slave-zeo Posted December 16, 2017 Share Posted December 16, 2017 Overall status: WORKING WELL Hello again, True Believers! On today's episode of Spider-man and His Amazing Friends we'll be looking at the Dell XPS 8930 tower system. Lets start off by looking at a detailed list of the 8930's hardware, Intel® Core i7-8700 CPU @ 3.20GHz, 3192 Mhz, 6 Core(s), 12 Logical Processor(s), Coffee Lake 32GB DDR4 2666MHz RAM (2x16GB sticks @ 2133MHz, aftermarket) NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 Ti, Graphics card #1 (aftermarket) Intel® UHD Graphics 630, Graphics card #2 (cannot disable in UEFI BIOS) Realtek Audio (not sure what chip yet) KXG50ZNV512G NVMe TOSHIBA 512GB WDC WD30EFRX-68EUZN0 (3TB hard drive, aftermarket) PLDS DVD+-RW DU-8A5LH, Optical drive Killer E2400 Gigabit Ethernet Controller Qualcomm QCA9377 802.11ac Wireless Adapter ASMedia USB 3.1 eXtensible Host Controlle Intel® USB 3.0 eXtensible Host Controller The UEFI BIOS has tons of options that need to be disabled. This is the main UEFI BIOS screen. Nothing to change here, except maybe the date. The Advanced tab. Make sure to switch RAID to AHCI or your disk will not show up. Everything else should be set as in the picture. Next up is the Security tab. Make the changes to match the picture. I'm not sure if this is needed but I went into the Secure Boot option and selected "Delete All Secure Boot Variables", see picture below. Secure boot options. As stated above I deleted the variables. Finally the Boot tab. Just set as in the picture. Never mind the "Windows Boot Manager". I ended up deleting the entry via the "File Browser Del Boot Option" and added Clover via the "File Browser Add Boot Option". GREAT SCOTT! This had to be the easiest install of a Hackintosh ever. Basically I made an install USB stick and put FakeSMC.kext and AtherosE2200Ethernet.kext in the EFI/CLOVER/kexts/other folder. No other kexts were needed. I booted off the USB stick, installed macOS and I was done with the OS portion. After installation I rebooted the computer and then booted from the USB stick. I chose the freshly installed drive and it booted to the setup portion of the installation. After setup it was onward to the desktop. I'll not bore you with the specifics of fully setting up a bootable macOS install, but after all was said and done it was smooth sailing. Post install was basically installing VooDooHDA and the nVidia web drivers. Ethernet was taken care of via the AtherosE2200Ethernet kext. USB and Bluetooth worked without any extra effort. As far as I can tell the only thing NOT WORKING is the WiFi. I Googled a bit but nothing turned up for the Qualcomm QCA9377. I keep on the look out for a kext though. The CPU shows up as unknown, but everything else seems to be in order. The CPU's speedstep works as intended. I monitored it via the Intel® Power Gadget for a good bit and it was scaling fine. The NVMExpress ssd looks to be detected and set up properly. I really didn't expect it to be. A very pleasant surprise. Geekbench 4 scores. Not sure if it's good or bad. Take with a grain of salt. Here are the Cinebench results. Again, I'm not sure if these are good or bad. This test seems a bit dated considering the comparative results of the other hardware. People seem to still use it, though, so here it is. This is supposed to mean something about disk speed. I'm still not sure if it's good or not. Enjoy, if you're into this sort of thing. Here is my EFI folder for the Dell XPS 8930, Google Drive Link Here are the Post Installation tools I used for this install, Google Drive Link I have more information to share. I'll get back to this later on. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PPCnostalgic Posted December 16, 2017 Share Posted December 16, 2017 When I saw your GB4 scoring and your advice "Take with a grain of salt" I just gulped and said uh!?!?..... what a powerful machine bro, great job! 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sasan Posted December 26, 2017 Share Posted December 26, 2017 Hey, Thanks for your very informative post on installing OS X on Dell 8390. Did you find any solution for the Wifi? Thanks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
slave-zeo Posted December 30, 2017 Author Share Posted December 30, 2017 Hey, Thanks for your very informative post on installing OS X on Dell 8390. Did you find any solution for the Wifi? Thanks. Nope, the wifi is and will probably remain totally unsupported. The bluetooth is good though. On an unrelated note, I never did figure out what Realtek audio chip is in this desktop. The physical chip on the motherboard is so tiny I can't read any text on it. I booted into Linux and it was just referred to as Realtek HD Audio via lspci. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
