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You're welcome! You probably already know if you need more RAM, without even knowing it. Even if your system has room for it, does the program or task at hand actually benefit from the additional and/or faster RAM? So you are in the right mindset to be wondering does it make a difference to Big Box. My understanding is likely not and I say that because of the earlier comment, you probably already know if you need more. Do you ever get pop up warnings stating your system is "out of memory" or "memory is low" etc type of errors? If you do, yea you need more RAM. If not, the amount of RAM is likely sufficient. So any improvement would need to be made from faster RAM. But I'll admit, I'm not sure, but learning towards "no" that faster RAM would make a noticeable improvement for Big Box. It's more likely you would already be disappointed with the performance of your system if the amount or speed of the currently installed RAM was insufficient. If you're happy currently, I'd say leave it as is, since you being able to ENJOY using your PC is really what counts in the long run! My thought process here is the longer you stretch out the dollar you spent on your current system, you will then have more funds saved up to spend on the newer system when it comes time you really need an upgrade bc the current one is no longer capable of what you need it to do. I've learned the hard way specifically with RAM. My last audio workstation, still have it setup as my backup, is a 2009 Mac Pro and I put 48GB in there to find out the Pro Tools version I was running at that point doesn't even utilize more than 8GB, which is what I had in there originally 🤦‍♂️. I had to upgrade the Pro Tools version (aka more $ spent) which can utilize all the RAM installed. So yea I can say it's easy to spend on something that sounds good on paper, but there is some asterisk making it more or less like "wtf I just spent how much $ to get no improvement!". Just sharing to say, learn from my mistakes 🤣

My experience suggests you will not notice any real world improvements in this regard when comparing a NVMe SSD to a SATA SSD. There have been a handful of tech youtubers who did some "real world" tests with game loading times for an experiment. Telling people something like "load up this game on PC A (running SATA III), and then load it up on PC B (running NVMe), etc".....the majority of them couldn't tell a difference because statistically, load times are only going to be fractionally better if at all. (my game loaded in 12.5 secs instead of 13 secs....woo hoo lol) The difference between going from a HDD to a SSD, whether SATA or M2, will be a huge noticeable improvement. It will make your system feel like a new one I bet! My recommendation would be if the purchase is made to be used for Big Box and/or game storage, then I would go with a 2.5" SATA SSD over a M2 NVMe drive. Of course, I'm assuming that NVMe is going to be more expensive than SATA though. If they are the same or close enough price per GB then I sure wouldn't blame anyone for going with NVMe. It seems like NVMe drives get utilized to their utmost potential when they are used for working with large creative work flows, such as video editing where you really need fast speeds for a good experience. For storing and loading games, there isn't a real world benefit as of right now. Check out your motherboard's manual if you're curious if you got a spare M2 slot or need to know how it operates. Some M2 slots when populated will disable SATA ports or PCIe lanes. Warning you about that because you could find yourself installing a new M2 drive and then wonder why one of your other SATA disks that you didn't even touch all of a sudden is no longer being detected. I mentioned the how it operates part because some work different depending on what type of M2 drive is installed. There is M2 SATA and M2 NVMe. M2 SATA is going to be basically a 2.5" SATA SSD but in the M2 form factor so speeds and capability is the same as traditional 2.5" SATA SSD at around the 560MBps you mentioned. But this will surely take up existing SATA ports, as in, it will disable 1 or more normal SATA ports when populated. M2 NVMe is the type with the 3.5 GBps+ speeds and these may take up PCIe lanes, and/or disable SATA ports. If you don't know about this page, check this out. It an excellent source to use to compare various PC components. You can narrow your search down using the filters on the left hand side and sort with the columns on the right. https://ssd.userbenchmark.com/

If you already have an ini file created from another MAME install and your goal is to reproduce all those same settings, you could copy/paste that ini file to the newer MAME install. Same goes for other customized stuff like crtl remaps and button remaps. Rather than enter all that stuff manually again, save yourself some time and copy those files/folders to the newer MAME install.

