Build a Portable Hackintosh for 4K Editing Without Breaking the Bank

If you’ve ever wondered whether you can build a portable editing workstation that fits in your backpack and is also on par with a regular Mac Pro in terms of size and performance, the custom portable 4K video editing PC that US-based cinematographer and educator Max Yuryev has built from scratch might be a viable option for your workflow. In the video ahead he talks about the way he has put together a custom Hackintosh PC costing just $1,200.

Furthermore, it even turns out that this custom configuration performs better than his previous computer, which was a $5,000+ Mac Pro which he actually sold after building this machine. It also beats the 5K iMac Retina in many tests delivering exceptional performance for a quarter of the price of a new Mac Pro and about a third of the price of the 5K iMac.

Without further ado, let’s dive in the video below and see what is all this hype about.

To start off here is a full list of components that you will need to build this system on your own.

• EVGA Hadron Air Mini-ITX Steel Black Chassis with 500W 80Plus Gold Power Supply
• Gigabyte LGA 1150 Intel Z97N IWi-Fi-Bluetooth th HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 Mini ITX DDR3 1600 Motherboards GA-Z97N-WIFI
• Intel Core BX80646I74790K i7-4790K Processor (8M Cache, up to 4.40 GHz)
• Samsung 850 EVO 250GB 2.5-Inch SATA III Internal SSD
• Gigabyte GTX 960 Overclocked 4 GB GDDR5 Graphics Card
• Crucial Ballistix Sport 16GB Kit (8GBx2) DDR3-1600
• ARCTIC Freezer 13 CO – 200 Watt Multi compatible e Low Noise CPU Cooler with Extreme High Durability for AMD and Intel Sockets
• AzureWave Broadcom BCM94352HMB 802.11/ac/867M bps WLAN + BT4.0

• Acer H226HQL bid 21.5-Inch Widescreen LCD Monitor 

It seems that this custom built machine is a little bit bigger in comparison to a Mac Pro, but it’s still small enough to fit in your backpack along with a 21-inch monitor and a handful of accessories.

From the tests conducted in the video, we can easily see that the Hackintosh machine performs in a similar way in terms of rendering of multiple video files ranging in size and resolution. It also worth noting that this Hackintosh PC runs a lot cooler and even quieter in comparison to the iMac in certain situations.

Ultimately, this custom built proves that you don’t need to invest $5,000 for a Mac Pro to be portable enough and have all the bells and whistles your primary editing workstation provides. If you don’t mind carrying a little bit more weight with you when you are travelling around you can actually get a twice faster machine with you in comparison to a MacBook Pro that is also twice less expensive than the latter.

When you add the fact that you can easily turn this custom built into your primary workstation there is really no other solution available out there that gets even close to this one in terms of performance, flexibility and efficiency it provides.

[source: Max Yuryev]

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