TR Forums

Trying to build the most powerful Macbook and Mabook pro...Where do i start and how much would i need to successfully make this happen. In terms of Macbook im talking Towers...and in terms of Macbook pro. Both need huge memory space. Basically like a pc,if you were to build A super mac computer, where would you start? Thanks Guys!

Err... what?

MacBook only comes in specific, predefined configurations. You can't "build" a custom one.

Sorry, what exactly is your question...

MBA tops out at 16GB of RAM From Apple. Impossible to upgrade yourself.

Mac Pro tips out at 32GB I think and if you want to open one up I believe it is user upgradable.

And, the only place to start is an iMac and upgrade RAM, or Mac Pro and upgrade RAM. Depending on if you need lots of CPU cores or fewer, higher clocked ones.

Why not just use Linux instead?

whm1974 wrote:

Why not just use Linux instead?

For the second time on this thread:

Err... what?

If you want (or need) a Mac, how is Linux the solution? Just because they're both based on variants of UNIX doesn't make them functionally equivalent. Without knowing the OP's use case, you have no way of knowing whether Linux (or any other OS) is appropriate.

(I'm starting to think that MDBT's Jehovah's Witness analogy in the Avast thread was spot-on, at least where you are concerned...)

NoOne ButMe wrote:

Mac Pro tips out at 32GB I think and if you want to open one up I believe it is user upgradable.

Pretty sure it depends on the model. IIRC the one I use at work has 16GB, and is *not* upgradeable.

Edit: Oops, mis-read your post thought it said "MacBook Pro" not "Mac Pro". My comment applies to the MacBook Pro.

Tonybados wrote:

In terms of Macbook im talking Towers...and in terms of Macbook pro.

he wants a macbook/macbook pro............. in a tower form factor?

just brew it! wrote:

NoOne ButMe wrote:

Mac Pro tips out at 32GB I think and if you want to open one up I believe it is user upgradable.

Pretty sure it depends on the model. IIRC the one I use at work has 16GB, and is *not* upgradeable.

Edit: Oops, mis-read your post thought it said "MacBook Pro" not "Mac Pro". My comment applies to the MacBook Pro.

I actually mistyped, I did mean to say MacBook Pro. And you are correct it is all of the models are indeed limited to 16GB.

Mac Pro is up to 64GB.

IMac 27" is up to 32GB
IMac 21.5" is up to 16GB. Maybe be 8GB for the gimped model.

I think the OP is joking/trolling/flaming. That wink placement leads me to believe so.

DrDominodog51 wrote:

I think the OP is joking/trolling/flaming. That wink placement leads me to believe so.

Ahh, OK... I think you're right. Consider me trolled then.

Well, just in case it's not a troll, I could think of two things that come in tower format that could run OS X, if that is part of the question. 1) An Intel tower PC Hackintoshing it up. 2) An Intel tower PC virtualizing OS X. I can actually do this smoothly on an i3-5010u Broadwell NUC, with 250GB Crucial M.2 MX200 for storage, and 16GB RAM, so clearly a tower could do it better.

Like MOSFET, I think this guy just wants to build a Hackintosh.

To bad he couldn't have said "Mac" or "iMac" or "Mac Pro" which is why I'm not sure that a hackintosh is true. Perhaps he's looking for a laptop that can be made into a hackintosh

The SuperMac you want is the S910 with dual 604e's at 250 Mhz. As an added bonus, it doesn't have an Apple logo on the case.

If you want to build a Hackintosh, start here:

http://www.tonymacx86.com/building-cust ... -2015.html

Z97 and Haswell or Broadwell really is the easiest way to go about it right now. Maxwell is also a little tricky on OS X since no Mac ships with a recent GeForce. It's possible and not all that hard, but you do have to be careful about drivers.

Ummm, I'm guessing money is no object by the tone of the post.If you want to build the ultimate mac, just go to apple's website, select the Mac Pro, click customize, or something like that, and just start clicking on all the most expensive options when selecting your processor, ram, and gpu. There really isn't much more to it. Pretty simple. I just went and selected all of the most expensive options. Looks like it will run you only the low low price of about $6,800. Hope your using it for more than web browsing and email.

We can build an Hackintosh much cheaper then that. And it will still be better then Apple's offerings.

whm1974 wrote:

We can build an Hackintosh much cheaper then that. And it will still be better then Apple's offerings.

Except having to hack around a lot of problems, and then the time spent fixing the hacks because some updates broke the hacks.

A hackintosh is only cheaper if you don't account for your time. There isn't a point to it other then just to say you did it. There isn't a big market out there for people to hack up OS X. Just buy Apple hardware if you want to run OS X. OS X minus the hardware integration isn't that great, and part of buying Apple is the hardware, which is pretty nice.

That was true in the "bad old days", and still today, but only if you're using an old boot loader like Chameleon or Chimera. If you take care in picking out your parts and configuring Clover for your hardware, you'll see pretty much everything survives even a whole OS upgrade (i.e., from 10.10 to 10.11) with less effort than upgrading Windows.

Flatland_Spider wrote:
Just buy Apple hardware if you want to run OS X.

The Mac mini is way underpowered and I consider AIOs to be a real dumb idea. Don't get me started on the "trash can" form factor of the new Mac Pro. I would prefer a standard tower, but as I have told been many times before, Apple doesn't want people like me for customers.

whm1974 wrote:

The Mac mini is way underpowered and I consider AIOs to be a real dumb idea. Don't get me started on the "trash can" form factor of the new Mac Pro. I would prefer a standard tower, but as I have told been many times before, Apple doesn't want people like me for customers.

If you don't like their hardware, why would you want to *be* one of their customers? The feeling ought to be mutual (if it isn't already).

