Mac Studio killing off "High End" Hackintoshes?

[dgdosen]

As a 3900X Hackintosh builder/owner, I can safely say this after seeing the Mac Studio: When I retire this Hackintosh, I'll replace it with 'at least' a Mac Studio. That's just a no brainer.

As fun and 'value-oriented' as this Hackintosh is, the Mac Studio beats it on so many (all?) levels. I'll assume that will be the case for most owners of Hackintoshes based on i7/i9/Ryzen 9 chips.

 

[velocityg4]

As a 3900X Hackintosh builder/owner, I can safely say this after seeing the Mac Studio: When I retire this Hackintosh, I'll replace it with 'at least' a Mac Studio. That's just a no brainer.

As fun and 'value-oriented' as this Hackintosh is, the Mac Studio beats it on so many (all?) levels. I'll assume that will be the case for most owners of Hackintoshes based on i7/i9/Ryzen 9 chips.

It might kill off some. Many are built by people who primarily want a Windows gaming computer or a customizable computer. Heck even a computer for booting multiple OS.

It won’t have much effect on those people. Although eventually when macOS drops x86 support. That’ll kill off the hackintosh.

 

[v0n]

It doesn't. For starters there is always the dreaded upgradability issue. Mac Studio may seem competitive at the moment but it's only because insane post-covid CPU/GPU prices. By the end of the year boxes at half the price will beat top spec Ultra in just about all real life tasks.

Final Cut rendering (being artificially slower and partially unaccelerated on opencl GPUs) might still have upper hand on Ultra (not to mention, M1 would never be faster if nvidia could still write drivers for macos and FCPX supported CUDA) Multicore benchmarks for Ultra might be still unbeaten, but nothing running on Silicon benefits from those, not even Apple's own software.

Two years on into Silicon rollout hackintosh still provide much better compatibility - for musicians almost all DAW stuff that matters still doesn't run natively on Silicon and for video editors about 70% of video editing plugins still don't work natively or run like **** on arm. Judging by the progress (or lack thereof) there is at least half a decade before the shock left over by Apple switching to iPad chips settles and Silicon gets proper support from developers.

 

[WhatDoYouGuysWannaDo]

I'm going to replace my i9 9820X that I just built 2 years ago. I know that's a short amount of time, but it's not because of performance so much as it is that I'm tired of dealing with a Hackintosh, and because the Hackintosh that I built in 2010 ended up lasting me until 2020. I did upgrade the RAM once, and the video card a few times, but only for compatibility. So for my Studio, I just ordered it with the RAM upgrade, and I think it will last me 10 years and I'll never have to worry about breaking my install with a new OpenCore config again. I'm done with that phase of my life, lol.

 

[Flint Ironstag]

GPU power scales linearly for me, so Hackintosh it is! Maybe we'll see support for 7900 cards 😂

 

[th0masp]

I'm not running a hackintosh but the open platform is just more flexible and can be upgraded - or repaired. That's all the reason to use it IMO.

If I were to buy a Studio I'd have to max out the RAM and probably at least go mid-range on the storage to be safe. If Macs were still upgradeable those two points would not even be a concern - just buy what you anticipate to require today, not three years from now.

New computer looks tasty right this moment - what else is new?

 

[-narcan-]

It would be far more expensive to try and build a hackintosh that competes with the Studio, so I think they're dead for now.

As for upgrades, the easy answer really is just that Macs hold their value exceptionally well. If you need more ram in the future, just sell and get whatever the latest thing is with more ram.

 

[joker00]

I’m have a hackintosh. Mac by day, windows gaming by night.
just ordered the studio for my day box.

 

[BrianBaughn]

I've seen the question asked and it seems a good hackintosh, upgradable to 64 or 128GB of RAM and comparable in power to the low-end Mac Studio, can be built for about the same price. The post I read also said about half of the cost would be the GPU.

For "pro" audio a high-end GPU isn't really needed…so the cost of that hackintosh could be reduced by a significant sum.

I'd guess macOS will drop support for their last Intel Macs in 3-5 years. In the past, I've commonly run a two-year old version of macOS so extrapolating that out a new hackintosh would mean good for 5-7 years. It's all a guess.

The hackintosh I built 8 years ago is running Monterey. The only main component that has changed is the video card and I got a compatible used one for under $100. Additional RAM in there, also.