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

[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.

 

[trs96]

If anyone is wondering about the quality of these HP cases....

I weighed my HP 6300 Pro right side panel. It has no flex in it. Comes off quite easily by just loosening the two captive screws. Weighs in at just under 2.5 pounds. If you are using metric, 1.13 kg. Made of steel. Paint job is good too.

 

[ohgood]

My other hack is an older quad core xeon gigabyte dealio. It was really nice 6 years ago, but with today's gopro file sizes (4k is unbearably slow) I needed an update...







I came across your guide doing a google search for hackintoshes on ebay. the models available surprised me, and led me to google "hp 8300 hackintosh" and I arrived here. This is one of the most comprehensive, well done tutorials I've come across, for ANYTHING. Thanks for putting all the time and effort into detailing it step by step. This is a job VERY well done.

I have only installed my hack on the 8300 so far, have not enabled sound or nvidia drivers yet, but I'm very impressed with the speed and simplicity of osx on this desktop. I'll be buying another pair for the kids to use.

Just a thank you and a hat tip to your efforts.

 

[trs96]

I have only installed my hack on the 8300 so far, have not enabled sound or nvidia drivers yet, but I'm very impressed with the speed and simplicity of osx on this desktop. I'll be buying another pair for the kids to use.

This was a community effort with a goal of having a build that anyone, with no previous experience could succeed at. The result being a low cost and capable CustoMac that can run the latest version of macOS, without costing a fortune.

Since these cost so little and work so well I wanted everyone to know about this option. That's why this guide was written.
Glad to hear you're happy with yours. You can also take a look at the Dell Optiplex guide. Those are the same gen as the HP 8300 and work quite well. I've got one HP 6300 Pro and two Dells that I'm running HS and Mojave on. The USFF Optiplex with an i5-3475S or I7-3770 and an SSD works about as well with Mojave as the new $800 Mac mini. Without all of the thermal throttling problems. The main sacrifice made when choosing the Dell or HP USFF is no Thunderbolt 3 and no option to go past 16GB of ram. For a general use machine they perform really well and are very efficient.

[Guide] Install High Sierra or Mojave on the Dell Optiplex 7010 / 9010 Desktop PC - Revision II

The Dell Optiplex CustoMac Mini Desktop Comments This guide for the Dell Optiplex 7010/9010 is a complete description of 7 steps necessary to get your system working with macOS High Sierra or Mojave. These business desktops are Ivy Bridge based and have the Intel Q77 Express chipset. Dell...

www.tonymacx86.com

 

[sigmatec]

I add the kexts at /Volumes/EFI/EFI/CLOVER/kexts/Other and I get both black screens.
Every time that I boot I need to unplug the HDMI from the monitor, then when the OS is loaded I plug it again and I get a normal image.

 

[trs96]

I add the kexts at /Volumes/EFI/EFI/CLOVER/kexts/Other and I get both black screens.

tried installing WhateverGreen Kext and Lilu to /L/E or /Library/Extensions on your system drive.

You can also boot with only one monitor connected and then connect the second one when you reach the desktop.
If you don't reboot very often it's certainly something you could live with.

 

[sigmatec]

tried installing WhateverGreen Kext and Lilu to /L/E or /Library/Extensions on your system drive.

You can also boot with only one monitor connected and then connect the second one when you reach the desktop.
If you don't reboot very often it's certainly something you could live with.

sorry I didn't understood
I add the kexts to the /Library/Extensions and I get the same issue.
Yes is doable but I would like to find a solution to avoid stress on the video ports.

 

[trs96]

sorry I didn't understood
I add the kexts to the /Library/Extensions and I get the same issue.
Yes is doable but I would like to find a solution to avoid stress on the video ports.

This is a common problem when using Nvidia graphics. You can find hundreds of posts here on this topic. So if you keep searching those and try various techniques that worked for others you may be able to resolve this.