LB will launch the selected game through the default emulator assigned to that platform or to that particular game if setup as such. Right now I would believe you set it up so Retroarch is your default emulator for Arcade platform. Assuming you have already added MAME as an emulator in your emulator list, simply make MAME the default emulator for the Arcade platform by ticking the checkbox in the Edit Emulator window. I'm not sure about the high score stuff because I haven't tried out this feature yet.

that's a known issue with the fan-made patch. The in-game options toggle button (F1) worked with the initial build of the game, but not after it got an update. Seems like the fan who made the patch never bothered or was capable of improving their patch to keep it working as intended. You can still edit the patch file config by opening it manually in a text editor and changing the parameters accordingly. I only use my WiiMotes for Wii games after getting a pair of Arcade Guns (aimtrack light guns) so I haven't used WiiMotes in this game. But you're just using them as a mouse, which is the same way an aimtrack gun works here too. I know there are videos of people using two light guns with this game....but I never once got two light guns working. The only way I got 2 players working is the 2nd player is controlled via a controller and that is not conducive to translating to a light gun, which also sounds like you have tried and also thought sucked, because it does. Getting 2 players working on light guns, It's not an issue with WiiMotes or light guns in general, it's a problem with how the game was coded. Raw input would be required to have two instances of a mouse. This way the 2nd player could also work the same way as the 1st player. Frankly the devs dropped the ball big time on this game by not implementing light gun support.

Hi Jason, I'm curious what your plans are with the buttons in the upper right hand corner of the control panel? Everyone has the obligatory start/coin buttons of course, but there is more than that here so I'm wondering what other functions you're using them for?

Sorry man I think I shared about everything I can on this topic in my previous posts. I more or less set this up and haven't touched it since so I don't really have much else for an idea if moving the marquee screen to all 4 sides of the main screen results in problems. To understand where you are in your troubleshooting though, are you saying it does work on emulators that match your main monitor resolution? but not if the emulator outputs at a lower resolution? if so maybe check if the ones that work are using exclusive fullscreen or windowed fullscreen to see if there is any correlation between fullscreen mode used

hey xevious, either will get the job done so you cannot go wrong really. In a nut shell, if you need all that capacity then the Exos drive will fit that job nicely. If you can get by with a smaller capacity disk, then check out either Seagate Firecuda series or WD Black series which a marketed more for the use case you have here. You would notice fastest performance with Firecuda because it's a HDD/SSD hybrid disk but I suspect WD Black disk would offer basically no worth while difference to the Exos disk. Quick googling makes me think they do not make Firecuda and Black series at such capacities though. So if you need a disk at 18TB capacity, you may very well be stuck getting a disk from one of their series that is designed/marketed for Enterprise/datacenter/NAS type of applications rather than the typical media consumer at home.

hey there @xevious1974! It's familiar enough to understand but not quite what I expected from HWInfo64. The way I'm interpreting it is these are the SMART parameters and are telling you the min and max values so you know if you have any issues going on. Only the ones with "(Data = ABCXYZ)" at the end appear to have actual values associated with them. If they are blank I'm guessing that would mean nothing pertinent was recorded for that parameter. I'm no expert here but nothing jumps out as a red flag as a major problem, but this is something that looks funny. Spin Up Time: 82/1, Worst: 82 (Data = 25035110,7) That really large value for spin up time seems out of place and this could impact how quick things feel running off a HDD. So I'm not saying you must start backing up all your data thinking the disk will fail, but if I were you I would monitor this value each time you use this disk for the foreseeable future to get a better idea if the number is getting worse and get a better picture if the disk is beginning to degrade. A disk that is performing worse doesn't always mean it will fail, but they can certainly be directly linked. So just keep a close eye on this before you trust this disk for storing more data To give a somewhat more tech orientated explanation, that is the milliseconds it takes for the disk to reach the rated RPMs like 7200 RPM is a common speed for example. 82ms is acceptable....but idk wtf this huge 2503511,7 value is. If that is honestly how long it takes your disk to spin up, it could explain why it feels slow sometimes. Basically anytime the disk needs to do anything and it's not at full speed (it could be at idle for example) it's taking 25 seconds to do what it normally did in just a handful of milliseconds. You could potentially get around such a problem by turning off any power saving features for the disk, so this way it wouldn't go into an idle/sleep state when not in use. But that might wear the disk out even faster if it is in fact getting worn out. These are just guesstimates since I haven't had any first hand experience with this particular value giving me a concern so take the advice with a grain of salt There should be some additional stuff that comes up by default in HWInfo64. For example here is one of my drives that is in good shape. I figured you might have a "Drive Warning" error which is an easy way to figure out if SMART sees anything funny going on. You would want to see "No" in these fields indicating no errors, failures or warnings were detected Now here is a disk that is still in "good" shape, but has a few pending sectors (sectors that were reallocated due to errors more or less) and has a Drive Warning error as a result, rightfully so. This value, if a high number or keeps growing is a legit reason to be concerned and start backing up your files immediately Though to put it into perspective, 353 sectors....there are 512 bytes per sector, that's 180,224 bytes or basically 180KB......not exactly a lot of space lol so even though sometimes errors occur they might not be so bad as initially thought. This is a 4TB spinner, I'm not too concerned about the 180KB because it hasn't grown in quite a while. Wanted to share that example to help reiterate the point that an error or disk that isn't performing as good as it did on day 1 doesn't mean it will fail, but it at least means you should watch it closer. Should things trend in the direction of getting worse, it's going to continue like that and at that point you would now know it's time to back up the data and replace the drive or at least use it in a way where you don't mind if the data was lost

