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[GUIDE] Catalina on HP EliteDesk 800 G4/G5 Mini - The Perfect MacMini8,1 Hackintosh - CLOVER & OC

Thank you for responding!

gen_debug files are attached. It is too hot here in Spain nowadays, 32º ambient temperature. Fan doesn't makes much noise, because the fan speed increases when there is load on the CPU, but if you touch the chassis, it is really hot.

Here are the temperatures when idle:
1595952110902.png


  1. What are idle temps in Windows 10 and how do they compare to Catalina idle temps? I can install Windows and test it, but I use macOS daily to work, so cannot do this until the weekend.
  2. Is the fan working properly without any obstructions of the front and rear vents? Yes, it is working correctly. If it is important, I have the prodesk mini installed on the vertical stand.
  3. What is the ambient temp (office temp around the unit)? 32º Celsius
  4. If 1-3 reveal no issues, do this at your own risk: Remove the heat sink, clean the old thermal paste and properly apply AS5 or your favorite thermal paste. If you want, please take a look on the debug files. If you don't see any problems there, I will change the thermal paste to see if it improves.
One additional thing I noticed, I have 2 NVMe installed. They reach 70º at the hour I finish working (when start from cold, they are 50º). Do you have any heatsink installed on your machine for the NVMe?

And the last one, yesterday arrived the DW1560 WiFi + Bluetooth card. Installed correctly and was working in OpenCore without problems, but when I changed it to your latest CLOVER EFI folder to send debug info to you, bluetooth is not working (The BCM bluetooth device is not seen in the USB devices on System information). Do you know how to change it?

Thank you very much for your help!
 

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  • debug_941.zip
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Thank you for responding!

gen_debug files are attached. It is too hot here in Spain nowadays, 32º ambient temperature. Fan doesn't makes much noise, because the fan speed increases when there is load on the CPU, but if you touch the chassis, it is really hot.

What are idle temps in Windows 10 and how do they compare to Catalina idle temps? I can install Windows and test it, but I use macOS daily to work, so cannot do this until the weekend.
  1. Is the fan working properly without any obstructions of the front and rear vents? Yes, it is working correctly. If it is important, I have the prodesk mini installed on the vertical stand.
  2. What is the ambient temp (office temp around the unit)? 32º Celsius
  3. If 1-3 reveal no issues, do this at your own risk: Remove the heat sink, clean the old thermal paste and properly apply AS5 or your favorite thermal paste. If you want, please take a look on the debug files. If you don't see any problems there, I will change the thermal paste to see if it improves.
One additional thing I noticed, I have 2 NVMe installed. They reach 70º at the hour I finish working (when start from cold, they are 50º). Do you have any heatsink installed on your machine for the NVMe?

And the last one, yesterday arrived the DW1560 WiFi + Bluetooth card. Installed correctly and was working in OpenCore without problems, but when I changed it to your latest CLOVER EFI folder to send debug info to you, bluetooth is not working (The BCM bluetooth device is not seen in the USB devices on System information). Do you know how to change it?

Thank you very much for your help!

Your ambient temp is high. Expect your idle temp to be 15-20C above ambient, so with 32C ambient, your idle temps will be no less than 47C. I am running with 2 NVMe SSD and 1 SATA6 SSD as described here and I have no NVMe heatsinks. Your 70C NVMe temp is high, but everything inside of your enclosure will be hot if any one component is too hot.

Try the following:
  • Remove RTCMemoryFixup.kext. You don't need this with CLOVER and AppleRTC kext patch enabled.
  • Try with and without NVMeFix.kext
  • Confirm that your BIOS settings match the configuration that I've outlined in the PDF document attached to Post #1
  • There is an option in BIOS settings to adjust the minimum idle fan speed. You may want to increase this idle fan speed to compensate for your high ambient temp.
Regarding your Bluetooth - you need to use the SSDT-UIAC.aml attached here to add the required USB port (HS14). Replace the existing SSDT-UIAC.aml in your EFI/CLOVER/ACPI/patched folder. Note that this issue is indicated in Known Issues and Their Solutions.

