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Just as with any Hackintosh setup: The guy who builds the system seems to have "no" knowledge about hardware and thinks he could write about it. This guy says i

Just as with any Hackintosh setup: The guy who builds the system seems to have "no" knowledge about hardware and thinks he could write about it. This guy says it's a eight core CPU which is just wrong. The power supply is WAY too oversized resulting in bad efficiency and thus a bigger power consumption. He also states he needs no special kexts. Well.. that's because you are using Clover! God damn.. there is so much wrong with >90% of those articles online on how to build a Hackintosh... it's amazing.

morganwilde 9y ago
Can you give a good resource that's not wrong? I'm really curious.
- atVelocet 9y ago
  https://www.tonymacx86.com/buyersguide/april/2017 https://www.tonymacx86.com/buyersguide/april/2017 This is something to start with. But i don't know why they don't go with a NVMe SSD? Clover supports it and it's way faster. But overall these are relatively good guides. I still would make some minor adjustments but that doesn't matter.
mtarnovan 9y ago
He said he was going to buy the 8-core Mac Pro. What's wrong about that?
nnq 9y ago
> The power supply is WAY too oversized resulting in bad efficiency and thus a bigger power consumption ...but who gives a f? It's a desktop, no battery to drain. And of all the appliances in your home, the computers surely don't mean that much as a percentage of power usage. Yeah, other things are probably wrong too, but I think you picked the wrong detail to care about here :) Better to have a bigger power supply and be sure it'll handle whatever you might add to the machine in the future than to care about replacing it. And from my (and everyone else I talked to) experience, inefficient (power-wise) electronics tend to last way longer than efficient ones, so I prefer them (since my time wasted finding a replacement or a repair shop is worth more than the price of the extra power), even when it comes to fridges and washing machines. (Commenting mostly because all this insane obsession with energy efficiency is getting on my nerves.)
- atVelocet 9y ago
  I give a fuck :p And even if he overclocks his CPU and GPU it's still oversized. It just doesn't make any sense. I think a good system is well balanced with room for improvement. But we are talking about a 760W PSU! This systems consumes at least 300W to 350W under load. So thats twice the needed load! A 600W PSU would have also done the job but this thing is just pure overkill.
  - prodmerc 9y ago
    It is better to have spare wattage instead of running it at full load. It's not like the PSU uses power by itself, and a larger one will last longer and be future proof...
  - mirekrusin 9y ago
    He's saying he may upgrade to GTX 1080ti - that's extra 250W. It's the first time I can hear that oversized PSU leads to more power consumption - how come?
    - tbihl 9y ago
      From what I'm reading, the 1080ti and 280x both fall right before 250W, so the change shouldn't be significant.
      - mirekrusin 9y ago
        Also PSUs have an efficiency, i.e. only 80% of consumed energy goes into the components (it's available), the rest goes as toaster/heater I guess. There are different standards it seems gold, platinum etc.
    - davrosthedalek 9y ago
      Somewhere in the power supply, power is converted via a switched inductance, the power transfer is controlled by the switching frequency, with toughly the same energy transferred for each cycle (constant I_peak). Losses are roughly f*I_peak^2. There are several factors limiting maximum f, so to get a bigger maximum power, bigger power supplies have bigger I_peak. Thus, for the same transferred power, a bigger supply will have bigger I_peak and smaller f, but since I_peak appears squared, the loss is worse. (This is the rough explanation, the devil is in the details) Additionally, many power supplies are worse at load regulation if their load is too low.
thinknot 9y ago
>He also states he needs no special kexts. Well.. that's because you are using Clover! All Hackintoshes require the FakeSMC kext (to bypass DSMOS), that's it. Some systems require more kexts, for example, to have networking, etc. Clover doesn't patch or install kexts, but it patches the ACPI tables (especially DSDT). Maybe that's what you mean?
- atVelocet 9y ago
  Clover does more than just patching ACPI tables. But when you change some ACPI tables and other registers (CFG...) via Clover you don't need those hacked kexts. It's as simple as that.
TheSpiceIsLife 9y ago
The way I'm reading it here he's referring to the Mac Pro he didn't buy.: "The spec I was going to go for was an 8-core model, with 32 gigs of RAM, a 1 TB flash drive, additional external storage, two D700s" Unless I missed something. Also, I've often wondered who needs a 700+ watt power supply? How many video cards, drives, CPUs, etc etc could that handle?
