I've seen people selling their Mac Pros to build Hackintoshes. Well, I've done the math, comparing a fully loaded Mac Pro 2009 (2x6-core) vs the best Core i7 (6700K) Hackintosh you can build:
- The Mac Pro 2009 (with 2x6-core) can be sold for 1.5x the price of building the top-end Hackintosh. In other words, if you sell today and use some of the cash to build a top-end Hackintosh, you'll "earn" 0.5x the price of a Hackintosh in "spare cash/profit" by selling the Mac Pro.
- The Hackintosh has 75% of the multi-core CPU Geekbench performance that a fully loaded Mac Pro 2009 has.
- It's a lot of hassle to build the hackintosh and sell the old Mac. And the hackintosh is uglier, risks being noisy, and has external WiFi antennas all over the place. There's loads of work setting up drivers and making sure every little detail works without crashes etc. And there's issues with Thunderbolt and USB 3 working in Hackintoshes, etc. All of those things will mature over the coming years.
- So switching from a Mac Pro 2009 to the best Core i7 Hackintosh
today is basically like getting a tiny bit of cash in return for a 25% drop in CPU performance, and lots of other drawbacks and hassle.
- More importantly: That tiny bit of spare cash after the machine-exchange won't be able to build a good machine-upgrade in a few years, when you inevitably need a new machine for more performance.
- Furthermore: PC parts lose their value instantly. You won't even be able to GIVE THEM AWAY FOR FREE in a few years when you inevitably want a CPU+motherboard upgrade, when a brand new Intel CPU platform exists.
So, here's a smarter way of handling Apple's phasing-out of hardware support. This method minimizes hassle, maximizes performance, and nets the same amount of cash in the end:
- Keep the Mac Pro 2009.
- Upgrade it to firmware 5.1 (fake "Mac Pro 2010").
- Enjoy the hassle-free OS X installations (until some future OS blocks even the 5.1/MP2010 model, which will take a very long time, unless Apple wants to piss people off; and even then, you can start hacking on your Mac Pro at that point, to install new OS versions there anyway).
- Run your current Mac Pro machine into the ground and enjoy its speed.
- When the time comes for an upgrade, you will
still be able to sell the Mac Pro 2009 since there's always a market for a fast Mac Pro... and here's the cool thing: When you sell it in the future, you'll get less money than today, but the final price you get for selling your monster-Mac Pro 2009 in the future will probably be about the same as the amount of SPARE CASH you'd have if you were selling
today and
immediately buying a Hackintosh.
- In other words, by waiting, you still have the same amount of "extra" cash in your hands in a few years when you inevitably need a NEW build/performance upgrade.
- And for those thinking they can just sell their Hackintosh instead if they were to build one today: That's not really possible. You can never sell your old Hackintosh PC parts, because nobody wants old "top-end" PC parts. Gamers want the latest parts, and grandmas want the cheapest budget parts. So buying a Hackintosh today is an instant loss since they don't retain any value.
- So regardless of which path you take, you'll have the same amount of cash in your hands in 5 years.
- And you will definitely want to build a new Hackintosh in a few years, since it will be way more powerful (we're talking 10-12 cores per CPU) than anything you can build today. But by waiting you get to enjoy the performance of your current Mac Pro 2009, and you'll STILL get the exact same amount of "spare cash" leftovers in the future from selling your old Mac Pro 2009.
- So wait, and enjoy the machine and the fact that it's faster than every Core i7 hackintosh available today. And then sell it and build a monster hackintosh in 5-10 years, which you were inevitably going to do anyway.
I hope I explained it clearly enough that someone else will understand what I'm saying. I don't have time to rewrite the post.