One other thing... You can reduce the amount of work that your CPU / Graphics is doing at idle by disabling Spotlight and disabling some Graphics options as follows:
  • System Preferences > Spotlight > Search Results: Uncheck all options
  • System Preferences > Spotlight > Privacy: Add all Volumes
  • System Preferences > Accessibility > Display: Check "Reduce motion"
  • System Preferences > Accessibility > Display: Check "Reduce transparency"
Try changing these options to see if this reduces your idle temps. You can always change them back to their defaults.

MY SSD temps reported by HWMonitor are below. These look low to me, so I'm not sure that these are accurate.

Screen Shot 2020-07-28 at 1.21.50 PM.png


EDIT: @chanquete69 I had incorrectly stated that the SSDT-UIAC.aml file should be replaced in EFI/CLOVER/kexts/Other. This file should be replaced in your EFI/CLOVER/ACPI/patched folder.
 
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Your ambient temp is high. Expect your idle temp to be 15-20C above ambient, so with 32C ambient, your idle temps will be no less than 47C. I am running with 2 NVMe SSD and 1 SATA6 SSD as described here and I have no NVMe heatsinks. Your 70C NVMe temp is high, but everything inside of your enclosure will be hot if any one component is too hot.

Try the following:
  • Remove RTCMemoryFixup.kext. You don't need this with CLOVER and AppleRTC kext patch enabled.
  • Try with and without NVMeFix.kext
  • Confirm that your BIOS settings match the configuration that I've outlined in the PDF document attached to Post #1
  • There is an option in BIOS settings to adjust the minimum idle fan speed. You may want to increase this idle fan speed to compensate for your high ambient temp.
Regarding your Bluetooth - you need to use the SSDT-UIAC.aml attached here to add the required USB port (HS14). Replace the existing SSDT-UIAC.aml in your EFI/CLOVER/ACPI/patched folder. Note that this issue is indicated in Known Issues and Their Solutions.

One other thing... You can reduce the amount of work that your CPU / Graphics is doing at idle by disabling Spotlight and disabling some Graphics options as follows:
  • System Preferences > Spotlight > Search Results: Uncheck all options
  • System Preferences > Spotlight > Privacy: Add all Volumes
  • System Preferences > Accessibility > Display: Check "Reduce motion"
  • System Preferences > Accessibility > Display: Check "Reduce transparency"
Try changing these options to see if this reduces your idle temps. You can always change them back to their defaults.

MY SSD temps reported by HWMonitor are below. These look low to me, so I'm not sure that these are accurate.

View attachment 482095

EDIT: @chanquete69 I had incorrectly stated that the SSDT-UIAC.aml file should be replaced in EFI/CLOVER/kexts/Other. This file should be replaced in your EFI/CLOVER/ACPI/patched folder.

Thank you very much for this advices. I have changed my CLOVER folder to reflect this changes and checked BIOS options. For the moment, I have configured the fan at 20%. Let's see how it is working today :)

One additional question, you can see if Power Management is working fine for the CPU in the debug files? Or is there any way to check it in the OS? I think frequencies are too high when I am not doing anything, and maybe it rises the temperature too.
EDIT: Here you can see the frequencies:

1596011706100.png

Thank you!
 
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@chanquete69 if you followed my suggestions in the last post, including the Spotlight and Graphics settings, then you might have something running in the background. Are you testing your system after a clean install of Catalina (without installing any apps)? Also, are you testing with all browsers closed?
 
@chanquete69 if you followed my suggestions in the last post, including the Spotlight and Graphics settings, then you might have something running in the background. Are you testing your system after a clean install of Catalina (without installing any apps)? Also, are you testing with all browsers closed?

