I ordered a refurb Mac Studio with AppleCare+ this morning. That likely spells the end for my last Dell i7 9020 (USFF) Hack. I put 4 of those old Dells in use the last couple of years thanks to tsr96's easy to follow guides. They're still fine for most everything but they're all running Catalina. 3 of the 4 have been shelved.
I bought a base M1 Mini in 2020 and loved it. But sold it to my brother in 2021 because I was on the road, and got a base M1 Air. Sold him the Air a couple of weeks ago because I'm working at home now. Tried getting by with Hacks and a 2014 Mini but I was spoiled by the M1s. Gave in and ordered the Studio when it came back in refurb stock.
Thanks to everyone here for the support and great info. I'll keep checking in to see if any of my gaming PCs might serve me well as Hacks in the future.
Those tiny little i7 Dell 9020s are nifty little machines. Literally picked one up out of recycling at my new job. As was mentioned earlier in this thread, my main Hackintosh rig (i7 3770K, GA-Z77X-UP5 TH, 32GB, GTX 980ti) was killed by a power surge caused by the power transformer in front of my apartment collapsing into the Earth. I'm currently using an Optiplex 9020 USFF to resurrect my old build. Thankfully, it looks like the SSD lived. In addition to finally having my Mac again, I'm creating new install media for making new Hackintoshes with. So far, I have a Mojave installer made.
Only odd issue I ran into, is the 9020 refused to boot on a 2048x1536 monitor... 1920x1080 was fine though... Guess the iGPU just doesn't support that resolution, or something... It only took me 3 hours, giving up, and trying the machine at work... taking it home, having it
not work, and then realizing the difference, to finally solve that one... Once I solved that though, I can say I've been nothing buy overjoyed to have such a convenient little box to host my Mac on!
Really undecided how I wanna proceed in the long run... M1/M2 macs are promising, but the limited monitor support is a serious issue for me. I run a lot of old apps too, so Catalina and beyond are a sore spot too... I kinda wish someone would develop an app that can run 32-bit Mac apps on Catalina+ versions of Mac OS...