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

[trs96]

Ebay deal for an i5-4590 7020 SFF model
​

Seller is saying these are in grade A condition. Price is very reasonable. You'll need to supply your own SSD.
For the cost of a new i3-8100 you get the whole computer which includes the i5-4590 that is just about as fast
and powerful as the i3-8100. 8GB of ram, PSU, motherboard and case too. Can't beat this deal for an entry level small hackintosh. Quiet and energy efficient too. Costs way less than a new base level late 2018 mini. If you figure in 25 dollars for a 128 GB SSD, it's still $650 dollars less than the new Mac mini. You could even install an NVMe SSD with an adapter via the PCIe x16 slot if you will use integrated graphics. See the HP 250 GB version in post #1 of this User Build.

 

[trs96]

Checked BIOS settings (which aren't shown in PR files) and noticed I didn't use

Video
Primary Display -> Auto (For HD4600)

But set it to Intel explicitly and I think the machine BIOS is on version A12
EDIT: And I used
Legacy Option ROMS - Enabled

Made the change to Intel HD for the display and enabled option ROMS now no more black screen after sleep. Any idea how or why this works ?

 

[nicksoph]

Not really - I'm just stumbling thru this, and, making guesses, somewhere there's a thread mentioning it, but can't remember if it said to set it to Auto or Intel. Just installed an Addlink S70 512GB PCI Express SSD - £66 from Amazon - booting clover from USB. The card itself I've had for a while, and I ordered something similar to one in shown earlier in this thread which will be used when it arrives.

 

[trs96]

Just installed an Addlink S70 512GB PCI Express SSD

2540 MB/s read speeds are some of the best that I've seen. Are you using the x16 slot or the x4 slot ?
Which NVMe adapter are you plugging it into ?

 

[nicksoph]

The NVMe adaptor shown in the picture - bought about a year ago because it had several connections - I will get more details when I next unplug it. This one is interesting because of the connections (will they all run together!?) but I think the cards themselves are all about the same speed based upon the type of connectors they have. In the blue graphics card slot atm, but may need to move it for the Quadro when that happens. The Addlink seems to be tuned to make long writes fast at the cost of speed for smaller ones but the HP ones recommended seem in short supply and more expensive.

 

[nicksoph]

Can you boot these machines with only a USB and the OS on PCI based drive and NOT get an error message at boot about no hard drive being present?

 

[trs96]

Can you boot these machines with only a USB and the OS on PCI based drive and NOT get an error message at boot about no hard drive being present?

I've never tried it as I always have a SATA SSD with Clover installed. Do you have to hit the F1 key every time you boot ?

 

[nicksoph]

Do you have to hit the F1 key every time you boot ?

Yeah - sometimes twice (with a reboot inbetween) for it to work. Couldn't see anything obvious in BIOS settings. I was hoping not to have to find space for a SSD in the box and to reduce power usage a bit too, but if torn between pressing F1 or adding an SSD, I'll go for pressing F1 after every power on.

 

[trs96]

I'll go for pressing F1 after every power on.

Not something I would do but I tend to sleep mine instead of shutting all the way down so I guess I could live with that. You can always remove the slim optical drive, use that sata connection for a 2.5" SSD. Can be any old 64GB or even smaller drive that is no longer useful as a boot drive. Even new 120GB drives sell for under 20 USD these days.

 

[nicksoph]

Even new 120GB drives sell for under 20 USD these days.

What I didn't realise was what the SATA port on this card does.
I thought it provided an extra SATA port via PCI and I could add a drive to it, when in fact it's a straight (except powered from the PCI slot) SATA drive if you connect a SATA data cable to it with an M.2 SATA drive installed.

Starting with a machine that was booting up from the USB and the card shown above with the Addlink ssd. -

Pulled a Western Digital M.2 SATA drive from my Lenovo 110s Laptop and added it to this card,
Connected card SATA port to Motherboard SATA port 0.
Booting Clover from USB and into macOS from the Addlink drive, the WD drive showed up straight away.
Formatted and installed Clover to WD drive,
Copied the Clover Folder from the USB onto this new drives EFI folder (making sure it Has NvmExpressDxe-64 in drivers64UEFI) overwriting all the old files.

Removed USB.
Reboots first time.
I can sleep now.

Edit - Swapped PCI slots and put a Nvdia K600 into the 16x slot and found the NVMe drive speeds took a hit - with read and write maxing out at about 1500MBs but staying near that speed nearly all the time. See 2nd Blackmagic screenshot.

Timings - I closed all programs and timed Restart to Login Screen minus Clover Timeout Delay;
On X16 - 32 seconds
On X4 - 40 seconds

Edit: rebuilt from scratch but without the Nvdia card and going to run it with the Intel integrated graphics and the ssd card in the x16 slot.

Cant find where the card was bought from but heres one on ebay uk that looks like it will do similar - Dual SSD