Hackintosh builds?

[Sixstringer7]

Does anyone know of anyone or any company that will build a hackintosh for Pro Tools HD? I am trying to keep using my old process and Accel cards and not spend $10,000 on upgrades to PCI-e.

[Emcha_audio]

No company will build and sell you a hackintosh. As for somone or friends that's different but if they should do it freely.

[Dism]

Originally Posted by Emcha_audio

No company will build and sell you a hackintosh. As for somone or friends that's different but if they should do it freely.

... and just to expand on this point... it is indeed illegal for a company to distrubute a Hackintosh without the consent of Apple. There are some disputed moral grey areas regarding building them yourself, or having someone build one for you, but you cannot get in any legal trouble for doing so.

There are several threads on this forum regarding building your own OSX machine, and a plethora of resources from reputable sources like TonyMacx86.

[Brandonx1]

The issue you are going to run into is support. You should really build it yourself. Then you can support yourself. If you buy it from a friend or a company, it will not be legit. So if you have an issue, you may or may not be able to get someone to help you. If you build it yourself, you can help yourself. If you can't figure it out, I really think a really mac is the way to go. Or hire a fill time tech.

[Craig F]

look at this thread
http://duc.avid.com/showthread.php?t=324149

[John_Toolbox]

If you're not going to build it yourself, I'd seriously look at used mac pro's, and used PCIe cards. You can probably upgrade to PCIe for cheaper than you think, and you won't have to deal with the whole "BYOPC" thing.

Example:

There is currently a PCIe HD2 for sale on the DUC, including PT10HD, for $2500. You should be able to find a used nehalem mac pro for around $1200 or less these days(Maybe lower, I haven't checked prices on these for several months).

I bet if you shop around you can do better. Your PCI HD cards also still have some resale value, so factor that in as well.

Another option is a magma PE6R4-I chassis, that would let you keep using your PCI HD cards with a PCIe computer.

[sonorelli]

Originally Posted by Sixstringer7

Does anyone know of anyone or any company that will build a hackintosh for Pro Tools HD? I am trying to keep using my old process and Accel cards and not spend $10,000 on upgrades to PCI-e.

Kevin's Custom Computers

Email or PM for more details.

[God_made_me_do_it]

Actually there's just been a motherboard developed with Gigabyte which can apparently boot OSX out of the box -

http://quocomputer.com/

They just got going on kickstarter and doubled the target for funding so I'd imagine the next run of these is your best bet for making a cheap i7-based OSX machine. It also comes with Thunderbolt and Texas Instruments FW400/800 so is very nicely spec'd for audio work. No legal issues from what I can see with the exception of any you put upon yourself for installing OSX (no company can legally do that for you, these guys are no exception).

That said personally I'd just run Windows since all evidence points to it being a bit better at running loads of plugins at low latency these days anyway, but I appreciate some people prefer working in one OS over another or use platform-specific stuff other than pro tools so I guess that choice is down to you alone.