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

[TonyAspire]

Gee, I don't know, what does the guide say ?

Ok.. I never realized it the 8300 had a DisplayPort Monitor Connector. Mucho thank you.. sorry for the trouble

 

[trs96]

Thanks again! I replaced the voodoo 2.8.8 pkg with the voodoo 2.8.8 kext and the HDA disabler, now it's working the headphone jack, in my case I installed the 2.8.8 kext because with the 2.9 the audio was a little bit crackly and so low,I have a Gigabyte Gt 1030 2gb DDR5, fully functional in Sierra 10.12.6.

Yes, the best approach is to manually install either 2.9.0 or 2.8.8 to /Library/Extensions/ along with the Apple HDA Disabler Kext. That will get both HDMI and the onboard headphone and green Line Out jacks working. It seems that one of the two VoodooHDA kexts will work for various graphics cards. If you go with 2.8.8 use the one attached to post #1 so as to avoid the clicking sound. The 2.9.0 kext works best with my GTX 1050 card. No complaints here.

 

[TonyAspire]

Ok.. I never realized it the 8300 had a DisplayPort Monitor Connector. Mucho thank you.. sorry for the trouble

Found a proper cable and monitor and look what I got below... the startup config screen.

Sorry for the dumb questions... I still don't know why I was able to get Sierra working at all with the VGA on the mobo... I was just stuck and fixated on that. Thanks again.

 

[markintosh13]

ALC221 HD Audio Solved. I'm pretty certain I've now got a workable solution for analog and digital audio. What is required is that you install the VoodooHDA 2.9.0 kext and the AppleHDAdisabler kext to /L/E. That seems to do the trick.

Remove any previous Voodoo installs first before doing this, empty trash and reboot then run Kextbeast.

Nothing else is needed. No prefpane etc. I haven't had any issues with static or clicking noises. Please test this out if you have a chance. Thanks. Hope this works if you've not had previous success with analog audio on your HP.


Both kexts are attached at the end of Post #1.

That worked well - thanks so much. The onboard speaker is enough for now (the outputs and inputs now show up in the sound pref, so I assume they'll work if I ever need them). Haven't bothered with the Sabrent USB sound adapter.

Updated to Sierra 10.12.6, updated the nvidia drivers for my GT 1030, loaded up the Voodoo sound kexts, loaded the drivers for the super cheap ac600Mbps EDUP Wireless Usb Adapter, plugged in the IO Gear Bluetooth adapter, setup iMessage & iCloud.

It's so good.

 

[trs96]

That worked well - thanks so much. The onboard speaker is enough for now (the outputs and inputs now show up in the sound pref, so I assume they'll work if I ever need them). Haven't bothered with the Sabrent USB sound adapter.

I hadn't completely figured out how to get analog and digital audio working simultaneously when I posted this guide last month. I knew that with feedback from the community it would just be a matter of time. So I started experimenting and also listened to the responses of others trying the same build. So I can't take all the credit for how compatible this is or how easy it is to install macOS Sierra on these. Slice and the other Clover Devs as well as many of the Moderators here have really advanced this a lot over the 5 years that I've been learning this trade. I've mostly just put all the information together so that others would have a clear and easy to follow guide that pretty much guarantees hackintosh success. That it's really inexpensive too is just the icing on the cake.

 

[Fiat124]

If you use the 2.8.8 kext attached to post #1 it has been edited to permanently lower input gain. Replace your current one using the Kextbeast app and the problem will go away.

Done and fixed, thanks!

I bought a GTX 1050 2GB by Gigabyte on Amazon for under $100. There was a 20 dollar rebate. If you can get one of those at that price it's the best gaming bang for your buck.

Thanks for the recommendation! I poked around on Amazon and found a bunch of GTX 1050 2GB cards but none with a rebate. Are those normally listed on the Amazon listing?

 

[MrNeedSomeHelp]

Thinking about this for my first hackintosh build, i want to use this system for photo editing in lightroom, please forgive my newbie questions. size is a factor will the following specifications work and is the SFF model a good option for photo editing?

HP ELITE 8300 SFF (not sure what the difference is between 8300 sff and the 6300 sff)
500gb + 250 SSD boot drive (would I have to remove the CD-ROM to make space?)

But I'm not sure which of the low profile PCI express cards our the best for photo editing/lightroom.

