14.5 Sonoma on £88 ($110 US) broken eBay Intel Nuc 8 after repair.

Bought a faulty tall-boi Nuc 8 i5 from eBay which was being sold for parts/not working. Already had spare parts from an old Nuc build I'd transferred into an Akasa Turing for a friend and added 32GB of DDR4 and a 1TB NVME drive left over from an old laptop I no longer own.

About this hack

Specs:

• CPU: Intel Core i5-8259U
• GPU: Intel Iris Plus 655
• RAM: 32GB DDR4 2400 MHz
• Motherboard: NUC8I5BEH
• Display: BENQ EX2780Q 27-inch QHD display over USBC
• Audio Codec: Realtek High Definition Audio
• Networking: Wireless AC 9560/Bluetooth 5.1

What works:

• iMessage
• Software update
• Apple TV
• Wifi

Not tested yet.

• Thunderbolt 3 port
• FaceTime
• Sleep/Wake
• Bluetooth (although my iPhone is acting as a login key just fine if that uses Bluetooth)

Not fully tested as I've only set things up today but going well so far. I have a Lenovo Legion Booststation plus a Vegs 56 and a 5500XT I intend to test at the weekend but can't imagine I'd use either on a permanent basis as the tiny Nuc has just the right footprint for under my monitor and my gaming rig is my main powerhouse.

Repair wise, I replaced the fan, RAM, SSD and rebuilt it into the left over Nuc8i5 slim case from the project mentioned above.

Very happy with the eBay bargain and the ability to fix it up, get MacOS on there and tinker with it.

The eBay listing:

Got to stop buying broken things on eBay...

Thanks to:

• eBay
• Apple
• Opencore Install Guide
• About this Hack
• Opencore
• GibMacos
• r/hackintosh

For making this all possible. Absolute wealth of knowledge out there.