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The 4K Dell OptiMac - 9020 MT - Core i7-4790 - Radeon RX 570 - LG 4K IPS Monitor

@trs96 is this a good system to purchase? I currently have a HP Compaq Elite 8300 SFF. I have a spare RX 580 and I was either going to sell it or get a another system to put it in. Im just wondering if this will make a good system to run OS X on or if there was a better system that would work with the 580 for OS X.
 
MiniBUU said:
Im just wondering if this will make a good system to run OS X on
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Read through the guide to find out. Prices have gone up since the pandemic this year. A core i7-4790 MT sells for over $220 refurbished. A professionally refurbished one sells for closer to $300. See Newegg.

It may be worth buying if you don't need Thunderbolt, a 6 core CPU or DDR4 memory or HEVC decoding. If you need any of those, build new. The 4 core 8 thread i3-10100 CPU* is as good or better than the i7-4790 and only costs around 120 USD. That's a great value. It wasn't available when I first wrote this up. Optiplex 9020 prices were a lot lower then too. So what used to be a Core i7 a few years back in 2017, that sold for $320, now costs $200 less thanks to competition from AMD Ryzen.

*See post # 2,043.

Here's what you can get for about $336 for all new 10th gen hardware on Newegg today.

Screen Shot 11.jpg

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If you get the 9020 MT you'd have to upgrade the PSU anyway to run the RX 580 in it. So going new is probably the best value right now. If you can get a 9020 with i7-4790 in good condition for under $200 that is still worth pursuing. It won't have macOS support for as long as a new 10th gen. build will. The 9020s will run Big Sur with no problem. After that we don't know about longer term support when using iMac 15,1.
 
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Here's a comparison between the i7-7700, Kaby Lake vs the newer i3-10100 Comet Lake CPU.

Intel Core i7-7700 vs. Intel Core i3-10100 - Benchmark, Test and Specs

Intel Core i7-7700 vs. Intel Core i3-10100 - Benchmark, Geekbench 5, Cinebench R20, Cinebench R23, Cinebench R15 and FP32 iGPU (GFLOPS) benchmark results
www.cpu-monkey.com www.cpu-monkey.com

The i3-10100 is 100MHz faster in single and all-core turbo than the i7-7700 but has 2MB less of L3 cache than the 7700. Those are the only two significant differences. Now look at the prices of the two side by side:
Screen Shot 12.jpg


The new C.L. i3-10100 saves you over $227 for basically the same new CPU from Intel. Crazy.
 
I just did the install for a friend's computer. I followed the guide to a tee but cant get any resolution over 1080p on the system.

The hardware is as follows : 9020 SSF A25 bios i5 4670 8GB RAM and HD4600 with no GPU, the screen is an Acer 4K screen through the DisplayPort at the back.
It's running Mojave 10.14.6

I'm not aiming for 4K but would like to at least get 1440p.
Any help would to get 1440p be greatly appreciated :)
 
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coskun said:
I'm not aiming for 4K but would like to at least get 1440p.
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Look here for differences in build but note that DP to HDMI is a limiting option and you may find that 1440p is as good as it gets for hdmi
 
Just to clarify I'm running a DP 1.2 cable from the 9020 to the screen, but I can't seem to get anything over 1080p in the display settings.
I'd be happy with 1440p.
 
coskun said:
no GPU, the screen is an Acer 4K screen through the DisplayPort at the back.
It's running Mojave 10.14.6
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To see if your cable (DP to DP ?) is capable of enough bandwidth for 4K try Win10 with your 4K monitor. If that works then you'll know it supports 4K.
 
Yeah, it supports 4K. I had it running 4K 60Hz on Windows 10. Is there an extra step in the install to get it up to 1440p that I am missing?
 
coskun said:
Yeah, it supports 4K. I had it running 4K 60Hz on Windows 10. Is there an extra step in the install to get it up to 1440p that I am missing?
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Is it a DP to HDMI cable or a DP to DP ? 1440p should work without doing anything special when it's DP to DP. For 4K there is a requirement to increase the DVMT pre-allocation up to 64MB. If you don't do that 4K won't work via onboard DP.
 
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