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@artemiso, you've highlighted the exact reason to build a Hackintosh. The pre-packaged Mac Pro components are a bit ridiculous. I don't need PCIe SATA for my workstation, nor do I need W7000/W8000 cards. I really don't need a Xeon E5 either if I can find a compatible i7 board that supports 64GB.
With these changes the cost will be 1/2 price of a Mac Pro, with 95% the speed for my day-to-day applications.
You highlighted the exact reasons NOT to build a Hackintosh if you wanna use OSX and trading.
It did cost me 2 years and much more money that a the price of a Mac Pro to realise that, endless weeks of experimenting with many different video cards, mainboards, power supplies, coolers, etc.
Everything you wrote is correct:
there are video cards with 6 DP, there are i7 boards that support 64GB, a sata ssd is enough etc.
the components in a Mac Pro are not needed for trading and day-to-day applications, it's cheaper to build a PC
BUT
there is no video card with 6 DP that works with OSX on a Hackintosh with 6 screens connected
there is no i7 board with 64GB that works with OSX on a Hackintosh without disabling CPU and OSX features like speedstep and sleep
there is no SATA SSD that has TRIM enabled with OSX on a Hackintosh
there is no case, power supply and fans that get a Hackintosh with that components as quiet as a Mac Pro
That are the problems that you are facing trying to build a Hackintosh for trading, because there are many PC components but only few work OOB under OSX on a Hackintosh.
Building a Hackintosh with 2 screens is easy, building a quiet Hackintosh for 6 30" screens is (at the moment) impossible.
There are solutions for some of that problems with specific OSX versions, but with every OSX update you start over again and again.
If you go the Hackintosh road and start reading on tonymacx86.com (general Hackintosh), insanelymac.com (general Hackintosh), forum.netkas.org (graphic cards for Hackintosh), rampagedev.wordpress.com (i7 64GB and Xeon boards) then you will find many postings from me (same name khe91 as here).
In the end it's all about your time. How much is a day, a week, a month worth ? You wanna spent it on the internet to search solution to get a Hackintosh running ? Or you wanna spent it looking for trade opertunities ?
I've had a Hackintosh with 3 monitors running. It worked fine. This was with 1 Nvidia 640 card and Mountain Lion. I've also had success with multiple video cards as well, so I assume 2 video cards running 3 monitors each would not be an issue. From what I can tell Hackintoshing became easier starting with the Ivy Bridge Gigabyte motherboards that didn't require a dsdt. Sleep can be one of the more challenging things to get working properly. And every time you install an OSX update, you usually have to reinstall the sound. It's not a big deal, just kind of annoying.
In my opinion you only build a Hackintosh if a real Mac is completely out of your price range or you just refuse to pay the premium. And better still, only build if you'd be satisfied turning the Hackintosh back into a Windows or Linux box if the Hack isn't to your liking.
I have an 27 inch i7 iMac with one external 24 inch (HD) monitor attached using one thunderbolt port and a thunderbolt SSD drive on the other thunderbolt port, which contains my Windows 8 VM.
Right now, I am exploring ways of getting a third monitor up and running.
The Dell 25 inch with 2560 x 1440 resolution sounds fantastic but the only way I think I can add another monitor is to get some form of dock that can act as an intermediary between the imac and the SSD and second external monitor.
In an ideal world, the go to would be a mac pro but I cannot go there right now.
To add: The genuine Macs are actually good at one thing - form factor and cable management. Unfortunately, any custom build case tends to leave a lot of unused space and that clogs up your work area. I personally would pay an extra $200-$300 to save that space.