Maybe I didn't explain it correctly. The Intel Power Gadget Capture was made while I was using Google Meet in a web browser, so it is normal that certain load is on the CPU. But what seems difficult for me to understand is that with 20% CPU usage, the Core Avg is in line with Core Max, that is the CPU is running at full speed with only 20% load. Another interesting thing is that I opened the Intel Power Gadget application before making the video conference, when nothing was running. In this situation CPU was almost 0% usage, but the minimum speed registered by the application is 1,5GHz. That is why I am not sure that Power Management is working correctly. In the Dell XPS I have also hackintoshed, the CPU reaches 800MHz as the minimum frequency used.

I have uninstalled SN720 NVMe today, as I noticed that although not using it, temperature was much higher that the WD 750 where I have macOS installed, and I have finished the day with 57º Celsius. Much better than before. I tried with and without NVMefix.kext and results are nearly the same.

Let's see how it goes tomorrow.
 
Let's see how it goes tomorrow.

Ok. Try executing the 'top' command in terminal to see if it reveals a surprise CPU user.

I think your biggest challenge is your ambient temp. If your office is really 32C (90F), you need better cooling for your rig and yourself.

@chanquete69 - I'm still evaluating NVMefix.kext, so I appreciate your test results. It seems to me that NVMe SSD temps are lower with NVMefix.kext than without. One of the benefits of NVMefix.kext is that is is supposed to enable "Autonomous Power State Transition to reduce idle power consumption of the controller." That would definitely explain the lower NVMe SSD temp.
 
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Ok. Try executing the 'top' command in terminal to see if it reveals a surprise CPU user.

I think your biggest challenge is your ambient temp. If your office is really 32C (90F), you need better cooling for your rig and yourself.

@chanquete69 - I'm still evaluating NVMefix.kext, so I appreciate your test results. It seems to me that NVMe SSD temps are lower with NVMefix.kext than without. One of the benefits of NVMefix.kext is that is is supposed to enable "Autonomous Power State Transition to reduce idle power consumption of the controller." That would definitely explain the lower NVMe SSD temp.
I finally pulled the trigger and changed the thermal paste for an Arctic MX-4 I had lying around:
1596052213356.png

I also used one click CPUFriend to generate the kexts with a minimum of 800 MHz, and now I think I have the best situation. Will see how it goes tomorrow after the entire day of work. I will teach a kubernetes workshop during 7 hours, so it will be a good test to see how it goes :)

Thank you very much for your help @deeveedee !!
 
I also used one click CPUFriend to generate the kexts with a minimum of 800 MHz, and now I think I have the best situation. Will see how it goes tomorrow after the entire day of work. I will teach a kubernetes workshop during 7 hours, so it will be a good test to see how it goes :)

Thank you very much for your help @deeveedee !!

I think you may have discovered the CPUPowerManagement issue that I should have suspected: MacMini8,1 may be the wrong SMBIOS MacModel for your system. You may need to try iMac19,1 and iMac19,2 instead, since those Mac platforms include 9th gen i5 CPUs in their offerings (at least I know that the iMac19,1 includes a 9th gen i5 CPU option). After your workshop, I would suggest that you remove CPUFriend and related kexts and experiment with iMac19,1 and iMac19,2 instead. You may find that the correct SMBIOS MacModel will provide better CPUPowerManagement for your CPU.
 
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I think you may have discovered the CPUPowerManagement issue that I should have suspected: MacMini8,1 may be the wrong SMBIOS MacModel for your system. You may need to try iMac19,1 and iMac19,2 instead, since those Mac platforms include 9th gen i5 CPUs in their offerings (at least I know that the iMac19,1 includes a 9th gen i5 CPU option). After your workshop, I would suggest that you remove CPUFriend and related kexts and experiment with iMac19,1 and iMac19,2 instead. You may find that the correct SMBIOS MacModel will provide better CPUPowerManagement for your CPU.
Good catch! Will try it to see if it works better.
 
Good catch! Will try it to see if it works better.

You deserve the credit for that catch - not me. I overlooked the generation difference between your i5-9500T and my i7-8700T and suspect that is the problem. Your use of CPUFriend is clever.
 
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