrade to a UD3H/UD4H would not limit me in any way (for a good overview take a look at this comparison over at Gigabyte).
Storage (This is a big part, bear with me :))
As you might have seen in the part list I picked a whole lot of SSDs, and you might have already wondered why. Generally, I want both OS X and Windows to have a dedicated SSD -- for obvious reasons. Additionally, I want faster than SSD speed for OS X without the need for PCIe flash storage. One way to achieve that is using RAID 0 (striping) to combine two or more disks into one virtual disk, combining the space and speed of the disks used. This comes with the big issue that if one of the disks dies, your whole RAID is dead and all the data is lost. While I don't plan to store critical data on the OS-disks -- or at least not without backups -- a dead disk would not come with a big loss. Still, I don't my system to stop working from one minute to the next and having to go through the process of reinstalling everything. Thus, I would need a RAID 10 (stripe of mirrors) with four disks. This allows for one disk to fail without dataloss, while still benefitting from the higher write speeds.
For Windows, I am still contemplating about wether I should go for two SSDs in a RAID 1 for datasafety, or just stick with a single SSD, given that the Windows-OS data is not critical and quickly recovered in case of failure.
As for setting up the RAID under OS X, I found an article by MacBreaker on how to setup a Hackintosh on RAID 0, one comment mentions that the tutorial also worked for RAID 1 so I'm hoping for the best in regards to RAID 10. If I would go for a RAID for the Windows installation, I would use the host-level RAID provided by the Z87 chipset or the Marvell 88SE9230 controller of the motherboard (which might not be bootable to by Chimera, given the fixes OS X needs).
Additionally to the SSDs, some big HDDs for data are of course needed. Generally, I don't keep a lot of data on my computers but VMs, backups, etc. still take up a lot of space, so at least 1 TB should be available. At this point I started researching the possibility of sharing a RAID 1 between OS X and Windows to be able to access the data from both operating systems and still benefitting from the safety you get using RAID 1 (especially in light of Backblazes study on expected drive lifetimes; although one has to keep in mind that the usage pattern of 24/7 does not apply to this build).
The conclusion I came to in regards to sharing a RAID is that it generally is only possible using an additional RAID-controller which has driver support for both operating systems, such as the Highpoint RocketRAID cards. And I gotta admit: this is too much hassle for me. Not knowing for sure if this will work and maybe running into driver discrepancies corrupting the data is not my goal. And additionally, RAID 1 does not replace a backup anyway. As womble over on SuperUser points out:
Fire doesn't check what RAID level you've configured on your server.
Now, you might still wonder why the partlist contains four HDDs. My idea was to go for two independent RAID 1's, both consisting of two 1 TB disks each. Coming to think about it, I guess a single HDD with a bit more storage, say, 2 or 3 TB might be the better option (maybe combined with a HotSwap disk for backup purposes).
What it boils down to is probably the following setup:
| No. of disks | Disk Type | RAID type | Purpose |
|---|---|---|---|
| 4 | SSD | 10 | OS X |
| 1 | SSD | - | Windows |
| 1 | HDD | - | Data (both systems) |
| 1 | HDD | - | Swappable disk for backup |
At this point, we see that there are seven SATA ports needed to hold all the hard drives. I don't necessarily plan on installing a disk drive or additional hard disks at this point, still, having "only" eight ports with the lower tier motherboards mentioned above might be too few, so going for the upgrade to the UD5H with 10 ports might be worth it.
The last point to make here is the actual drives I've chosen. For the SSDs, I chose Samsung 840 EVOs, given the recommendation by tonymacx86 and the good ratings. For the HDDs, I currently selected the Seagate drives -- a selection, I'm not quite sure about. One the one hand, the Seagate disks do quite poorly in the aforementioned study by Backblaze. On the other hand, the ratings seem to be better than the ones Western Digital seems to get. Does anybody have any additional experiences?
Video cards
Now this is the part were I believe I need the most feedback: picking the right graphics card(s). As I have mentioned in the overview, I am not looking for the ultimate gaming rig, but the card has to be able to push 18,662,400 pixels on the desktop (again, only 1080p for gaming).
Looking at the cards tonymacx86 recommends and comparing them, the minimum card I need to get seems to be the GTX 760, given that I need a DisplayPort for a 4k monitor. This immediately brings up the next point: I need two DisplayPorts for two 4k displays. Which is why I added the extra card for two-way SLI, because apparently a adapter from DVI Dual-Link to DisplayPort can not convey 4k@60Hz (which is what I thought anyway).
Does anybody here have any differing recommendations regarding that point? Other cards? One single card? etc.
Case and Power Supply
For the power supply I'm gonna trust the value of 644 W PCPartPicker is giving me, and went for the Corsair AX860 to have a bit of breathing room. For the case I chose the Corsair 750D to accommodate for the potential 6 SSDs and 4 HDDs needed, although that could potentially be cut down to 5 SSDs, one internal HDD and one 5,25" bay for the swappable disk, allowing for a smaller case like the 550D.
Any other recommendations for cases are also greatly appreciated!
Monitors
As mentioned a few times already, I picked two Asus PB287Q 4k@60Hz monitors and one Asus VG278HE 1080p@144Hz monitor. If you know any other monitors in that price range and size which might be better, please let me know :).
Conclusion
Whew, that was a long post. If you made it through, thank you very much. If you made a comment, thank you even more! If you just skipped through, no worries, maybe you can comment on the parts you have read :).
If there are any open questions, or points that I failed to address, let me know!
Best regards.
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