I've read up a bit over the past few days. Please help me answer a few questions after my research.

I originally posted what's below to tonymacx86, but I have a few more targeted questions and want to ask here as this subreddit seems to be more responsive than that forum.

1. I have a $200 budget on a Hackintosh and prefer Dell. What would be better, an OptiPlex 9010 with i7-3770/16 GB RAM or a $200 used Precision with a Xeon (don't know which) and 16 GB RAM? My only use case is Xcode and iOS development. That is all I would remote into the Hack for. (I assume I can't build or buy anything current for $200.)

2. Would any specific components (processor, graphics card, etc.) in either prebuilt become unsupported sooner than another? On tonymacx86, I was told that I could update SMBIOS to keep things working for some period of time, but I don't know when things could potentially become unsupported. This leads me into...

3. Which form factor is better? I'd prefer smaller, but apparently graphics cards can or should be updated even for Xcode/development because HD 4000 in the i7 can't even keep up with 1080p? (This doesn't make sense to me, but okay...) And even at that, at some point HD 4000 may become unsupported in macOS, which means that I'd need a graphics card. Only the mid-towers can fit regular graphics cards; the desktop (half-size) one fits half-height graphics cards, and the small form factor OptiPlex can't use any.

Thanks in advance for the help!

Original post follows:

Hi all,

Please first note that I am a complete noob to this. I have poked around the forums a little bit, but if there are any threads on here or articles online that answer my questions, please link them to me, and I will read them.

With that being said, I am a first-time Mac/Hackintosh user looking to get into iOS development. I have a VM set up, but it doesn't seem to be quite right and is clunky. I also do not want to spend $250 on the cheapest used Mac Mini (2012) that supports Mojave when it might not be compatible with the next version of macOS, at which point Xcode won't update and I'd be SOL. So with that in mind, the next best thing seems to be a Hackintosh, that I could reasonably pull off for $150 or so.

A few questions: 1. Are there any guarantees (probably too strong of a word, but rather extrapolations) that a Hackintosh would be able to receive a few more years of macOS updates compared to a 2012 Mac Mini? Which would receive longer updates, a decent cheap Hackintosh or a 2012 Mini? 2. Sticking with that budget, it seems almost impossible to build anything (with old or new parts) that would outclass a decent older i5/i7 prebuilt. Is my assumption here correct? 16 GB of DDR3 (good for longevity in my opinion) is $75 used, half of my presumed used prebuilt price. 3. Assuming I go with a prebuilt, I'm partial to Dell's business lines. Is there anything specific I should shoot for? There's a guide for the OptiPlex 7010 and 9010, but are there any other worthy and compatible models? Are any form factors better in this lineup? (I'm ideally thinking that smaller is better, but it's really not an issue to tuck something bigger out of the way if performance, etc. is better.) 4. How would any of these suggestions compare to a 2012 Mac Mini?

Thanks in advance for any help you can give me as a complete noob!