Paul Reese
OK, so I had a deeper look into his article and now I'm certain that he's trying too hard to make he's point and his price comparison is just silly.
-He's quoting $4170 for iMac 5K, i7, 32GB Ram, 512GB SSD and AMD R6 4GB, including Apple RAM, most people are smart enough to buy RAM separately which takes literally 2 minutes. Same Mac with 32GB Crucial RAM - $3560
-He's quoting $200 for a 500 GB Samsung EVO SSD. Quick amazon check - Samsung 850 Pro 512GB - $342 Please note that it's still a SATA drive, the iMac still has a better PCIE SSD.
-I'm not an expert on GPUs but the GPU in the iMac has 4gb and then one he quoted only 2gb.
-The display itself - look at my previous post.
If you want an 'equivalent' monitor it will cost you more than the gaming UHD screen he quoted. Proper accurate cinema 4K IPS display are expensive: this LG may be suitable and it's quiet popular as a display for the new Mac Pro users. Price: $1400
http://www.amazon.com/LG-Electronics-Digital-31MU97-B-31-0-Inch/dp/B00OK...
Which makes his contraption just as expensive.
To be honest, I personally would prefer Mac Pro + 4K monitor than the iMac. I feel like the guts will age faster than the display and inability to connect it to anything else is fairly limiting, but hey that's me. I can also see the point of mackintosh, especially if you need loads of GPU power and plan on using top tier graphics cards. Getting hackintosh to save few bucks though? I'm not convinced.
To be fair, he's monitor is not even proper 4K. It's a fairly average TN panel 3840 X 2160 (8.2 mpx), so calling it "equivalent" to a cinema 5K IPS display 5120x2880 (14.7 million pixels) really isn't fair.
It's literally half the pixels...
So it's basically Panasonic FZ1000, triple the cost though and a year later...