pastrychef's $62 Dell OptiPlex 3050 Clunker - i3-6100 - RX 560

[pastrychef]

Audio is not working. Checked back, front and HDMI, did not try display port.

As stated on post #1, I never got the on board audio working and haven't tried since the beginning.

HDMI/DisplayPort audio works on my RX 560. I never tried with IGPU only...

You can try following Heporis' guide to getting on board audio working. Please see here.

 

[pastrychef]

Updated Clover + kexts and macOS 10.15.2 installed fine.

Update:
Hardware HEVC decoding seems to have broken after updating to 10.15.2. I think we need to wait for an update to WhateverGreen for this to be fixed.


Update #2:
This kext fixes hardware decoding on my RX 560.

 

[pastrychef]

If any of you are interested in this build, there's a seller on eBay who has some barebones units available for $65.

Dell Optiplex 3050 MOTHERBOARD, CASE, POWER SUPPLY, HEATSINK/FAN COMBO | eBay

Optiplex 3050 Manufacturer Part Number Dell Manufacturer Dell Item Condition Missing accessories (Software, cables, manual, remote, etc.) Box Condition This item has been Tested for Key Functions, Ready for Resale.

www.ebay.com

The price to performance ratio of these things are really hard to beat. If you want to go super cheap, get an i3-6100 for about $60. If you want to go all out, get an i7-7700 (as far as I know, 7700K will not work). Keep in mind that Kaby Lake has much better HEVC support than Skylake.

The only downsides are:

• Only two DIMM slots so RAM can only go as high as 32GB.
• Getting on board audio to work requires workarounds that I don't like. I prefer to just use USB audio or HDMI audio.

If you need four DIMM slots, the following $40 barebones units are another great deal, but I they are on a slightly older Q150 and doesn't have an NVMe M.2 slot and I don't know if they support Kaby Lake CPUs. The Optiplex is on a B250 chipset.

HP ProDesk 600 G2 SFF Barebones No Processor No Ram No Hard Drive | eBay

HP ProDesk 600 G2 Barebones Only. No Processor. No Hard Drive. No Hard Drive bracket.

www.ebay.com

*Disclaimer: I have no affiliation to either of these sellers.

 

[pastrychef]

Updated EFI to r3. Audio out is now working perfectly without the need for any workarounds.

 

[MasonJF]

Ahh wonderful, worked like a charm on the i5 variant.

Edit: I did discover a problem with the GPU, with a r5 240 (detected by the system as an r7 340??) it would only tell me it had 5mb of vram, and was running into some pretty serious graphical issues. I attempted to fix the kexts or spoof it in clover to no avail, so I removed the video card from the system completely and let the HD630 do the work, now it works perfectly fine as far as I can tell.

If anyone knows of a solution to this r5 240 problem (This is a school machine, so really I can't just not use this card) I'd greatly appreciate it! Thanks

 

[hannibal1969]

Hi Pastry. A friend of mine had a very old iMac core2duo and its starting to fail. He has not much money so I googled some 2nd hand shops nearby and found this one based on your clunker. Based on your experience does he need to add that RX560 or is it fairly ok already with an i5 7500? I think it is a good basis for a hack and it will improve a lot compared to his old iMac. Plan to make a bid for 150-200 with monitor. I also need Bluetooth and WiFi. It needs to work OOTB which needs for the whole box basically.

 

[pastrychef]

Hi Pastry. A friend of mine had a very old iMac core2duo and its starting to fail. He has not much money so I googled some 2nd hand shops nearby and found this one based on your clunker. Based on your experience does he need to add that RX560 or is it fairly ok already with an i5 7500? I think it is a good basis for a hack and it will improve a lot compared to his old iMac. Plan to make a bid for 150-200 with monitor. I also need Bluetooth and WiFi. It needs to work OOTB which needs for the whole box basically.

I believe that's a Small Form Factor version of the OptiPlex 3050. In my opinion, it may not be practical to spend money on a low profile RX 560. They tend to run a bit more expensive than the full heigh video cards. If it were me, I would just go with the IGPU.

If you decide to use IGPU, I highly recommend that you adjust the DVMT Prealloc via Grub Shell method.

 

[djashjones]

Would this work with a 7040M i5 with a Samsung 970 NVMe?

I know I'd need to redo the audio (layout id), USB and I have a supported WiFi/BT card.

Thanks in advanced. I do love these Optiplex's.

 

[pastrychef]

Would this work with a 7040M i5 with a Samsung 970 NVMe?

I know I'd need to redo the audio (layout id), USB and I have a supported WiFi/BT card.

Thanks in advanced. I do love these Optiplex's.

I'm not sure... Theoretically, most thing should work... But it really comes down to how agreeable the BIOS on the 7040M is.

You can probably use the EFI as a base and make adjustments for better compatibility with the 7040M.

 

[hannibal1969]

I believe that's a Small Form Factor version of the OptiPlex 3050. In my opinion, it may not be practical to spend money on a low profile RX 560. They tend to run a bit more expensive than the full heigh video cards. If it were me, I would just go with the IGPU.

If you decide to use IGPU, I highly recommend that you adjust the DVMT Prealloc via Grub Shell method.

Pastry can you tell me more about how to do it? I have bought a HP Prodesk 600G1 which worked but after BIOS Upgrade to latest the IGPU driver is not loaded anymore. Only with the -igfxvega bootflag. I don't know what exactly is going on but it has something to do with the DVMT memory available I think. Can you lead me the way?