This was an experiment I conducted last year on another forum, which the administrator closed down due to financial issues. I "built" a Hack Pro on Newegg and compared the premiums to that of the Mac Pro that was available at the time. I thought it might be relevant. Please forgive me, as there are certainly mistakes and errors in this experiment. Ever still, i'd like to know your opinions. ---------------------------------------------------------------- This is about as close as you can get to the original specs for a minimum-level Hackintosh Mac Pro. The original. The hackintosh. Conclusion: Not much of a difference. The Mac Pro's mouse has a 360 degree ball rather than a scroller, so it is probably more expensive. The case is also probably more expensive. (I chose the most mac-ish case found that was of quality) The CPU on the Hackintosh is actually 0.2GHz more powerful than that of the Mac Pro minimum because there were no 2.8GHz models in stock. I found that the biggest inflation factor is the processor. Why? Intel notoriously prices their highest processors disproportionately high. This occurs with every single model line by them. The lower model will be in the $100-200s, the middle model in the $200-300s, and the slightly higher one (Which happens to be the highest) is $1200~, even though its only 10% faster. There is a quad-core Xeon that also boasts a 12MB cache and includes almost all of the same features and probably performs at least 90% as fast, for less than $400. If a hackintosh-builder purchases that, they will receive about the same CPU performance for far, far less. The SECOND factor is the RAM. The Mac Pro adopts traditionally server-PC parts, like ECC-registered FB-DIMM ram. Whether or whether not ECC-registered RAM actually performs better is highly questionable (at least for audio-video Mac Pro purposes). If my build used normal RAM, there would be at least $50 of savings, if not more, and probably the exact same performance as well. But it's quite possible that ECC Ram is the key to the magical low latency Macs have to offer producers. In terms of parts, the Mac Pro is a pretty good deal (which I hate to say) but it is. For actual performance, its a horrible deal. I'm positive a similar build with the 2nd-or-3rd highest level Xeon would perform exactly the same, and it'd be $750+ cheaper. And it'd probably be more likely to be able to run Leopard properly, because they're more common (I have NOT checked whether the motherboard and parts I chose would be compatible for OSX86). The only hardware drawback (besides unimportant things like the case and mouse) is that the motherboard supports only up to 8GB of RAM while the Mac Pro motherboard supports 32GB. But is that 32GB potential really gonna be used with a Mac? I can see how it'd be important for PCs, but Mac Pros are designed for and used by audio producers, movie directors, and professional photographers; I think they'd definitely just get multiple Mac Pros if they needed to do more at a time. Nobody producer is out there rendering 6 different 1080p full-feature films on one PC. PS: Yes, I made sure the power supplies are the same. (the Mac Pro has a 980W server power supply, so the nearest I could find was this 1000W one). And as for the power supply that comes with the case, (350W), disregard it. OH also, the processor i chose is LGA771 and the motherboard is 775. I couldn't find a 775 model, so I added the 771 model- their prices are the same anyway, so it doesn't affect this comparison.
Decent overview, but why did you use an X38 mobo instead of a server board like the Mac has? Going to the same 2.8ghz Xeon that the Mac uses would drop ~$300 off the price. If you factor in the higher price of a server mobo (+$100 more maybe?) and the dropped price of the CPU (-$300), the PC ends up being about $1850, $450 less than the Mac. That price wouldn't make the Mac a good deal at all IMO.. You also have to consider that professionals generally won't go with the basic model, and at the higher end is where Apple (and any other big computer seller) will rape you, and this is where the huge savings of assembling your own PC will be more apparent.
Yeah, I realized that. The experiment was limited to what Newegg had to offer. You're exactly right, had I considered other sources. I apologize for any inconsistencies and contingencies.
Edited my post, you're too quick. Also, I looked up that Xeon price on Newegg, they carry it now, and AFAIK have carried it since release...
and then don't forget things the mac includes that you won't get like the really sweet liquid based cooling and SATA backplane on drives. the mac pro is expensive, yes, but not unreasonably so. it's a workstation machine and uses some very high end components.
Apple uses liquid cooling on the Mac Pro? I know they had it with the Power Mac G5, but I thought they dropped it for the Pro. In any case, add a Corsair H50 and $50 to the price if you want to compare it with a basic WC.
They did drop it on the Mac Pro. They also removed the IHS from the i7 chips in the new Mac Pro's oddly... http://anandtech.com/mac/showdoc.aspx?i=3597&p=10
Many things to note 1. I wouldn't use that psu. Maybe something like a corsair 1000w? That one comes with a cable too. 2. I'd skip on those peripherals, but that's just personal preference. $54 for a keyboard? No thanks, unless it's something that actually helps me out (like the natural 4000) 3. I'm assuming you're comparing to an older mac pro (not the latest nehalem ones). If you don't ever intend on upgrading to two cpus, get one of these: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819117166 instead of that xeon you have (which won't work with the board you picked, with the socket being different). http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115041 would also work. 4. cut costs with http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131282. 5. You don't need a case with a psu. Psus in this case (ha ha) would just be thrown aside, so why not get a cheaper case without a psu?
Here's what I would go for in a Hackintosh. Higher quality, and the parts are 100% working based on the OSX86's Wiki. $2499.00 $2037.89
please, name the price. im really interested. but at work, so the images won't show when 2009 model came out, i built one on OCuk using i7 920, 6GB RAM and gtx280. and it's still cheaper than single processor, 4GB GT120 one. (of course, case is p182, PSU is Tx650w and HDD is a cheap 320GB)
Prices added to my last post. I would say that everything in my list would be better than the Mac Pro model... That includes the keyboard and mouse.
The family pack is actually 5 licenses, though there isn't a 'single-user' license version from Newegg, so I had to add the family pack (which still comes out to be $400 cheaper than the apple version, WITH better stats).
