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

[atlfmv7]

Thanks for posting that. Looks like the only way to get 4K @60 Hz is to use DP to DP or to adapt DP to HDMI with an active adapter.

Nah, thank you. I didn't even realize I was only at 30Hz until you posted that. Looks like I'll be grabbing a DP cable from work tomorrow!

 

[Daneland]

Ok.Now my story.
I received my MSI GT 1030 LP 2GB yesterday and HP 6300 today.No other additions yet.It took me a couple hours or less to install Sierra.I only stuck when trying to install Nvidia drivers.I had to install re-install.But did not make any changes. Than,I started to look for a solution and I installed Clover for some reason (I guess I did this, complete noob luck) and problem solved. I dont think I changed a thing with Clover, I just installed it.
At the moment, I am migrating my iMac's data. I used an HDD drive to install Sierra, I guess I will replace HP's small 30 GB SSD with iMac's 250 GB SSD and install Sierra next time to this SSD.
So far everything works well.I can hear voice from the HP's speaker, Nvidia works well.I will test it throughly.I need to find a cheap bluetooth and wifi adapter, a web cam.
Many thanks for all people who contributed to this topic but of course lion's share goes to trs96

 

[trs96]

Glad to hear of your success @Daneland

It was about a year long process to put this all together. I started by trying to help those with the 8200 model and then later the 8300 before I ever owned one. It looked very promising. Then I subscribed to the HP 8300 thread started by pastrychef in Summer of 2016. From those threads I learned about the common issues that many would run into when trying one of these builds. The Snazzy labs video on the Elite 8300 MT hackintosh came out in mid May 2017 and since has had about 905,000 views so I thought it would be a good idea to have a highly detailed guide that worked for all the 6300/8300 form factor desktops since there was such a large amount of interest. That video gets people interested but doesn't really give any practical "how to" information to have success installing Sierra on the HP PC.

I assembled all the relevant information I learned in the User Build forum so that anyone, even a complete beginner could easily get Sierra working in a few hours. The frosting on the cake was getting the Nvidia support for Pascal cards and the 2.9.0 VoodooHDA kext this past April. V.HDA 2.9.0 allows you to get fully working HDMI audio as well as analog audio. You only need to add the AppleHDA Disabler kext to /L/E with the 2.9.0 kext and it works. The web drivers are what make this go from an average pre-built hackintosh to one that can easily be your daily driver. I wanted anyone, regardless of level of experience they have or amount of money to spend to be able to use macOS and have a good user experience.

I first published this in mid June and it has hardly taken much coaching for new HP 6300/8300 owners to get macOS running on these. Couldn't have done any of it without this community. Really happy about how this all came together. Hopefully full macOS compatibility will continue through High Sierra and we can even give users some AMD graphics cards options for those that want to edit video in FCP X with a card that works OOB and performs well. Vega cards will likely be much too power hungry but there should be some mid-range choices for AMD in the future.

 

[pastrychef]

I think that at this point, 4K@60Hz over HDMI 2.0 is kinda like VGA. Unsupported, but some people may get it to work. That being said, anyone who wants 4K@60Hz should stick with DisplayPort.

 

[Lonelytanker]

Nah, thank you. I didn't even realize I was only at 30Hz until you posted that. Looks like I'll be grabbing a DP cable from work tomorrow!

And your monitor has HDMI 2.0 ports? Not all 4K monitors do.

 

[atlfmv7]

And your monitor has HDMI 2.0 ports? Not all 4K monitors do.

Yeah, I checked the manual today and buried in there it said HDMI1 is 30Hz and HDMI2 is for 60Hz. Unfortunately HDMI2 doesn't come up at all when plugged in, so I'll have to get a DP cable for 60Hz 4K.

 

[Thyldor]

I've recently bought a HP Elite 8300 Tower and have tried to install OS X 10.12 on it with moderate success.

Specs:
i5 3450 (the computer came with a 3770 but I used it on another build)
Nvidia GT420
8GB DDR3 1600MHz (4x2GB)
1TB SSHD
TP Link TL-WN725N Rev 2.1 (I can confirm that this one also works, not just Rev 2.2)


Problems I encountered but managed to solve:

After the install, I selected the "use Nvidia web drivers" option in clover. Upon booting, the desktop was the correct resolution, but the image was really messed up. After endless search and nearly buying a new GPU, I found a unrelated post that mentioned that I wasn't supposed to use that option. Lo and behold, when booting with clover with no options selected, it worked like a charm.

I also couldn't boot without the install USB stick inserted and couldn't figure out why. While trying to create my SSDT using the shell script, it would give me an error, saying that the CPU wasn't supported by the motherboard and said it was a iMac14,2, which baffled me, since I selected iMac13,2 in MultiBeast and it said it installed successfully. I was able to set the PC to iMac13,2 using the Clover Configurator and it's working now.

I tried to check wether or not the SSDT was working using MSRDump.kext with gave me really weird permission errors on the kextload command. I then downloaded it using the Mac itself ( I had previously downloaded it on another computer) and after that it worked.


My current issue:

I don't think the SSDT is working. The MSRDumper kext only displayed 2 states, 16,31 , which I later confirmed with HWMonitor.
I can't figure out why for the life of me. I place it in EFI/Clover/ACPI/patched. Is there another step I'm supposed to do? Change something in the clover config?

I've uploaded the SSDT, since after checking the one posted by pastrychef, they do look slightly different ( other than his being for the 3770)


Also, it feels like it stutters a bit, I'm thinking it might be from just having 2 P States. It's mainly the first input after it's been idling for 5-10 seconds. I'm assuming it goes into the 1.6GHz state and has to jump to 3,1GHz which causes the slight lag/stutter.

Any advice would be really appreciated.

 

[pastrychef]

You must make sure that you installed Clover on to your boot drive and then you must make sure that drive is set to be first in the boot order in your BIOS.

For Nvidia, in Clover Configurator, in System Parameters section, put a check next to NvidiaWeb. None of the other Nvidia related checkboxes in Clover Configurator need to be checked.

I am not near my 8300 at the moment... I'll take a look at my ssdt.aml when I am in front of the 8300...

 

[mlai]

Testing Request: I would like to know if anyone with a 4K monitor could confirm whether or not a Nvidia Pascal card can produce a 4k resolution with a 60Hz refresh rate via the HDMI 2.0 output. I know that 30Hz works. Apple doesn't officially support HDMI 2.0 but I'd like to know if the Nvidia web drivers make this possible. Make sure to test with a 4K capable HDMI cable. TIA.

I normally have my GTX 1050 Ti connected to a BenQ 4K monitor via DP. However I just swapped it to HDMI (using the monitor's HDMI 2.0 port) and it comes up as 60HZ, according to the info screen reported by the monitor itself. I'm also using a BJC HDMI 2.0 cable.

 

[trs96]

I normally have my GTX 1050 Ti connected to a BenQ 4K monitor via DP. However I just swapped it to HDMI (using the monitor's HDMI 2.0 port) and it comes up as 60HZ, according to the info screen reported by the monitor itself. I'm also using a BJC HDMI 2.0 cable.

Interesting, so maybe it is possible with the higher bandwidth cable. Is the performance, visually, just as good as when you connect to DP ? Is there any lag or artifacts when moving the mouse around quickly ?