[GUIDE] Catalina, Big Sur, Monterey, Ventura, Sonoma, Sequoia, Tahoe on HP EliteDesk 800 G4/G5 Mini - The perfect MacMini8,1 Hackintosh

[deeveedee]

If you like experimenting with purely cosmetic tweaks to your hack, then this virtually useless bit of trivia is for you!   

 

If you examine your IORegistry with IORegistryExplorer or Hackintool, you'll notice that some devices in the PCI0 ACPI path are unnamed:

 

Devices pci8086,a36f and pci8086,a379 are unnamed.  The missing ACPI names of these devices doesn't affect the operation of our hacks, but this does provide a small ACPI learning opportunity.  Device pci8086,a36f is @14,2 (_ADR 0x00140002) and device pci8086,a379 is @12 (_ADR 0x00120000).

 

The attached SSDT-Other provides ACPI patches that name the devices and add their model string via method _DSM (Device-Specific Method).  Add SSDT-Other to folder OC/ACPI in the Open Core EFI and create a new "ACPI > Add" entry in your OC config.plist for SSDT-Other.  After rebooting, the unnamed devices now have ACPI names.  I chose arbitrary ACPI names that do not conflict with existing named devices.

 

 

Now your brain is cluttered with just a little more than you wanted to know.

 

 

EDIT: Maybe a little more useful... the update to macOS Tahoe 26.5 Beta (25F5042g) proceeded without issues.

 

About This Hack

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SSDT-Other.aml.zip config.plist.zip

Edited March 31 by deeveedee

[MacKonsti]

Hi @deeveedee you hurt my feelings now about "virtually useless cosmetic hack" that I have been using for a long time, but I guess you are right, LOL 😜

The idea is you could indeed use arbitrary 4-letter names based on the official device name (I had extracted them via lspci when it worked in the old days, but Hackintool is also good) see example of (part of) my SSDT for visualisation of others, here in the thread.

        Device (MCHC)  // Intel Corporation Coffee Lake Host Bridge/DRAM Registers [8086:3ed0]
        {
            Name (_ADR, 0x00000000)
        }

        Device (PGMM)  // Intel Corporation Core Processor Gaussian Mixture Model [8086:1911]
        {
            Name (_ADR, 0x00080000)
        }

        Device (THRM)  // Intel Corporation Coffee Lake Thermal Subsystem [8086:9df9]
        {
            Name (_ADR, 0x00120000)
        }

        Device (SRAM)  // Intel Corporation Coffee Lake Shared Memory Controller [8086:9def]
        {
            Name (_ADR, 0x00140002)
        }

Except MCHC that became a must in recent macOS versions, the others indeed were based on the names of the device...

Anyways, great to see you active here, even if Tahoe is not (yet) my cup of tea--I guess as time goes on, it will grow in me 😅 (still on Sonoma, super stable)

Edited April 1 by MacKonsti

[deeveedee]

8 hours ago, MacKonsti said:

Hi @deeveedee you hurt my feelings now about "virtually useless cosmetic hack" that I have been using for a long time, but I guess you are right, LOL 😜

The idea is you could indeed use arbitrary 4-letter names based on the official device name (I had extracted them via lspci when it worked in the old days, but Hackintool is also good) see example of (part of) my SSDT for visualisation of others, here in the thread.

 

I should have started my last post with "This one is for MacKonsti..." 😆

 

Note that there are also 2-letter (e.g., AC) and 3-letter (e.g., XHC) ACPI names that I see in my hack's ACPI.

Edited April 1 by deeveedee

[deeveedee]

I just performed a clean installation of macOS Tahoe 26.4 (25E246) on an HP EliteDesk 800 G4 Mini 65W with i5-8600 CPU and no dGPU (using UHD630 iGPU).  Performance is surprisingly good.  For those looking for a very inexpensive and capable hack to use Apple's final macOS release for Intel, this is a great mini desktop choice.  My latest hack's system specs are as follows:

• HP EliteDesk 800 G4 Mini 65W
• CPU: Intel i5-8600
• Graphics: Intel UHD630
• Memory: 32GB DDR4 (2 x 16GB)
• NVME m.2 SSD: WD 256GB
• SATA SSD: ADATA SU800 256GB

[deeveedee]

Starting with VoodooHDA.kext 3.1.2, VoodooHDA's Info.plist must be customized for proper operation of the master volume slider on this HP EliteDesk 800 G4/G5 Mini.  Before installing VoodooHDA.kext 3.1.2+ in /Library/Extensions, make the following change in Info.plist:

 

 

 

Without this configuration change, the master Volume slider does not work properly.

 

The VoodooHDA Info.plist is located in VoodooHDA.kext/Contents.

Edited April 8 by deeveedee

[hiphopboy]

anyone have the problem with grey screen after login on 26.5 beta ? 

[deeveedee]

EDIT: This "startup sequence" difference that I observed was because I enabled FileVault by mistake and not because I performed a clean re-install of macOS Tahoe 26.4.1.  Sorry for the confusion.

 

===================================================================

 

It appears to me that the startup sequence of macOS Tahoe changed in a way that was not properly updated with incremental macOS updates.  If you have been upgrading macOS Tahoe with incremental updates since the early days of Tahoe and if you have time to test, create a new APFS volume and perform a clean install macOS Tahoe 26.4.1.

