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

[asleb]

I have never had USB work as well on a hack as it is working on this HackMini8,1. Just for a test, I was creating a Catalina Installer USB and put the hack to sleep in the middle of the operation. The hack went to sleep (which may be a problem since USB activity should have blocked sleep?). When I resumed, the hack continued and finished creating the Installer USB (which worked perfectly).

Hi @deeveedee I have pretty much fixed patching screen buffer. But like I complained about sleep and never getting this fixed. My Lenovo m93p never crashes on sleep. So why do my other mini PC projects (HP 800G2, Lenovo m910q) crash on sleep? Aha, because I only have a SATA SSD on the m93p and NVMe drives on the others. So I cloned the NMVe drive to a SATA SSD and disabled the M.2 NVMe drive. Sleep is working perfect! I have success with NVMe drives in other desktops but it seems these mini PCs are more like laptops (?). So do you have any ideas how I can get sleep to work when related to NVMe drive. Your HP 800 G4 I presume uses a NMVe drive or are you using SATA?

 

[deeveedee]

Hi @deeveedee I have pretty much fixed patching screen buffer. But like I complained about sleep and never getting this fixed. My Lenovo m93p never crashes on sleep. So why do my other mini PC projects (HP 800G2, Lenovo m910q) crash on sleep? Aha, because I only have a SATA SSD on the m93p and NVMe drives on the others. So I cloned the NMVe drive to a SATA SSD and disabled the M.2 NVMe drive. Sleep is working perfect! I have success with NVMe drives in other desktops but it seems these mini PCs are more like laptops (?). So do you have any ideas how I can get sleep to work when related to NVMe drive. Your HP 800 G4 I presume uses a NMVe drive or are you using SATA?

I can boot and run Catalina 10.15.5.02 from both NVMe and SATA - no issues. There are NVMe SSDs that cause problems with both real Macs and hacks (google and you'll find many reports). Congrats on finding your sleep problem!

EDIT: @asleb Does this NVMefix help you?

 

[asleb]

I can boot and run Catalina 10.15.5.02 from both NVMe and SATA - no issues. There are NVMe SSDs that cause problems with both real Macs and hacks (google and you'll find many reports). Congrats on finding your sleep problem!

EDIT: @asleb Does this NVMefix help you?

Thanks @deeveedee! I thought I had tried this before but maybe I had an old version. Sleep works like a charm now booting from NVMe. My HP 800 G2 mini is now (almost) for me the perfect MacMini (something version). 50 tracks in Logic Pro X smooth is nice for $200! Just a question about wifi/bluetooth. I have used Dell DW1802 (and others) on other hackintoshes and works fine with acidanthera's brcm kexts. I bought a Broadcom BCM94360NG that works OTB with no extra kexts on my Lenovo m910q. I also bought a Broadcom BCM94352HMB mini-pcie card for Lenovo m93p also working OTB. But none of the M.2 cards work in the HP 800G2. Terrible speed and unreliable BT. The seller of the BCM94360NG told me it does not work in the HP. Very strange. All Intel cards I tested work fine. And it is not using Intel GNV which uses proprietary pins. Have you replaced the wifi card and what brand?

 

[deeveedee]

Thanks @deeveedee! I thought I had tried this before but maybe I had an old version. Sleep works like a charm now booting from NVMe.

All Intel cards I tested work fine. And it is not using Intel GNV which uses proprietary pins. Have you replaced the wifi card and what brand?

Glad that worked for you. I had only started looking at NVMeFix.kext to see if it improves power management, so it was just a lucky guess.

Read my first post here for my hardware specs and what is working / not working.

EDIT: Note that there is a regression fix commit in GitHub for NVMeFix.kext, so I suspect there is a version 1.0.3 to be coming soon.

 

[asleb]

Glad that worked for you. I had only started looking at NVMeFix.kext to see if it improves power management, so it was just a lucky guess.

Read my first post here for my hardware specs and what is working / not working.

Yes I read that but just wondered if you had since gotten a replacement for the Intel card. I would not recommend any of the intel wifi projects to get your Intel card working, at least not yet. Too slow and buggy. Let me know if you find anything that works in OS X. It is probably much of the same socket and compatibility.

