Hackintoss, is the way to go if you what killer performance on a Mac platform.
If you get the right components you will Crush any MP 5.1 , you even keep up with the new Mac Pro Late 2013 edition
I have been running the same Hackintoss Desktop for over 2 years now and in A.E. its 2x faster then
my MP5.1 , with 26G ram, 4 core 8 thread Xeon CPU, SSD OSX & Raid0 with 2WD VelociRaptor 10k 600GB Drives(1.2TB in Raid-0)
tonymacx86 is a Great resource for hackintoss there even a list
of components that will work for OSX
buyers-guide for CustoMac_Pro this where I started to learn all about how to build a Hackitoss.
The #1 mother board recommended is the Gigabyte.
As far as Raid disk array's , there is 2 option first you can buy a raid controller PCIe add on Card
Or you can use the motherboard sata on board chip controller to build a raid-0 disk array.
With the add on card you will get faster speed e.g. Raid-5 which is a minimum of 3 disk (4 better incase one drive fails)
with redundancy .
Where as Raid-0 is fast only needs 2 disks can be configured in OSX ,uses the on board controller, But No redundancy .
If a drive fails you lose the Whole Raid and all of you data ,unless you backup.
A good Raid card with memory runs about $250.0 - $600.0 you can get cheaper one but they have no ram on the card .
I run a ATTO R380 in raid 5 configuration with 4x2TB=8TB (in raid5 it read as 6TB)
R/W 450MB/s on average.
Raid-0 in my MP5.1 R/W is 250MB/s , If on a budget the onboard controller works just fine , just remember to backup.
I'll mention one last thing , the best part about the Hachintoss is the fact that you can Overclock your CPU big time.
I have a i7 3770k 4 cores, 8 threads , default speed is 3.5GHz I crank mine to 4.7GHz(with a water cooler) plus overclock the Ram from 1066
to 1600 MHz. Make a Biggggg difference .