slave-zeo Posted January 27, 2018 Author Share Posted January 27, 2018 I ran into one problem which I just fixed last night after a few weeks of giving me fits. My Qualcomm ethernet chip would lose connection for a fraction of a second and then reconnect right back. This caused all kinds of lag problems for online gaming (World of Warcraft mainly). The way I fixed it was to go into the System Preferences > Network > select Ethernet from the lefthand side > click Advanced > and finally under the Hardware tab change Configuration to Manually and then Duplex to full-duplex, flow-control. I really think it was the energy-efficient-ethernet part under Duplex causing the problem. Regardless, no problems with disconnections now! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Louviendevias Posted February 2, 2018 Share Posted February 2, 2018 I'm having a problem that when i shutdown, it restarts back on. Any thoughts? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
slave-zeo Posted February 7, 2018 Author Share Posted February 7, 2018 I haven't encountered a restarting after shutdown problem. Are you using the EFI folder in the original post? Another thing I ran into was when upgrading to macOS 10.13.3 the updated nVidia drivers do not work so well. There is tons of lag and screen drawing choppiness. I had to downgrade to the 10.13.2 drivers to get smooth graphics back. This isn't a XPS 8930 problem, but instead a nVidia problem. Still, many 8930 systems were shipped with nVidia graphics so it's something to look out for. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
slave-zeo Posted February 11, 2018 Author Share Posted February 11, 2018 I'm diligently working toward getting the Intel UHD 630 graphics working. I've made progress but ultimately still failing. The GPU is showing up in System Information properly (See image below). But will not display anything on the attached monitor. The monitor is initialized at boot time as it powers on from it's sleep state, but no useable output. The Apple VT H264 encoder also seems to be available with both hardware and software options. Below is showing the OBS output options. I've tried all manner of kext's and device id's and pretty much anything I could find to make it work. I'm still looking and testing. I'll update as I experiment. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Louviendevias Posted February 15, 2018 Share Posted February 15, 2018 I'm diligently working toward getting the Intel UHD 630 graphics working. I've made progress but ultimately still failing. The GPU is showing up in System Information properly (See image below). But will not display anything on the attached monitor. The monitor is initialized at boot time as it powers on from it's sleep state, but no useable output. Screen Shot 2018-02-11 at 6.37.49 AM.png The Apple VT H264 encoder also seems to be available with both hardware and software options. Below is showing the OBS output options. Screen Shot 2018-02-11 at 6.38.42 AM.png I've tried all manner of kext's and device id's and pretty much anything I could find to make it work. I'm still looking and testing. I'll update as I experiment. I fixed my graphics problem following this guide. See post #470. Hope it fixes the lag for you. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fry-man22 Posted March 1, 2018 Share Posted March 1, 2018 Thanks for the post. This has been helpful as a starting point for me. I have a similar setup to yours, but I have the 8700K so I think I may have a different chipset than you. I currently have NO fan speed even with the Fakexxxx.kext installed. I can see the temps, but I can't see or control the fan speed for the CPU or the case fans. I think it's always running at minimum. I literally never hear the fan (like in a bad way). Can you confirm that you can see the fan speed in HWMonitor.app? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
westfw Posted March 2, 2018 Share Posted March 2, 2018 I got mine working using the hints and EFI folder here, plus a bunch of googling.My 8930 (from costco!) didn't come with an SSD, so I added a WD 512GB drive first.. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HomerJ Posted April 12, 2018 Share Posted April 12, 2018 Was it really that easy? I have an Alienware Aurora R7 (which I believe uses the same motherboard) and can't even get the installer to boot. I used the latest clover, and added FakeSMC. When I boot (in EFI mode) I get the clover menu, but as soon as I select "Boot from Installer", the PC just dies. Mouse and keyboard lights go off, and nothing else happens. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gvr4wd Posted May 10, 2018 Share Posted May 10, 2018 Ahhh, noob here. Just bought a XPS 8930 from Costco and installed successfully with a existing SSD lying around. Thanks for the hints! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