 

 

Edited April 15 by deeveedee

[deeveedee]

On the "new" media hackintosh that I built with an HP EliteDesk 800 G4 Mini, I'm using the OC 1.0.7 EFI that I attached to Post #1.  The hack is driving two VGA displays.  One of the displays is connected via DP->VGA adapter (on con0) and the other is connected directly to a VGA port in the Flex IO port (on con2).  The old VGA displays are working perfectly.  My configuration is as follows:

• HP EliteDesk 800 G4 Mini / i5-8600 / UHD630 iGPU / 32GB (2 x 16GB) RAM
• VGA Flex IO port
• macOS Tahoe 26.4.1
• 2 x Dell VGA Displays (1 display connected via DP->VGA adapter, 1 display connected via VGA Flex IO port)
• con0: Type 0800 (HDMI) for the DP->VGA adapter
• con1: No connection
• con2: Type 0400 (DP) for the VGA Flex IO port

Edited April 16 by deeveedee

[deeveedee]

When I post my next updated Open Core EFI for this hack, it will include a minor refactoring of the RTC patch.  Instead of replacing Device RTC with a new Device RTC0, I'm changing only the value of RTC._CRS (retaining the original Device RTC).  This revision does not change the behavior / functionality of the RTC patch and is more cosmetic.

 

If you want to implement this change before I post my next EFI (not sure when that will be), do the following:

• Replace EFI/OC/ACPI/SSDT-AWAC-HPET-RTC.aml in your EFI with the version from the attached archive
• Add ACPI > Patch > RTC._CRS -> XCRS from the attached config.plist to your Open Core config.plist (copy the patch from the attached config.plist and paste it into your config.plist)

 

The ACPI patch renames RTC._CRS -> RTC.XCRS in Table DSDT.  The revised SSDT-AWAC-HPET-RTC.aml generates a new RTC._CRS.

 

To test your revised EFI, copy the EFI to a bootable USB stick and test-boot with the USB stick before changing the EFI on your main boot drive.

Archive.zip

[deeveedee]

macOS Tahoe 26.5 is now my "production" OS on this hack using the EFI attached to Post #1 with the ACPI mod in my previous post.  All working perfectly. Tahoe runs very well on this hack, even without a dGPU.

 

 

To optimize Tahoe performance on this hack, I recommend the following:

• System Settings > Accessibility > Display > Reduce Transparency: Enabled
• System Settings > Accessibility > Motion > Reduce Motion: Enabled
• Memory: Minimum 16GB RAM with two equal-sized SODIMMS (e.g., 2 x 8GB)

 

 

EDIT: For audio in macOS Tahoe, I am using VoodooHDA.kext 3.3.4 pre-release as noted here. SIP csr-active-config = <03000000> to install VoodooHDA.kext in /Library/Extensions and then csr-active-config = <01000000> for normal operation of VoodooHDA.kext.  Read more here.

 

Edited May 24 by deeveedee
fixed typo

[deeveedee]

Very fast and easy upgrade to Tahoe 26.6 Beta 1 in my test volume.  For audio, I am now using VoodooHDA.kext 4.0 from MaLd0n here with VoodooHDAEnableVolumeChangeFix=True for working Volume slider.

 

[deeveedee]

Just making an observation about the RTC Fix that I'm using for this hack (SSDT-AWAC-HPET-RTC.aml) which changes RTC resource length from 8 to 2.  When RTC resource length = 2 (required by HP EliteDesk 800 G4 Mini), IORegistry looks like this:

 

When RTC resource length is unchanged at 8 (HP EliteDesk 800 G5 Mini does not need the RTC Fix), IORegistry looks like this:

 

 

Note that the RTC Fix that I'm using is copied from CLOVER's RTC Fix.  The RTC Fix (changing RTC resource length from 8 to 2) avoids access to problematic CMOS offsets on motherboards where CMOS compatibility is an issue.  Again, this fix is not required for HP EliteDesk 800 G5 Minis.  The fix is included in my EFI, since the EFI is for both G4 and G5 Minis.

[deeveedee]

While I continue to test the latest Beta macOS (26.6 at the time of this post), Tahoe 26.5.1 is currently my production macOS on this hack.  I am incredibly pleased with how well Tahoe is running on this platform.  Most of my Mac desktop work is performed on HP EliteDesk 800 G4 Minis with i5-8600 CPU / UHD 630 iGPU and no dGPU.  Performance for my everyday use is fantastic.

 

Feeling very lucky to have this tiny macOS platform that has provided years of reliable, trouble-free use.  

 

HP, Apple and the Hackintosh Community make a great team!

Edited June 6 by deeveedee

[deeveedee]

At some point during the macOS Tahoe release schedule, Apple appears to have changed the way it screens Macs for enrollment in Tahoe Beta updates.  If you don't see macOS Tahoe Beta updates as an available option in "System Settings > General > Software Update," try this fix.

[deeveedee]

I was pleasantly surprised to find that while the 65W EliteDesk 800 G5 Mini is intended for 9th Gen Intel CPUs, it also supports the 8th Generation i5-8600 CPU.  I had a barebones G5 mini and an extra i5-8600 that needed a home.  Together they make a perfect, low-cost hack for Tahoe.

 

GeekBench 6 CPU

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About This Hack

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Edited Tuesday at 05:37 PM by deeveedee

[ird]

On 6/16/2026 at 9:31 AM, deeveedee said:

I was pleasantly surprised to find that while the 65W EliteDesk 800 G5 Mini is intended for 9th Gen Intel CPUs, it also supports the 8th Generation i5-8600 CPU.  I had a barebones G5 mini and an extra i5-8600 that needed a home.  Together they make a perfect, low-cost hack for Tahoe.

 

GeekBench 6 CPU

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Thanks for sharing this @deeveedee. Is the G5 "unlocked" for boost power like G4 if an 8th gen CPU is dropped into it? I remember you mentioned with i5-9600 you observed there were limitations on how high the CPU could boost even with a 250W power brick.

[deeveedee]

@ird good question.  I will need to run a few performance comparisons of G4 and G5 to determine whether they are treating PL1/PL2 the same for 8th Gen CPUs.