- monochromatic 9y ago
  Electronics that are running at capacity tend to have more issues. If a 700 watt power supply wastes a couple bucks worth of power a year, but lasts twice as long, who cares about the power?
  - ramchip 9y ago
    > Electronics that are running at capacity tend to have more issues. Do you have any statistics or other sources on that? (honestly curious)
    - monochromatic 9y ago
      No, I don't. Just anecdotes, conjecture, and common sense. I'd like to see the numbers too.
  - ychompinator 9y ago
    A 700W 80+ power supply will generally be more efficient pushing 450W than a 500W PSU because the wattage output is in the mid-range where peak efficiency generally occurs.
  - wtallis 9y ago
    Power supply longevity is already extremely high compared to any other component, if you're looking mostly at high-quality brands like Seasonic. Their top tier product line (with 650W models and up) has a 12-year warranty, and the next tier down (with 550W models and up) has a 10-year warranty. If you want a long-lasting power supply, you can just buy one directly.
ejolto 9y ago
> The power supply is WAY too oversized The fan is off if the load is below 30% which is neat if you are into silent builds.
- atVelocet 9y ago
  I have a 450W PSU and my fan runs with maybe 300rpm and is absolutely unhearable inside the case (even when it's night). So i won't count this as an argument. ~ 230W = 30 % Load (760W) ~ 135W = 30 % Load (450W) The idle draw of such a system is below 100W (okok.. max 100W ;) ) so you won't hear any fan even with a smaller PSU.
  - ejolto 9y ago
    That's true! And the system has 4 Noctua fans and a Corsair H80i water cooler, which will all make more noise than the PSU anyway.
ReligiousFlames 9y ago
Lol. Doesn't grok hyperthreading is stealing idle execution units in a real core to make it seem like there are more cores. FWIW I use a MBP 13 non-Retina mid-2012 with 16 GiB and two SSDs. Good enough and no weird compatibility issues.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
nedsma 9y ago
It's a great PSU having over 90% efficiency at just 20% load. plus being completely silent at that load. The GPU alone needs more power than GTX 1080. At 90% CPU TDP utilization, the setup will pull more than 450W. Add some overclocking, the total power consumption goes easily over 500W. How is that being oversized?
- atVelocet 9y ago
  - The system won't pull more than 350 to 400W - A GTX 1080 needs less power than the R9-280X -- AnandTech and others have shown that - System Idle is around 80W (thanks AMD ^^) -- 20% load would be around twice: ~150W. So the PSU runs at about 10% load in idle --- When running at 10% load the PSU has a worse efficiency - Why the fuck is he buying a AMD GPU? Ahh.. Hackintosh BS :/ ("no real NV drivers...") - Even if OCd, the system will not pull more than 400W (look at AT and their OCd X99 system). Maybe 420W.
glenneroo 9y ago
> This guy says it's a eight core CPU which is just wrong. Actually it has 8 logical cores and 4 physical cores. For all practical purposes, you have 8 cores at your disposal. I build workstations for 3D rendering and I have yet to see a tool that cares whether the cores are physical or logical, as long as you have enough RAM for each core, you can use each one to it's fullest extent.
- darpa_escapee 9y ago
  Unless the parallel operations you're running interweave nicely with the CPU pipeline, there are many instances where a hyperthreading enabled 4-core CPU performs no better than a non-hyperthreading enabled 4-core CPU. On average, a setup with 4 logical cores and 4 physical cores performs 15%-30% faster than a setup with just 4 physical cores.
  - glenneroo 9y ago
    Fair enough, I wasn't aware performance was that bad. Regardless, my point is that the article didn't specify if he meant logical or physical cores, therefore saying that the article is wrong, is partially incorrect (and seems like an unnecessary attempt to nitpick for the sake of nitpicking).
    - detaro 9y ago
      X-core CPU basically always means physical cores, even the marketing departments have gotten that message. Logical cores are called "threads" in that context.
glenneroo 9y ago
Quick and dirty calculations of power usage (min - max): Motherboard: Asus Maximus VI Gene - 57 - 123 CPU: Intel Core i7 4770K 3.5 GHz Haswell - 70 - 80 RAM: Kingston HyperX Beast 4 × 8 GB DDR3 2400 MHz - 12 SSD: Kingston HyperX 3K 480 GB (×2) (Striped) - 1 - 4 HDD: Western Digital WD Black 3 TB (×2) (Mirrored) - 16 - 20 GPU: Radeon R9 280X - 15 - 257 Cooling: Corsair H80i - 4 Fans: Noctua NF-S12A (×2) & Noctua NF-F12 (×2) - 4 Sound: Bowers & Wilkins MM-1 - 12 Other: Bluetooth LE & Wi-Fi PCIe Module - 2 Final output: 193 - 518 Watts. 750W PSU is not a huge overkill, especially if he wants to add more drives and/or a bigger GPU. Also as mentioned by others here, PSUs generally run quieter at lower loads.