 

[pastrychef]

Wikipedia shows that the 6300 uses the Q75 chipset and the 8300 uses the Q77 chipset:
HP business desktops - Wikipedia

As far as I can tell, the biggest difference between the two is the number PCI-e slots available:
Intel Ivy Bridge: Everything You Need to Know > Chipset and CPU Line-up at Launch - TechSpot

Fitting two 2.5 drives should not be a problem. The 3.5 bay (under the optical drive) is probably the most ideal location for this. Use of a 3.5" to 2x2.5" hot swap cage will work nicely but it's entirely optional and primarily for convenience and aesthetics. There's also space under the power supply for a 3.5" hard drive. Use of either of these bays would not require you to remove the optical drive.

I don't think that Photoshop/Lightroom is very dependent on powerful GPUs, so you probably don't need the most powerful of video cards. I've seen forum members here mentioned use of anything from GT 710 all the way up to GTX 1050 with these systems. Anything from GT 740 up would probably be good for your needs. Budget plays a big role in this decision... (This is just my opinion, performance is often subjective and what feels fast for me may feel slow for others.)

I think that Lightroom is quite dependent on drive speeds. So, investing in fast drives may be a good idea.

 

[markintosh13]

Thinking about this for my first hackintosh build, i want to use this system for photo editing in lightroom, please forgive my newbie questions. size is a factor will the following specifications work and is the SFF model a good option for photo editing?

HP ELITE 8300 SFF (not sure what the difference is between 8300 sff and the 6300 sff)
500gb + 250 SSD boot drive (would I have to remove the CD-ROM to make space?)

But I'm not sure which of the low profile PCI express cards our the best for photo editing/lightroom.

My 6300 SFF is coming together as a Aperture photo editor, connected to my 40" 4K monitor.

Bought it as an i7 3770 with 1TB HD, 4GB ram. Replaced the single stick of ram with a 16GB kit. Replaced the HD with a 256GB SSD for boot and apps. Adding a 1TB SSD for photo library on a SATA III port. May use drive caddies to fit the SSDs into the HD drive bay and the empty floppy drive/media drive bay or may just let them sit loose. No need to remove the DVD drive (though probably no reason to have a DVD drive either). Using a traditional HD for photo storage is a sure fire way to slow things down. My Samsung 850 EVO 1TB SSD is probably going to r/w at about 500-550 MB/s sustained, an HD is probably going to r/w at around 40-80 MB at best. Just say no to HDs.

I wanted an i7 3770, so looked at both the 6300 and 8300 options with that cpu, and found the best price to be a 6300.

The physical difference between the two seems to be mostly that the 8300 has x16, x4 and x1 pci-e slots and a PCI, whereas the 6300 has an x16 and two x1 slots.

If I had been able to find an 8300 i7 3770 in a mini tower, at the same or similar price, I would have gone that route, as used GTX 750 Ti cards are pretty cheap, but the GT 1030 low profile card I went with wasn't particularly expensive either. Either way, the PSU still limits the options to low power cards. If i had a x4 slot, I would have toyed with an x4 PCI-E m2 two slot SSD adapter for faster storage (but I had the 1TB sata ssd already).

If I do decide I want the much faster pci-e m2 storage, as I do not have a spare x4 slot (and do not want to be bottlenecked by pci-e x1 m2 adapters), I'll have to resort to the following: I'll have to use my current x16 slot for the x4 adapter, and will have to move my GT 1030 (which is actually an x4 card) to an x1 slot and take a small performance hit there (and will have to open up the back of the physical slot by grinding out or melting away the plastic). At the moment, my desire to drive the throughput is constrained by a reallocation of budget.

As for GPU, many photo editors don't benefit from a super powerful gpu. For me, the GT1030 is fine, and the cpu and ssd storage is more important.

 

[trs96]

I've noticed that many who are new to macOS and are using it for the first time are completely unaware that Apple dropped support for analog video (VGA) about 10 years ago. I've revised step 1 of the guide and added some pictures that make it easier to see this. VGA is still supported in Windows 10 mostly because businesses still use many older VGA only monitors and most businesses use Windows as their primary OS. Intel Skylake and newer CPUs do not support VGA anymore. It is officially E.O.L.
I switched to a DVI connection on my Dell 17" LCD monitor back in 2005 with the first Mac Mini and have never looked back.
See this article from December 2010. Intel announces the End of VGA