You can find brand new Ryzen 7 2700X (8 cores) for very reasonable prices after the last price cuts (we're a few months away from the 7nm ryzen 3rd gen).
If it's still too much a Ryzen 5 2600(X) (6 cores) is still a very good processor for almost any use case.
About hackintosh and AMD, that's is not only possible, but also not too complicated to achieve on Mojave (see https://vanilla.amd-osx.com/ for more details). Older versions required using custom AMD kernels, but some guy figured out how to patch the vanilla kernel for Ryzen and Bulldozer straight from Clover; it's not as simple as using Intel, but it's much easier than it was a few years back.
I'm also building a computer and just purchased an i7 9700K for $400. I also wonder what the equivalent-performance AMD processor would be given the performance loss of these patches. Unfortunately it's a bit late to back out without returning the motherboard as well, though.
I have a 2700X and it's a monster for the money.
That said the Zen 2 (3rd generation) is out a in a few months so depending on urgency you may want to wait for the 3xxx series.
They moved to 7nm and the IPC bump is supposed to be decent.
Re:AMD Immune to MDS Vulnerabilities
by ignaloidas on Sunday May 19, 2019 @09:52AM
(#19953273)
You can still run MacOS in VM even when using AMD. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ATnpEOo3GJA
I'm building a PC, initially wanted to use Intel because of hackintosh. But I don't think it's justified to have an already expensive CPU (Intel is more expensive than AMD) gets throttled down again due to patches.
So now I'm considering AMD. What would you recommend for developer? I will use it for Android, Docker and occasionally gaming.
(I'm aware that I most likely won't have hackintosh due to AMD)