01-31-2014, 07:11 PM
to expand on ADent's advice...
An Ivy Bridge setup will serve you just as well vs a Haswell.
Keep in mind, new IB "LGA1155" motherboards will become scarce as the 1156 Haswell offerings expand.
I run an i5-3570K on a GA-Z77-DS3H (v.0 F9) w/ GT 640-2GB.
DS3H PROS: USB-3, all chipset functions are supported as Apple OEM (Gb-eNet, Audio, SATA). Has an mSATA-II socket. 4x 8GB DDR3 max. All Solid-State Caps.
DS3H CONS: NO o/b Thunderbolt or FW. Only 2 of the 5 SATA ports are 6Gb and NO eSATA; Either cheaply solved with a $20 or less SATA-III PCI-e card.
Only certain FW800 cards will work due to BIOS conflict, well documented @ TonyMac and InsanelyMac forums.
An Ivy Bridge setup will serve you just as well vs a Haswell.
Keep in mind, new IB "LGA1155" motherboards will become scarce as the 1156 Haswell offerings expand.
- MoBo: A Gigabyte GA-Z77 Series
- CPU: An Intel "IB" Quad Core
Here's the models (not all are Quad) with HD4000:
Core i3-3225
Core i3-3245
Core i5-3475S
Core i5-3570K
Core i7-3770
Core i7-3770x
- Graphics: If not Intel HD4000 or better, a nVida GT 640* 128-bit minimum. I'd avoid cards with VGA D-Sub port unless you really need it.
*DDR5 if possible but the 2GB DDR3 boards are snappy.
Stay with a better brand like ASUS, EVGA, Gigabyte, PNY or nVidia OEM (most nViDIA OEM cards are sold as refurbished; they're typically just unused returns from PC mfrs.).
I run an i5-3570K on a GA-Z77-DS3H (v.0 F9) w/ GT 640-2GB.
DS3H PROS: USB-3, all chipset functions are supported as Apple OEM (Gb-eNet, Audio, SATA). Has an mSATA-II socket. 4x 8GB DDR3 max. All Solid-State Caps.
DS3H CONS: NO o/b Thunderbolt or FW. Only 2 of the 5 SATA ports are 6Gb and NO eSATA; Either cheaply solved with a $20 or less SATA-III PCI-e card.
Only certain FW800 cards will work due to BIOS conflict, well documented @ TonyMac and InsanelyMac forums.