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

[craighazan]

Happy Days. macOS Mojave 10.14.3 on Dell Optiplex 7010 with NVMe SSD, referenced here. I'm a little bit amazed that I got this working. Only issue, the boot up disk isn't recognized. But insert the Unibeast Mojave installer and the disk is recognized, Simple solution I suspect. Read and write speeds are a little lower than expected. But read is still double what a standard SSD is.

 

[trs96]

macOS Mojave 10.14.3 on Dell Optiplex 7010 with NVMe SSD

Great to hear it works. Hope you don't keep that mobo on nothing more than an anti-static bag for too long. It's not properly grounded. There are some good acrylic test benches that places like Newegg sells. Any basic mATX case will work too as the mobo mounting holes are standard. You can then at least properly ground the motherboard to the metal case.

 

[craighazan]

Great to hear it works.

Thanks for the tip trs96, no I don’t keep running like that for long!. This board will be going inside a Power Mac G5 case. I wanted to make sure Mojave worked on the NVMe drive before proceeding with the rest. Also about that 1050Ti stuck on the board, DP to HDMI cable arrives Monday. A little jerky in Mojave, but it’s a learning process too.

 

[trs96]

Also about that 1050Ti stuck on the board, DP to HDMI cable arrives Monday. A little jerky in Mojave, but it’s a learning process too.

If you install High Sierra you could then use Nvidia Web drivers to get full acceleration. A 1050 Ti and Mojave won't be a good graphics experience. No Nvidia drivers yet, it may be that Apple is holding them up, not really sure whose fault it is.

 

[craighazan]

If you install High Sierra you could then use Nvidia Web drivers to get full acceleration. A 1050 Ti and Mojave won't be a good graphics experience.

That’s a good point!, I’ll try that tomorrow. The final build will include an RX580 and a 750W Power supply. After your tip though I don’t think I’ll try with a ungrounded 750W power supply.

No Nvidia drivers yet, it may be that Apple is holding them up, not really sure whose fault it is.

They should just have ... and get it all over and done with in my opinion. It’s strange, it’s about Metal2 compatibility isn’t it?. Maybe Apple has something up its sleeve. Or maybe it would require Apple revealing something they don’t want revealing. All we can do is speculate about it. Though it would be nice to know ‘Why?’.

 

[BillyGoatGruff]

I have successfully installed mojave on Dell 9010 DT, i7-3770 following your excellent guide.

I was curious if I could load mojave on a Dell 9010 All-In-One... and saw some matches when I googled that some were successful, although none were clear about what they did.

I took the SSD from the Dell 9010 DT and put it into the AIO... booted and got Clover but black screen after "half progress bar" which I think means a graphics issue. I connected an HDMI monitor to the HDMI-out on the AIO and sure enough, there's part of the desktop. I used the shortcut for desktop mirroring (cmd-F1) and lo ... I can see the machine is booted, now displaying a mirror to the external monitor. Looks like HD4000 is good with 1540 MB , etc. etc.

SO... I rebooted and within Clover changed the option on graphics to the 0x123456789 and walla! the AIO built in is on with login.

Now, I come to this fantastic forum and thread to ask ... what change do I need to make to the config.plist to get the graphics to work... seems like I am so very very close.. can someone help by providing the correct edits?

I did look at Clover and it showed Card DeviceID=0162, Model:Intel HD Graphics 4000, but I am not sure if that's helpful in getting the graphics to display to the AIO monitor (as opposed to the external HDMI).

EDIT: Upon further reflection, and wondering why the Dell Optiplex 9010 All-In-One wasn’t included in this Guide, it struck me that perhaps I should be approaching this as a laptop? And thus my question doesn’t really belong in this thread after all?

 

[jed2]

@jed2 You are a brave man. Thanks for testing this out for the community.

I'm curious as to how much improvement you are seeing in the boot times. Also what has changed in terms of your HD4000 function from the way if functioned before in the fully disabled state ?

So I've now put the 3245 into one of the 7010 SFFs and the boot time is now on a par with the HP8300 from Clover to Mojave login of about 10 seconds (SSD of course). But getting through the BIOS and to the Clover screen still takes a lot longer than the HP8300. I wonder why that is. Its the same on all the 7010s I've tried - SSFs and DTs. No big deal though but were it not for the fact that the 7010s were prettier I might be tempted to go back to 8300s for boot-up alone. Still its nice to have solved the MacOS/HD4000 issue on the 7010.

 

[trs96]

I might be tempted to go back to 8300s for boot-up alone. Still its nice to have solved the MacOS/HD4000 issue on the 7010.

Many people own a couple of each. They're so inexpensive, why not ? How often do you shut down your 7010s ? If you don't reboot that often a slightly slower boot time isn't a big deal. You do have sleep working correctly ?

 

[jed2]

Many people own a couple of each. They're so inexpensive, why not ? How often do you shut down your 7010s ? If you don't reboot that often a slightly slower boot time isn't a big deal. You do have sleep working correctly ?

Yeah, sleep works. Its not a big deal but I just like to know why they should differ so much and what if anything I can do to fix it. i'm more interested in fixing things than using things

 

[trs96]

@jed2 I'm getting 36 seconds from pushing the power button to the macOS sign in screen. Is yours much longer than that ? This is on my 7010 USFF with AMT enabled.