 

[deeveedee]

EDIT: The slow NVMe SSD performance was due to the ADATA M.2 NVMe SSD. I swapped it for a WD M.2 NVMe SSD as described here. Leaving this post for historical purposes.
-----------------------------------------------------------------

In Post #54 and Post #72 I noted that my system boots Catalina 10.15.5 slower from my NVMe SSD than it does from my SATA6 SSD. I found two threads (here and here) that discuss NVMe SSD Controllers detected as "Generic SSD Controller" instead of "Apple SSD Controller."

As shown in the attached screenshot, both of my NVMeExpress SSD Controllers are detected as Generic. Both NVMe SSD Controllers are reported as "Link Width: x4" and "Link Speed: 8.0 GT/s" with Trim Support.

Could it be that the performance issue is simply because they are detected as Generic SSD Controllers and not Apple SSD Controllers?

 

[asleb]

In Post #54 and Post #72 I noted that my system boots Catalina 10.15.5 slower from my NVMe SSD than it does from my SATA6 SSD. I found two threads (here and here) that discuss NVMe SSD Controllers detected as "Generic SSD Controller" instead of "Apple SSD Controller."

As shown in the attached screenshot, both of my NVMeExpress SSD Controllers are detected as Generic. Both NVMe SSD Controllers are reported as "Link Width: x4" and "Link Speed: 8.0 GT/s" with Trim Support.

Could it be that the performance issue is simply because they are detected as Generic SSD Controllers and not Apple SSD Controllers?

On my HP 800 G2 it shows "Apple SSD Controller". Original HP NVMe (Samsung) On my Asrock z390 with Samsung 970 EVO, it shows "Generic SSD Controller" but I have no slow boot or speed problems. I get 1800 mbs write / 2900 mbs read. But it is interesting and I am reading the posts you linked to.
#read# and it seems a bios issue. I can not see anything in the HP bios to change this. But then we are talking about 2 minutes boot time. That is a problem. What do you mean by "my system boots slower..." ?

 

[deeveedee]

I have uninstalled Clover's AudioDxe driver because it caused a loud "pop" during startup. There is a commit in Clover's GitHub repo related to AudioDxe. I wonder if this commit addresses this issue.

 

[deeveedee]

Big lesson learned...

After experiencing poor NVMe SSD performance, I swapped my ADATA SSD for a WD Black SSD. R/W speeds are awesome (and symmetric) as shown in the attached screenshot. However, the big lesson learned was about the displays. When I cloned my backup to the new NVMe drive (using Carbon Copy), my displays did not work properly after booting from the new NVMe SSD. The only change was the NVMe SSD - no other changes and EFI was identical. My system would start to boot and login normally, but then one display would go black and I'd be left with a single display.

I made a VERY lucky guess and rebuilt kextcache using Hackintool - problem fixed. Displays are back to normal.

Lesson learned: if you're having display problems after cloning a new drive image, rebuild kextcache with Hackintool, manually or your favorite way.

NOTE: I install 3rd-party kexts in /Library/Extensions and set CLOVER "Inject Kexts" = "Detect." Rebuilding kextcache may have resolved this problem for me because of my kext installation strategy. If you install your 3rd-party kexts in E/C/k/O and not in /L/E, I'm not sure if this fix applies to you.

 

[deeveedee]

Now that this rig is finished, I have a total cost (USD) for this HackMini8,1:

• $420.00: Gently used HP EliteDesk 800 G4 Mini 35W: I7-8700T, 16GB DDR4 (1 SO-DIMM), 256GB Samsung NVMe SSD, Intel Wi-Fi / Bluetooth
• $52.00: 16GB DDR4 SO-DIMM (expanding memory to a total of 32GB DDR4)
• $70.00: 500 GB Western Digital WD BLACK SN750 NVMe M.2 2280 500GB SSD
• $72.00: 2TB Seagate 2.5" SATA6 HD

Total Cost: $614.00 USD

Final configuration

• CPU: I7-8700T: 6-core, UHD 630
• 3 x Display Port video ports, 6 x USB 3.1 ports, 1 x USB-c 3.1 port
• 32GB DDR4 RAM
• 1 x Samsung 256GB NVMe M.2 SSD
• 1 x Western Digital 500 GB NVMe M.2 SSD
• 1 x Seagate 2TB 2.5" SATA6 HD