[Guide] Install High Sierra or Mojave on the Dell Optiplex 7010 / 9010 Desktop PC - Revision II

[trs96]

Good enough for me. Will stick with the HP 8300 then

The other nice thing about the HP is that you can swap out the PSU for an HP replacement for pocket change. There are thousands available on Ebay. So if yours fails, replacement is not painful at all. My HP power supplies have been rock solid. Sometimes Dell will sneak in low, 65% efficient PSUs in the 7010/9010. You have to read the label closely once you get your Dell and then buy the 90 % or higher eff. model to replace the junky one you might get.

Just to finish up on Dell annoyances, I really dislike the way they used 5 pin fan headers on the mobo. The only purpose for doing this is to make you buy Dell CPU and case fans. On the HP you can use most any 4 pin PWM fans you like.

In spite of these minor issues, if you can find a great deal on one of these Dells, say with a Core i7-3770 they do perform as well as the HP models. I do prefer the design and build quality of the USFF 7010 Dell model over the HP 8300 USDT, mini-itx like model. Mine has an 80+ gold 200W psu that is quiet. The PSU is internal instead of having an ugly and inefficient power brick outside of the case like the HP 8300 USDT. Here's a pic of the PSU from an ebay listing. AFAIK all of the USFF Dell models use the gold rated PSU. It's the SFF, Desktop and MT models can have the cheaper 65% efficient versions.

 

[N8261D]

The other nice thing about the HP is that you can swap out the PSU for an HP replacement for pocket change. There are thousands available on Ebay. So if yours fails, replacement is not painful at all. My HP power supplies have been rock solid. Sometimes Dell will sneak in low, 65% efficient PSUs in the 7010/9010. You have to read the label closely once you get your Dell and then buy the 90 % or higher eff. model to replace the junky one you might get.

Just to finish up on Dell annoyances, I really dislike the way they used 5 pin fan headers on the mobo. The only purpose for doing this is to make you buy Dell CPU and case fans. On the HP you can use most any 4 pin PWM fans you like.

In spite of these minor issues, if you can find a great deal on one of these Dells, say with a Core i7-3770 they do perform as well as the HP models. I do prefer the design and build quality of the USFF 7010 Dell model over the HP 8300 USDT, mini-itx like model. Mine has an 80+ gold 200W psu that is quiet. The PSU is internal instead of having an ugly and inefficient power brick outside of the case like the HP 8300 USDT. Here's a pic of the PSU from an ebay listing. AFAIK all of the USFF Dell models use the gold rated PSU. It's the SFF, Desktop and MT models can have the cheaper 65% efficient versions.

View attachment 361289 View attachment 361290

Okay. So originally I did this and installed it on my HDD. I have recently bought an SSD hoping for faster boot times. Unfortunately, I redid my USB installer Vanilla style hoping that would improve my boot times. I cannot get the Vanilla installer to boot. So I tried redoing the unibeast installer. I can't get that to boot either. How can I fix this? FYI when I saw it won't boot, I mean neither will go past the end kernel cache or whatever. I can get to clover and everything though. My Hackintosh itself will still boot into macOS on it's own.

 

[trs96]

Okay. So originally I did this and installed it on my HDD. I have recently bought an SSD hoping for faster boot times. Unfortunately, I redid my USB installer Vanilla style hoping that would improve my boot times. I cannot get the Vanilla installer to boot. So I tried redoing the unibeast installer. I can't get that to boot either. How can I fix this? FYI when I saw it won't boot, I mean neither will go past the end kernel cache or whatever. I can get to clover and everything though. My Hackintosh itself will still boot into macOS on it's own.

Which Unibeast version did you use ? What do you see when you try to boot ?

Why not just clone your existing install to the new SSD ? Makes it much easier.

 

[N8261D]

Which Unibeast version did you use ? What do you see when you try to boot ?

Why not just clone your existing install to the new SSD ? Makes it much easier.

I used the UniBeast 8 I believe. When I try to boot it is the end random seed is the last piece of text. I actually did clone the drive after posting that, but my boot time is still 2 minutes long which seems quite ridiculous, especially for an SSD.

 

[trs96]

I used the UniBeast 8 I believe. When I try to boot it is the end random seed is the last piece of text. I actually did clone the drive after posting that, but my boot time is still 2 minutes long which seems quite ridiculous, especially for an SSD.

It's probably a corrupted config.plist causing that. Create a new one and see if that helps the boot time improve.

You can also uncheck the box for debug in CC and see if that helps.

 

[N8261D]

It's probably a corrupted config.plist causing that. Create a new one and see if that helps the boot time improve.

You can also uncheck the box for debug in CC and see if that helps.

View attachment 361758

Wow. NEver would have guessed that. It drastically improved boot time on the HDD. Now time to try the SSD! Do you know what the deal may be with the backup drive? I know I don't need it know, but I would prefer to have it in case I ever need it.

 

[N8261D]

Wow. NEver would have guessed that. It drastically improved boot time on the HDD. Now time to try the SSD! Do you know what the deal may be with the backup drive? I know I don't need it know, but I would prefer to have it in case I ever need it.

Worked on the SSD as well.

 

[trs96]

Wow. NEver would have guessed that. It drastically improved boot time on the HDD. Now time to try the SSD! Do you know what the deal may be with the backup drive? I know I don't need it know, but I would prefer to have it in case I ever need it.

What did you do ? Uncheck debug or create a new plist ?

 

[N8261D]

What did you do ? Uncheck debug or create a new plist ?

I unchecked the Debug.

 

[N8261D]

What did you do ? Uncheck debug or create a new plist ?

I took my UniBeast USB installer and copied my new EFI folder from the Macintosh HD and now it works 100%! One thing left to figure out though... I have a 120GB SSD and would like to have both Windows 10 and macOS installed on it. I know how to get them both installed, but I have a 500GB hdd that I would like to partition and use to virtually expand the SSD space on each partition making it look as though each drive has 310GB and install macOS on each. Essentially I want to use an SSD and HDD to make an SSHD. I used apple's JBOD in RAID assistant on the install USB and it worked, but I cannot install macOS onto it even though it is using macOS Extended (Journaled) format. Do you know how I could achieve this?