thank you for your suggestions. i agree that building one is the way to go to have a hackintosh, so i decided to pass by this time and bought a 2011 imac. thank you for your answers!

Building the parts is one thing (and a regular PC case is going to be much easier than a G5), installing the software system is another. By installing it yourself you'll learn what's necessary to make a hackintosh work: bootloader, kext's, DSDT's, etc. This comes in handy when, for example, you run an OSX update that breaks your system and you can't boot anymore, or install a new graphics card and all you get is a black screen. Things like that happen with a hackintosh. When you installed it yourself you'll be able to figure out how to fix things. If you didn't you're going to be entirely dependent on support from the one who did. Reverse engineering the process at that point is going to be much more difficult than just starting it yourself. It starts with the very choice of hardware components. I advise everyone to do it themselves so they don't have to rely on others for support. The resources/guides/forums at tonymacx86 are great and make it relatively easy.

You will do better to build it yourself and go through the learning curve. Then you will be the master of the Hackintosh.

+1

It takes effort to learn and do it yourself but you'll be able to fix things when they go wrong. Will that ebay seller provide support?

I find my hackintosh to be the best mac I have ever owned, it's fast, cheap and extremely stable. I edit weekly using PPro CS6 and recently started learning After Effects to check out Shian Storm's GHears. I have also run FCPX 10.0.7 but didn't like the app so I switched to PPro. Recently I needed to turn 50, 10 second clips in to smooth slow-mo at 25%, and after a lot of fiddling in AE and opening up a hack in PPro CSS6, I found the great results and easy workflow/output was actually form FCPx's optical flow. I stacked up all 50 clips, let it render over night and came back the next day very happy.

Stablility: I would say once, I got an error message from the boot loader, so I rebooted and then all was fine. Haven't seen that message since.

My Hackintosh is 100 times more stable than PPro is. Sometimes it crashed 3x in one day, then is stable for weeks. I have a friend with a real macPro with the same issue in PPro CS 5.5. I recently color corrected a short in FCP7 and it was 100% stable.

Updating the OS is a pain, you need to always have a clone (in a dual boot config) of your working system, of course you are going to run Time Machine and have your data backed up, to insure having a trouble free experience. Setting it up and maintaining it, there IS A LEARNING CURVE, but, everything you need is on the TonyMac site and people there can and will help.

You will do better to build it yourself and go through the learning curve. Then you will be the master of the Hackintosh.

If this sounds like too much find someone local to build it with/for you OR buy a real mac. The real problem is now they all come with designed obsolescence.

You want to see pictures of the inside. I thought about modding a G5 case, but ended up very happy with a PC case b/c you can put more 3.5" and 5.25" drives in and swap parts much more easily. The interior of a G5 case needs a lot of modding to work and then it's tight. It's really a lot of work to do it well and then you've short changed yourself, since you don't have much room.

You also want to see a picture of the back panel with in/out ports, than can be done nicely for $ or can look like shiiiit. My guess is they aren't showing what they don't want you to see…..

With a temp of 127 degrees celsius, you could also dry your hair and heat the room with it! lol!

The first Late 2013 Hackintosh Pro is here... in body and spirit, but not in performance. Granted it's not blazing fast and may melt down at anytime, no need to throw it in the trash since it's made from a trash can anyway:

http://www.tonymacx86.com/mac-pro-mods/120757-mac-pro-late-2013-replica.html

Ha, ha, ha :-)

QUO anyOS motherboard is available at discount today via http://us6.campaign-archive1.com/?u=348249f548&id=ecb6a43dfd

Never let your Hack auto update on anything. Check manually or ask before it updates anything.

@CFreak Thanks so much, For your detailed story about your experiences.

It sounds good, and positive, although some things worry me (like waiting 1 minute for the machine to catch up...). My timelines will be sometimes more complex, so I wonder how your machine holds up with 3 streams of GH2 etc.. If I eventually choose for the 'consumer' socket, it will be at least a bit faster than yours, i7 4770, better GTX card and 32 GB Ram. I hope that will do for me

You wrote: "I also have a 2008 Mac Pro 2x2.8 GHz" Mine is 2x 3.1, and I put a SSD boot drive in that made a big difference already.

My geekbench is around 11K (which I think is not bad for an almost 6 years old machine), but many of the i7 3770/ 4770K only get a 15 -17 K compared to i7 3930K that get around 19-21K geekbench

About your "Alexis Van Hurkman food for thought", are you suggesting to buy a 2nd hand Mac Pro from 2010, or?

Thnx , I hope some more people can Share their experiences.

"Does a complex timeline with some layers and a bunch of HD (2K 1/2 resolution) files with audio effects + visual effects (color correction, stabilization) play (back) fluently in the reference monitor ? (without rendering/ previewing)"

My build is from Feb. 2013: an i7 3770k on the GA UD5H mobo, 16 GB RAM with a 1.25 GB GTX 570.

