Success Dell Optiplex 790 SFF Hackintosh

Hello,

So I was finally able to get a somewhat vanilla install (will explain the 'somewhat') of macOS High Sierra on a Dell Optiplex 790 SFF PC 8 GB Ram, 250 SSD Drive (more below). This all happened on Friday last week, I was at first having issues with getting the build up and running since no matter what I tried, when booting the USB in UEFI mode, the PC would not detect it no matter what. Of course this machine does support Legacy boot but I wanted to use UEFI as it's better IMO.

So my steps to get to this point were as follows:

1. Many here will agree and for good reason, pre-made distros are frowned upon but I can definitely say that it really helps to use one of these to get started if like me is not so familiar with going the vanilla guide from the get go. with that said, I used a Niresh build of High Sierra and I definitely didn't login with any personal info or iCloud with that distro. This allowed me to use create a bootable install media using createinstallmedia and then writing clover to the USB (more below about this).
2. When trying to boot as mentioned before, it would never boot or be detected in UEFI mode. I searched here and googled a lot, I finally found a Dell Laptop guide here on reddit a couple days ago and I used some of the steps on that guide and the guide had me create a small 500 mb MBR formatted partition for clover (more below) on the USB along with the main OS partition. This somehow fixed the issue where the usb would not be detected in UEFI mode :D.
3. This is where the 'somewhat' vanilla comes in. No matter what I tried, I couldn't get the config.plist to boot up the installer, I tried verbose mode and a few bootflags related to the 790 PC but would still not boot. So as much as i hated this idea, I decided to use the same Niresh EFI folder that had worked for me. I deleted almost every useless file/drivers/kexts on the EFI folder and did minor edits using Clover Configurator, generated a new serial number, loaded the required kexts and gave it a try. To my surprise it booted up the USB and got to the macOS Installer screen and was able to do the usual formatting of SSD Drive and then wait for it to install then boot from USB once completed to finish setting up.
4. Once I was able to finish the setup, I saw that everything was working as far as I could tell at that time, but then I started noticing a few issues, not show stopping but definitely needed addressing. First issue was a sleep issue where by I would lose internet connection when the machine would resume from sleep and the fix was just to restart in my case no biggy, this turned out to be because I was using an Apple1000e kext. This file worked great as long as the PC didn't go to sleep. I was able to google and use reddit to find that switching to the IntelMausiEthernet v 2.5.0 kext has been reported to fix this issue. This definitely addressed my first issue and no longer had issues when resuming from sleep.
5. Tonight, I fixed my Second issue which was boot times, the machine literally would take about 5 to 7 minutes to boot so i booted in verbose mode and saw that I was getting a timeout error related to the AppleALC kext I was using. Using trusty google/reddit once more, I read that this issue can sometimes be fixed by using a voodooHDA kext and when I switched the kext to voodoo and restarted fingers crossed, the machine booted and just took about 12 seconds from clover screen to login. My only expression I had was just a big WOW :D.

I can definitely say this was a really exciting experience for me and which I had tried a few months ago and gave up at that time. Not this time though, I wanted to see this through and am so glad at the results. Updates installed with no issues and iMessages work along with with audio, ethernet, GPU (using whatevergreen and lilu kexts. I can't upgrade to Mojave or Catalina as the GPU am using is fairly outdated as you can see but it works great for my needs right now. In the near future am planning on building one from scratch; with the latest hardware of course as I now feel I can definitely take up to the challenge :D.

In closing, I want to thank this sub and all the volunteers who take time to write all the guides here, as it was really of great help. I can definitely say their were times that I just wanted to post questions but I saw and read the side bar, I knew I wasn't the first one doing this so must of the answers to my issues were probably documented already. I searched and read lots of posts and I can say for sure it all paid off and am happy and feel accomplished :)

PS. any feedback/suggestions/questions are welcomed :)

more info PC specs (used CPU-Z) below.

https://preview.redd.it/lapwsphzqky31.png?width=1440&format=png&auto=webp&s=e5da09c4ee789d30da9fac1223b2e6906c23a4ea

https://preview.redd.it/6rghd67obly31.png?width=790&format=png&auto=webp&s=ab970fd509602c0e07a5afda6e668430a0c8adc4

https://preview.redd.it/k1qqi57obly31.png?width=494&format=png&auto=webp&s=6fecd716e6a22fb6879e809084a0dfe11d6b47b5

https://preview.redd.it/a97ssd8obly31.png?width=636&format=png&auto=webp&s=a23e586ccc030ca2aa6dfedfba5390db9827948b