Flatland_Spider wrote:

whm1974 wrote:

We can build an Hackintosh much cheaper then that. And it will still be better then Apple's offerings.

Except having to hack around a lot of problems, and then the time spent fixing the hacks because some updates broke the hacks.

A hackintosh is only cheaper if you don't account for your time. There isn't a point to it other then just to say you did it. There isn't a big market out there for people to hack up OS X. Just buy Apple hardware if you want to run OS X. OS X minus the hardware integration isn't that great, and part of buying Apple is the hardware, which is pretty nice.

There are really only two reasons to go with Apple vs. hackintosh: ease of setup and warranty/support. There are many who just want a computer that plugs in and 'just works'. Apple in this regard is no different than the likes of Dell or HP when compared to a DIY build, just the end user gets OS X instead of Windows. The warranty/support aspect is important in the professional realm. For example, a 3D modeling application encounters a rendering bug, you can go to the software vendor and get support with Apple hardware. If you're using a hackintosh in this example, the software vendor likely won't touch your system with a 10 foot pole.

If your use-case doesn't fall into those two areas, a hackintosh is far cheaper and generally gets you a faster system than what Apple offers at the same time. The savings can be substantial, especially when compared to Mac Pro for high end builds. I think the only area where Apple comes out clearly ahead is if you factor in the price of an equivalent monitor vs. the 5K iMac.

just brew it! wrote:

whm1974 wrote:

The Mac mini is way underpowered and I consider AIOs to be a real dumb idea. Don't get me started on the "trash can" form factor of the new Mac Pro. I would prefer a standard tower, but as I have told been many times before, Apple doesn't want people like me for customers.

If you don't like their hardware, why would you want to *be* one of their customers? The feeling ought to be mutual (if it isn't already).

Apple is both a hardware and software company. Many find OS X nicer to use but are turned off by the prices and restrictions of Apple hardware. Applications like Final Cut Pro were once the proverbial killer app to sell Mac hardware since there wasn't a Windows equivalent (and Apple threw this advantage away with Final Cut Pro X but that is a different story). Since OS X went x86, there has been an underground hackintosh community.

Apple does have a serious love/hate problem with the users who were once their core market. The trash can Mac Pro is a joke as many professionals want some expandablility. Spent several grand for SDI capture card? Be prepared to spend that amount again with the new Mac Pro for a Thunderbolt version that may not even be as capable. Even the basics like upgrading memory and storage are increasingly difficult or down right impossible on newer Apple hardware. Similar to the Mac Pro, there was some backlash from the death of the 17" MacBook Pro as that was dream system to bring on the road for production. The really big turn off is that some of Apple's remarks toward user complaints have not been encouraging. Due to poor sales, Apple killed of the rack mounted Xserve line half a decade ago with little resistance but Apple's recent rise in enterprise usage has had some user interested in seeing that line return.

the wrote:

The really big turn off is that some of Apple's remarks toward user complaints have not been encouraging. Due to poor sales, Apple killed of the rack mounted Xserve line half a decade ago with little resistance but Apple's recent rise in enterprise usage has had some user interested in seeing that line return.

Apple figured out that it was better to get into Corporations from the top-down instead of the bottom-up, to the degree they want to get into that market at all.

To be clear, instead of presenting themselves as a total solution with servers, services and corporate-oriented configurability for every user, they just position themselves as having the coolest and most desirable devices to certain users.

Why? Because when a top executive wants the newest iphone, guess what he gets even if the standard is blackberry and blackberry ONLY. Oh, right, he gets an iphone.

This isn't hypothetical, it's my Fortune 500 company and many others like it I've witnessed personally.

Why should Apple compete for the corporate space when by ignoring it entirely they get the best possible inroad to the premium users they might actually want?

the wrote:

There are really only two reasons to go with Apple vs. hackintosh: ease of setup and warranty/support.

If you're throwing those two out the window, why bother? Picky hardware, hard setup, and no support describes lots of different alternative operating systems, and I don't have to resort to piracy to run them. Some of them are even better at being a Unix then OS X is.

the wrote:

Due to poor sales, Apple killed of the rack mounted Xserve line half a decade ago with little resistance but Apple's recent rise in enterprise usage has had some user interested in seeing that line return.

Xserve is not coming back. You might have a point except Linux exists, and OS X integrates into Unix networks nicely. Linux and a couple of Dell servers will serve OS X users nicely. Apple has its niche as a consumer company, and they do that well.

I worked a while in a small business doing custom towers builds, troubleshooting, and virus removal. After a long day at work, the last thing I wanted to do was to come home and have to fix something on my own computer. I work hard for a living, which is why I bought my iMac. It's nice to just come home after work, take a nearly scalding-hot shower, and sit down at my computer and know that "most of the time" it just works. Tinkering was fun when I was in my 20s, but now I just don't have the motivation for it.

Linux....

whm1974 wrote:

Flatland_Spider wrote:
Just buy Apple hardware if you want to run OS X.

The Mac mini is way underpowered and I consider AIOs to be a real dumb idea. Don't get me started on the "trash can" form factor of the new Mac Pro. I would prefer a standard tower, but as I have told been many times before, Apple doesn't want people like me for customers.

The low end mini is pathetic, and the high end model isn't really any better than the one below it, but that's just how Apple segments their products. Considering that you can't get a Mac mini from anywhere else it shouldn't be that surprising that they're not going to help you get a deal on something.

The Mac Mini is kind of an oddity, and I don't really understand why it's still around. It should either go down and use the MacBook guts, or it should go up and be a real alternative to the Mac Pro.

Well I have to say that the guys that run Apple are not geeks nor tech types.