namio Posted September 26, 2018 Share Posted September 26, 2018 do you think this will work with mojave? will anything have to be done differently? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jharsem Posted September 28, 2018 Share Posted September 28, 2018 (edited) On 9/26/2018 at 4:34 PM, namio said: do you think this will work with mojave? will anything have to be done differently? Well my upgrade went 'not so smoothly' - mainly due to the fact my RX 480 is playing up (doesn't display on the displayport .. port) .. which I have a vague recollection of seeing as an issue before but the Killer ethernet usually supported by the Atheros22000 kext also isn't kicking in so that needs to be sorted as well.. audio is currently out but that seems to be a VoodoHDA issue which I can sort at a later stage. All this for Dark Mode .. =) Ninja Edit: Managed to get Video Card working (Dayman Framebuffer, Inject Ati, RadeonDeInit and 5 ports) Ninja Edit 2: Managed to get it all going apart from the sound card - I kept getting ACPICPU timeouts but moving the AppleACPIPlatform.kext from mojave's /Systems/Library/Extentions folder into clover's "other" kext folder let me get past that .. it also meant the Atheros driver came back to life so now onto audio. Ninja Edit 3: It's all working fine! Turns out I had to remove any audio kexts and leave the system to do it's thing (!). The compatibility of this machine is just amazing! Edited October 14, 2018 by jharsem Updated Results (Edit 3) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
slave-zeo Posted January 25, 2019 Author Share Posted January 25, 2019 (edited) It's been a while since I've visited this thread. My wife is using the 8930 as her main computer. It's currently running Mojave 10.14.2 but I'm going to upgrade today and see how it goes. I'll report new geekbench benchmarks when/if it finishes upgrading. Just a note, the Radeon RX 480 works fine on this setup with only lilu and whatevergreen installed in the kexts/10.14 directory on my EFI partition. There was only one negative thing I did note and sorry I forgot this. My daughter was using the 8930 as a graphics workstation. The older versions of Final Cut and Motion were giving corrupted files when rendering. This is with all the installable Pro App updates available. I updated Final Cut and Motion to their latest versions and they wouldn't start afterwords. Just a couple of icon bounces and an unexpectedly quit error. I tried this with a fresh install of Mojave 10.14.2 and it was the same thing. I first thought it was the Radeon RX 480 card but I tried a Radeon RX 580 with the same result. If anyone has the Pro Apps running on this machine PLEASE post here and let me know your configuration, such as kexts and clover options which differ from mine in the original post. It would be a great help to figuring this out. Otherwise, this is the most compatible Hackintosh I've ever had the pleasure of working with. Hardware wise everything is working EXCEPT the wifi, which i suspect never will. I might look into a replacement card even though I don't use the wifi. Edited January 25, 2019 by slave-zeo Double posted Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
slave-zeo Posted January 5, 2020 Author Share Posted January 5, 2020 With 10.15.2 I started getting random reboots. I did some googling and came up with this forums post containing information about it. https://hackintosher.com/forums/thread/solved-random-restarts-dell-xps-8930-catalina.3900/ I hope this helps anyone having trouble with the same. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Kotches Posted March 21, 2020 Share Posted March 21, 2020 (edited) Thanks for this post/discussion. I'm going to dive into the Hackintosh world. Picking up a Dell 8930 today at Microcenter :-) CPU: i7-9700k GFX: Radeon RX580 w/ 8GB (way overkill but getting for a good price) RAM: 32GB MAC OS: 1TB Crucial NVME Windows (for VM): 1TB SSD (to be determined, cheapest) Wish me luck Edited March 21, 2020 by John Kotches Formatting. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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