morganwilde 9y ago

Can you give a good resource that's not wrong? I'm really curious.

atVelocet 9y ago
https://www.tonymacx86.com/buyersguide/april/2017 https://www.tonymacx86.com/buyersguide/april/2017 This is something to start with. But i don't know why they don't go with a NVMe SSD? Clover supports it and it's way faster. But overall these are relatively good guides. I still would make some minor adjustments but that doesn't matter.

mtarnovan 9y ago

He said he was going to buy the 8-core Mac Pro. What's wrong about that?

nnq 9y ago

> The power supply is WAY too oversized resulting in bad efficiency and thus a bigger power consumption ...but who gives a f? It's a desktop, no battery to drain. And of all the appliances in your home, the computers surely don't mean that much as a percentage of power usage. Yeah, other things are probably wrong too, but I think you picked the wrong detail to care about here :) Better to have a bigger power supply and be sure it'll handle whatever you might add to the machine in the future than to care about replacing it. And from my (and everyone else I talked to) experience, inefficient (power-wise) electronics tend to last way longer than efficient ones, so I prefer them (since my time wasted finding a replacement or a repair shop is worth more than the price of the extra power), even when it comes to fridges and washing machines. (Commenting mostly because all this insane obsession with energy efficiency is getting on my nerves.)

atVelocet 9y ago
I give a fuck :p And even if he overclocks his CPU and GPU it's still oversized. It just doesn't make any sense. I think a good system is well balanced with room for improvement. But we are talking about a 760W PSU! This systems consumes at least 300W to 350W under load. So thats twice the needed load! A 600W PSU would have also done the job but this thing is just pure overkill.
- prodmerc 9y ago
  It is better to have spare wattage instead of running it at full load. It's not like the PSU uses power by itself, and a larger one will last longer and be future proof...
- mirekrusin 9y ago
  He's saying he may upgrade to GTX 1080ti - that's extra 250W. It's the first time I can hear that oversized PSU leads to more power consumption - how come?
  - tbihl 9y ago
    From what I'm reading, the 1080ti and 280x both fall right before 250W, so the change shouldn't be significant.
    - mirekrusin 9y ago
      Also PSUs have an efficiency, i.e. only 80% of consumed energy goes into the components (it's available), the rest goes as toaster/heater I guess. There are different standards it seems gold, platinum etc.
  - davrosthedalek 9y ago
    Somewhere in the power supply, power is converted via a switched inductance, the power transfer is controlled by the switching frequency, with toughly the same energy transferred for each cycle (constant I_peak). Losses are roughly f*I_peak^2. There are several factors limiting maximum f, so to get a bigger maximum power, bigger power supplies have bigger I_peak. Thus, for the same transferred power, a bigger supply will have bigger I_peak and smaller f, but since I_peak appears squared, the loss is worse. (This is the rough explanation, the devil is in the details) Additionally, many power supplies are worse at load regulation if their load is too low.

thinknot 9y ago

>He also states he needs no special kexts. Well.. that's because you are using Clover! All Hackintoshes require the FakeSMC kext (to bypass DSMOS), that's it. Some systems require more kexts, for example, to have networking, etc. Clover doesn't patch or install kexts, but it patches the ACPI tables (especially DSDT). Maybe that's what you mean?

atVelocet 9y ago
Clover does more than just patching ACPI tables. But when you change some ACPI tables and other registers (CFG...) via Clover you don't need those hacked kexts. It's as simple as that.

TheSpiceIsLife 9y ago

The way I'm reading it here he's referring to the Mac Pro he didn't buy.: "The spec I was going to go for was an 8-core model, with 32 gigs of RAM, a 1 TB flash drive, additional external storage, two D700s" Unless I missed something. Also, I've often wondered who needs a 700+ watt power supply? How many video cards, drives, CPUs, etc etc could that handle?