I have just finished editing a wedding video that a still photog shot who is trying to break into video. He's admits he F'ed it up and asked for my help. All 1080 29.97i. Lots of shaky handheld, and cameras in Auto WB. I had to stabilize every handheld shot in a 2 cam multicam shoot of the ceremony and then CC on top of that.

I am relatively new to PPro CS6 coming from FCP 7.

Previous edits have been 2 streams of AVCHD multicoated, edited natively. I was blown away by the performance. I never had to wait on the machine while editing, it was waiting on me!

(Soon I will be editing a project with 3 streams of GH2 AVCHD multicam. I am interested to see how the machine performs. I also have an overclocked GTX 470 which performed better than my GTX 570, but, ran hot and would eventually become unstable. It needs some new paste, a better cooler or to flash the card with a slower clock speed. I am on a $125 ebay MSI GTX 570 for now with zero GPU problems).

That said, this was the first edit that challenged my machine: I had 3 hours of material, from 2 different cameras. I edited natively. I also worked in chunks, with the Eastern Orthodox ceremony taking up 20 minutes and requiring Warp Stab on every other shot (handheld cam). Everything worked brilliantly until I added the warp stab to all the shots that needed it. That really bogged the machine down analyzing each clip, took up all the RAM, I left it over night to curn through it. It did it. It also bloated the project file with all that anaylize data (typical) and that made saving the file take ca. 2 minutes at a go. The 20 minute project was still responsive to work with, but a little slower to display if I jumped around a lot. I then pasted it all together in to one 42 minute time line for the export. Then I experienced a display lag if I jumped around in the timeline, sometimes waiting 1 minutes for the machine to catch up. I don't know if that's typical. It was my first long, complicated edit with lots of Ken Burns effects on stills and patched up poorly shot video.

To export a H264 version of the 42 minutes took 2 hours to render out.

I think the machine did great and I reached the limits of what one can expect from PPro with such crap footage. PPro has a habit of hogging your RAM and I could see that in the activity monitor. I would think more RAM would have helped. Seriously the Photog said it's the customer's fault for hiring him. He's an idiot, but, a colleague.

Other than that, I think eventually I will go for a stronger GTX7xx graphics card when they come down in price and another 16 GB of RAM (Ram prices spiked after I got the initial 16 GB).

I feel it's the best mac I have ever owned: It's the fastest and the cheapest and stabler than the early intel MBP laptops were. I would just suggest to alway have a clone of your boot drive (put extra $ into having a bulletproof back-up plan). Always clone before you upgrade the OS. Also I think the recent 10.8.5 inc. update 1.0 broke USB 3.o for a lot of people. A fix is coming I am sure, but, if you rely on those drives, you might be better off just using internal drives.

Also I would stick to the TonyMac golden builds. There you will find the most help if you get into trouble. I was torn to go for the Thunderbolt version of my board, but am glad I didn't. The cables alone make it not worth the price. USB 3 is faster that the mechanical HD inside, and is working best if you have it running off your Intel Mobo port (not the Via Hub). Going into territory they aren't exploring with new processors, no speedster, etc. sounds like trouble to me. I am a DP, not a computer engineer and I want to keep it that way.

Out of curiosity I looked recently and didn't see a Haswell Thunderbolt mobo recommended by TonyMAc anyway.

I would say if you can afford a mac, go buy one and be done. I know the new coke can MacPro is not my choice of a machine either. I want it all in a box. If you can't afford or wait for a MacPro AND YOU HAVE a tech aptitude for computers and don't mind testing your system and reading forums, you can build an awesome stable machine. Just be ready to invest some time instead of money. You also need to know how the Mac works pretty well, and the TonyMAc guys are counting on you wanting to learn the extra mile to get yourself up & running. Like here, there is some serious know how there.

The Hackintosh is essentially the same hardware as a mac, with a bootloader that allows you to boot your choice of OS. I also have Win7 on my machine (in case I need it).

I also have a 2008 MacPro 2x2.8 GHz which I have never bothered to try using PPro on. I will soon when I try to sell it and will experiment with my GTX 570 in it, to try and sell it as a PPro machine. I bought it for FCP7 and I was disappointed to see FCP 7 could only use 1 of the 8 processors. FCP X didn't utilize the full power of the GPU and was, not my kind of editor, so PPro it is for now. It's fast and snappy on my Hackintosh.

Good luck and let us know what you settle on.

+1 @vicharris It's a great mobo. BTW - I just sold mine over the weekend... sniff sniff, miss that old beast of a computer. iMac and laptop are more than enough for me these days.