[Guide] HP 6300 Pro / HP 8300 Elite - A 100 percent Working and Easily Affordable CustoMac

[BanjoBobby]

I've followed the "HP 6300 Pro / HP 8300 Elite - A 100 percent Working and Easily Affordable CustoMac" guide installing everything exactly as shown on an HP Elite 8300 SFF with 16GB RAM, the MSI Radeon RX560 graphics card, two 500GB Western Digital Blue SSD's (one for Win10, one for High Sierra) and a Rosewill RNX-AC1900PCE. Everything is working great except that I get random restarts of the machine. When running FCPX especially, the screen will go black and restart. I can't seem to find a specific condition that replicates the issue. Anyone else with a similar configuration having the same problem have any suggestions as to what might need to be done to correct?

 

[taskrov]

I have essentially the same system and it crashes occasionally. It is running 10.13.6 with 2019-001 security update. It was built as 10.13.6. Not sure how to diagnose it and have not seen a pattern yet.

 

[nicksoph]

Edit: Sorry. I made these comments thinking it was the HIGH sierra thread.

@BanjoBobby - I think mine was pretty much rock solid on High Sierra but I was using a different graphics card.
FCPX - is it generally stable for others in the version you have?
OSX seems to crash on hardware glitches more tahn windows, but if it is stable in windows you can be 'fairly' sure its not a hardware issue.
Dual booting can bring its own complications (sometimes relating to NVRAM) but if you have followed a guide, that's probably been covered.
If you are up for a complete rebuild, you might want to look at - https://www.tonymacx86.com/threads/...p-6300-pro-using-clover-uefi-hotpatch.265384/ - signs are that it's a better build and not that much more difficult a process.
but a q for you - Why no ssd?

 

[BanjoBobby]

Edit: Sorry. I made these comments thinking it was the HIGH sierra thread.

@BanjoBobby - I think mine was pretty much rock solid on High Sierra but I was using a different graphics card.
FCPX - is it generally stable for others in the version you have?
OSX seems to crash on hardware glitches more tahn windows, but if it is stable in windows you can be 'fairly' sure its not a hardware issue.
Dual booting can bring its own complications (sometimes relating to NVRAM) but if you have followed a guide, that's probably been covered.
If you are up for a complete rebuild, you might want to look at - https://www.tonymacx86.com/threads/...p-6300-pro-using-clover-uefi-hotpatch.265384/ - signs are that it's a better build and not that much more difficult a process.
but a q for you - Why no ssd?

@nicksoph I have 2 SSD's and 1 HDD. Each 500GB SSD is dedicated to a different OS (one for High Sierra and the second for Win10) with a 4TB internal HDD used for my 4k media and FCPX libraries. Depending upon how troublesome the stability issue gets, I may rebuild the system using the hotpatch method. This was my first attempt at a Hackintosh, so I went with what I perceived as the easiest approach first. Now that I'm more familiar with the tools & basic process I may try again.

 

[nicksoph]

@BanjoBobby the hotpatch method developed by Sniki, built upon this guide by trs96, and although I do have one of these HP's my daily driver is the hotpatch Dell 7010 which was also worked on by trs96 and Sniki, the machines are very similar and from the little I've used the HP it has been reliable and likewise for the Dell where Ive used it solidly for a week without hiccup. If you haven't settled your new machine I'd recommend the hotpatch process even if the machine is stable - (I also think it easier for those more used to Windows than hackintoshing.)

 

[NosajTrah]

Hello all, quick question for you. Two years ago a did my first Hackintosh with the 6300 Pro then last year I did my second with the 8300 Elite. I would like to do another this year and wondering what pre-made system more powerful than the 8300 Elite is as easy to Hackintosh as these two were? Thanks in advance.

 

[trs96]

Hello all, quick question for you. Two years ago a did my first Hackintosh with the 6300 Pro then last year I did my second with the 8300 Elite. I would like to do another this year and wondering what pre-made system more powerful than the 8300 Elite is as easy to Hackintosh as these two were? Thanks in advance.

system more powerful than the 8300 Elite

It depends on what you need more power for. Is it gaming, video editing, number crunching....
Do you need a faster boot drive ? Faster ram ?

If you mean more CPU power there are newer Haswell, Skylake and Kaby Lake systems by HP (Prodesk 600 or Elitedesk 800). They are usually differentiated by G1, G2 and G3 versions. They may not be as easy to hackintosh as the 8300s but are worth looking into.

Any of these can be bought with an i7 version CPU. G1 would have i7-4770/4790. G2 would be i7-6700 and the G3 i7-7700 (Kaby Lake). It doesn't make any sense to upgrade from an 8300 with i7-3770 to a G1 Haswell system. Wouldn't notice any significant performance improvement. A Kaby Lake G3 would be the best choice to get newer tech like faster DDR4 ram and M.2 slots. With an i7-7700 you also get HEVC decode and encode if that matters. Does matter to some that want to edit 4K video.

Note that Elitedesk 800 G3 systems with an i5 or i7 will not come down in price to the 250-300 dollar range for a couple more years when they go off lease. Right now, you'll be paying over $500 for a used or refurb one from Ebay. They start at over $700 on Newegg and Amazon.

In terms of more powerful graphics, the problem is always the proprietary 250W HP power supply which doesn't have an eight pin connector on it to power a graphics card. As you know, higher end graphics need more power to work. HP only wants you to use a card that gets all it's power from the x16 PCIe slot. That maxes out at about 75W.

What to do ? Search for some of the HP Prodesk 600 or Elitedesk 800 guides and see what you think about how good the guides are and how well that hardware works with Mojave.

Here's the EliteDesk 800 G3 which may cost as much right now as building new yourself.
http://www8.hp.com/il/en/products/desktops/product-detail.html?oid=15257631#!tab=specs

If you were to buy one you'd still need to figure out an SSDT for USB function and come up with a PSU replacement solution to power something like an RX580 8GB graphics card. So primarily you'd get a lot newer i7 CPU, ability to go up to 64GB of ram (DDR4) and a few M.2 slots to use. In terms of graphics you are still limited to the AMD RX 560 4GB unless you want to use a new replacement PSU and a 24 pin power adapter. I don't know if that even works or not.

In conclusion, it probably makes more sense to build a new Z370 system that has a detailed guide on how to install Mojave. Get a 600W gold rated PSU and then use whatever AMD graphics card you'd like. The AMD RX 570s or 580s are the best value right now. Newer AMD cards are on the way.

 

[teh603]

Ello everyone. Got one of these for my parents recently when their old nettop died, and now my wife's 2010 MacBook died as well so we're looking into getting one of these and eventually turning it into a Hackintosh. It'll probably be running that other OS until we get all the parts together and BIOS flashing done, though. I want to do some light 3D rendering beyond what my Air can do, which will require an nVidia card, and all that.

 

[trs96]

Ello everyone. Got one of these for my parents recently when their old nettop died, and now my wife's 2010 MacBook died as well so we're looking into getting one of these and eventually turning it into a Hackintosh. It'll probably be running that other OS until we get all the parts together and BIOS flashing done, though. I want to do some light 3D rendering beyond what my Air can do, which will require an nVidia card, and all that.

Welcome to the community. Do you have any specific question about this guide ?

 

[teh603]

Welcome to the community. Do you have any specific question about this guide ?

None yet. Looks pretty straightforward, although not quite as simple as installing Ubuntu.