monochromatic 9y ago
Electronics that are running at capacity tend to have more issues. If a 700 watt power supply wastes a couple bucks worth of power a year, but lasts twice as long, who cares about the power?
- ramchip 9y ago
  > Electronics that are running at capacity tend to have more issues. Do you have any statistics or other sources on that? (honestly curious)
  - monochromatic 9y ago
    No, I don't. Just anecdotes, conjecture, and common sense. I'd like to see the numbers too.
- ychompinator 9y ago
  A 700W 80+ power supply will generally be more efficient pushing 450W than a 500W PSU because the wattage output is in the mid-range where peak efficiency generally occurs.
- wtallis 9y ago
  Power supply longevity is already extremely high compared to any other component, if you're looking mostly at high-quality brands like Seasonic. Their top tier product line (with 650W models and up) has a 12-year warranty, and the next tier down (with 550W models and up) has a 10-year warranty. If you want a long-lasting power supply, you can just buy one directly.

ejolto 9y ago

> The power supply is WAY too oversized The fan is off if the load is below 30% which is neat if you are into silent builds.

atVelocet 9y ago
I have a 450W PSU and my fan runs with maybe 300rpm and is absolutely unhearable inside the case (even when it's night). So i won't count this as an argument. ~ 230W = 30 % Load (760W) ~ 135W = 30 % Load (450W) The idle draw of such a system is below 100W (okok.. max 100W ;) ) so you won't hear any fan even with a smaller PSU.
- ejolto 9y ago
  That's true! And the system has 4 Noctua fans and a Corsair H80i water cooler, which will all make more noise than the PSU anyway.

ReligiousFlames 9y ago

Lol. Doesn't grok hyperthreading is stealing idle execution units in a real core to make it seem like there are more cores. FWIW I use a MBP 13 non-Retina mid-2012 with 16 GiB and two SSDs. Good enough and no weird compatibility issues.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

nedsma 9y ago

It's a great PSU having over 90% efficiency at just 20% load. plus being completely silent at that load. The GPU alone needs more power than GTX 1080. At 90% CPU TDP utilization, the setup will pull more than 450W. Add some overclocking, the total power consumption goes easily over 500W. How is that being oversized?

atVelocet 9y ago
- The system won't pull more than 350 to 400W - A GTX 1080 needs less power than the R9-280X -- AnandTech and others have shown that - System Idle is around 80W (thanks AMD ^^) -- 20% load would be around twice: ~150W. So the PSU runs at about 10% load in idle --- When running at 10% load the PSU has a worse efficiency - Why the fuck is he buying a AMD GPU? Ahh.. Hackintosh BS :/ ("no real NV drivers...") - Even if OCd, the system will not pull more than 400W (look at AT and their OCd X99 system). Maybe 420W.

glenneroo 9y ago

> This guy says it's a eight core CPU which is just wrong. Actually it has 8 logical cores and 4 physical cores. For all practical purposes, you have 8 cores at your disposal. I build workstations for 3D rendering and I have yet to see a tool that cares whether the cores are physical or logical, as long as you have enough RAM for each core, you can use each one to it's fullest extent.

darpa_escapee 9y ago
Unless the parallel operations you're running interweave nicely with the CPU pipeline, there are many instances where a hyperthreading enabled 4-core CPU performs no better than a non-hyperthreading enabled 4-core CPU. On average, a setup with 4 logical cores and 4 physical cores performs 15%-30% faster than a setup with just 4 physical cores.
- glenneroo 9y ago
  Fair enough, I wasn't aware performance was that bad. Regardless, my point is that the article didn't specify if he meant logical or physical cores, therefore saying that the article is wrong, is partially incorrect (and seems like an unnecessary attempt to nitpick for the sake of nitpicking).
  - detaro 9y ago
    X-core CPU basically always means physical cores, even the marketing departments have gotten that message. Logical cores are called "threads" in that context.

glenneroo 9y ago

Quick and dirty calculations of power usage (min - max): Motherboard: Asus Maximus VI Gene - 57 - 123 CPU: Intel Core i7 4770K 3.5 GHz Haswell - 70 - 80 RAM: Kingston HyperX Beast 4 × 8 GB DDR3 2400 MHz - 12 SSD: Kingston HyperX 3K 480 GB (×2) (Striped) - 1 - 4 HDD: Western Digital WD Black 3 TB (×2) (Mirrored) - 16 - 20 GPU: Radeon R9 280X - 15 - 257 Cooling: Corsair H80i - 4 Fans: Noctua NF-S12A (×2) & Noctua NF-F12 (×2) - 4 Sound: Bowers & Wilkins MM-1 - 12 Other: Bluetooth LE & Wi-Fi PCIe Module - 2 Final output: 193 - 518 Watts. 750W PSU is not a huge overkill, especially if he wants to add more drives and/or a bigger GPU. Also as mentioned by others here, PSUs generally run quieter at lower loads.