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The 4K Dell OptiMac - 9020 MT - Core i7-4790 - Radeon RX 570 - LG 4K IPS Monitor

is this one ok
I would avoid it. Get a name brand like MSI. Has a 5 year warranty. This one should have the 8 pin supplemental power. The price is very good for this. About 39 USD so not expensive.

https://www.amazon.ae/MSI-A550BN-Bronze-Circuit-Frequency/dp/B09GW4S27Q /ref=sr_1_1

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I would avoid it. Get a name brand like MSI. Has a 5 year warranty.
Can confirm that they back their warranty as well. My son had one fail after about 2.5 yrs in his modest gaming rig and they replaced quickly under warranty.
 
Recommended 16GB Timetec kits are now selling for $19.99 on Amazon. New, not refurbished. If you use your OptiMac for video and photo editing and/or audio production, you want as many high quality, matching DIMMS as you can get. If your Dell came with 2 x 4GB of DDR3 it's not going to suffice. Buy two kits of Timetec 16GB and max out your ram at 32GB. The SFF and MT both have 4 ram slots that you can populate.

Note the 9020 USFF only has 2 ram slots so 16GB total is the maximum ram config.


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Following this great guide, I installed Catalina with OpenCore. After copying the installer EFI folder to the SSD, I was able to reboot. Then I added all the sn#, uuid, MAC address, etc to the config.plist with ProperTree. I did the OC Snapshot and OC Clean Snapshot but after restarting I see this:
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Is it a kind of OC version mess ?

EDIT:
It WAS an OC version mess !
This is my everyday Hackintosh with Monterey and OpenCore 0.8.0
I want to install Catalina on another hard drive so I used the EFI folder provided here. But it is an OC 0.6.9 version and this was not a good idea !

I used OCAT to get everything in the OC 0.6.9 way for this SSD with Catalina. Now I can pick either Monterey or Catalina in the One time Boot Setting (with F12).
 
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Just checked the Amazon best sellers today. Amazing to see the 9020 SFF still at #1. The mini computers with Celerons sell nearly as good but they don't hold up longer term and are very limited in what you can do with them. The N100 series are good for just basic web browsing, streaming etc. They are meant to be an internet appliance. Worst of all you can't install macOS on them due to incompatible graphics.

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The mini PCs are all plastic, run hotter and usually come with generic ram and NVMe SSDs. With a 9020 you can use a Gen 4 NVMe SSD in the x16 slot and get speeds faster than any Macbook laptop that Apple sells. I use the SN770 and get 3GB/s read and write speeds. Last year I paid 29.99 dollars on Amazon for a new SN770 500GB. Since then the prices have gone up. I bought right at the bottom of the crash in NAND flash prices.

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Today, I would opt for a 1TB SN770 that sells for $80. I don't see prices ever going as low as late last year.

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Working with TRIM broken (can be used with TRIM disabled, at slower boot times, or as a data storage):
  • Samsung 950 Pro
  • Samsung 960 Evo/Pro
  • Samsung 970 Evo/Pro
Working fine with TRIM:
  • Western Digital Blue SN550
  • Western Digital Black SN700
  • Western Digital Black SN720
  • Western Digital Black SN750 (aka SanDisk Extreme PRO)
  • Western Digital Black SN850 (need more tests)
  • Intel 760p (including OEM models, e.g. SSDPEMKF512G8)
  • Crucial P1 1TB NVME (SM2263EN) (need more tests)
Working fine with TRIM (SATA):
  • SATA PLEXTOR M5Pro
  • SATA Samsung 850 PRO (need more tests)
  • SATA Samsung 870 EVO (need more tests)
Working fine with TRIM (Unbranded SSDs):
  • KingDian S280
  • Kingchuxing 512GB
Incompatible with IONVMeFamily (die under heavy load):
  • GIGABYTE 512 GB M.2 PCIe SSD (e.g. GP-GSM2NE8512GNTD) (need more tests)
  • ADATA Swordfish 2 TB M.2-2280
  • SK Hynix HFS001TD9TNG-L5B0B
  • Samsung
Hi everyone,
Couple of questions about NVMe drives. I have a 9020 MT hackintosh with a 970 EVO Plus in an adapter plugged into the lowest black PCIe slot on the motherboard. I think TRIM is working?
All works well, followed the instructions, and now it works as a boot drive as well after copying over my EFI folder.
First question is re compatibility and the above list. Is the compatibility driven by macOS or is it limited by the Optiplex?
I’m thinking of retiring the Optiplex as a hackintosh and just using it with Windows and would like to replace the current 1TB 970 EVO Plus with a larger drive ie 980 or 990 or something else. Is comparability under windows going to be better?

Second do we know the PCIe gen of the bottom black PCIe x 4 slot? I’m guessing gen 3 but could be gen 2?
I assume the 3500mb/s speeds quoted by @trs96 are motherboard slot limited so no point getting an SSD the goes much faster than that?
 
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