First off, thanks to trs96, pastrychef, and all of the others who have posted guides to HP Hackintoshes. I had been considering building my own last year, but was hesitant to both build my own machine for the first time in ages, and figure out the Hack process at the same time. the HP 8300 was a perfect way for me to simplify the process. I bought my system around Black Friday last year, just before SSD prices climbed, so I got a pretty good setup for about $320:
HP Elite 8300 SFF I5-3570 - 3.4 Ghz/6 GB RAM/500 GB HDD ($134)
Crucial DDR 3 4 GB + 2 GB ($35) (it came with 4+2, so I now have 12 GB in dual channel mode)
SanDisk SSD Plus 480 GB boot drive ($80)
TP-Link TL-WDN4800 WiFi ($25)
MSI GeForce GT710 2GB ($34)
SYBA SD-AUD20101 Audio adapter w/SPDIF ($10)
I initially installed El Cap but have since upgraded to Sierra. Everything worked OOB, although I ended up using the Nvidia drivers for the video card even though it should have native support. I may not have set it up correctly though.
I've since added this SATA III card, which also worked OOB; I added a 2 1/2" drive in the bay with the SSD:
SYBA SI-PEX40094 2 port SATA III PCI-e card ($15, probably was cheaper after a rebate, don't remember)
I was looking for a second SATA power cable, but HP ones go for around $50-$70. I ended up getting this cable from Monoprice for $1:
https://www.monoprice.com/product?p_id=1321
I had to trim some of the connector that attaches to the motherboard, and then spliced it in to a regular SATA power cable.
I'd like to go back and make some changes based on this guide (I didn't do the DSDT patch, I don't have a SSDT file installed, etc.) Does anyone have suggestions on the best way to roll back changes if I can't boot from the SSD after trying changes? (This happened a few times in the past, and I did a Time Machine restore, but it seems wasteful to have to copy the whole volume.) I have the TM backup, a CCC clone (with EFI partition) on the 500 GB internal drive, and a bootable external SSD to work with.