thanks man. looking forward to seeing the rest of this beast of a cab built! it's great to be able to learn from how your building experience goes and gives me better directions on the finer details

Yes you can configure your drive setup like that. I have everything frontend and emulator and ROM etc related on a separate disk from the OS. I actually have them connected via SATA III inside my PC case, but I do have an external USB 3.0 dock and did try putting my disk in there once to see if there was a noticeable performance hit. There were no surprises, it worked fine

thanks jason, yea that all makes sense to me. but I think I'm talking about a different section regarding the top board of control panel. the video makes me think they designed it like a "pocket", it sort of drops in place and is secured already without additional fasteners. for example, here is a bit from the vid were they assemble the top board to it's....err...idk...."posts" or "feet"....so it stays in place. as the host describes "so it doesn't slide off". but I didn't notice they fasten this top board section down to the bottom/cavity section of the control panel with any screws (maybe they didn't film it though). so to share why I'm asking this question is because this gave me what is likely an out there idea, but imagine if you could lift the top board off the control panel (much like the pic I pasted in here), you could then easily unplug the cable to the I-PAC Ultimate IO and then take a different control panel top board that is the same except for a different button layout, plug that one in and drop it down. it would give me more or less a modular control panel setup for the cabinet. I kinda like the old school Mortal Kombat layout, but maybe it's not so great for certain other games so I'd also want something with a more generic layout. so I'm wondering if this cabinet design would be conducive to such an idea? sorry I don't mean to be a pester, just want to make sure I understood you right if this exact part was screwed down or not, or if it could be left unscrewed for such an idea.

looks good man! sorry to hear the HDD is becoming slow. if by checking tool you mean something that gives you the S.M.A.R.T. report then that's good it says it's OK but I then wouldn't know why it's becoming slow, usually SMART reports give some sort of warning about that. Other wise download a monitoring tool like HWInfo64 to get the SMART report because perhaps it would have an error/warning message about the disks health.

Thanks man! Really appreciate sharing the dimensions! I've got 31" doorways to bedrooms, one of the many reasons I haven't built a full sized cab yet. Glad to hear the plans are working out for you, and good enough at that for a recommendation. On the modular bit, I skimmed through the video and see why I recalled it wrong. It looks like the top board of the control panel just sits down into the bottom section/cavity of the control panel? As in if you need to get to the guts/wires that are in the control panel section you can just lift the top board off, is that correct? This was one of the things that attracted me to this design so would like to make sure I got that part correct. I certainly recalled this wrong thinking the whole control panel had an easy method for removal

@Jason Carr your garage looks massive! 3 bay doors! what an awesome bit of work space! I'm jealous too lol and it's cool to see you're going at it with that particular video's blueprints. when I saw that video I told myself, THIS is the cabinet style I want when I actually finally build one for me. about fitting through doors....did they make some parts of it modular? (without watching the whole video to jog my memory) I kinda remember the control panel could be removed (after some cable disconnecting of course), and maybe that was part of their plan to make sure ppl could fit it through standard doors? I sure didn't think about that yet myself, so would certainly like to hear your experience on moving it around or how it measures up to a doorway when all said and done.

Sounds great man! Sure thing, show off the finished setup when you get it all setup! Honestly I thought the photos from the backside of your case look very neat and tidy. That middle support brace on the back of these cases sure do an excellent job hiding cables that otherwise look like a rats nest lol. Upfront you could minimize cable clutter a little more by making better use of the access holes or maybe twisting the HDD around 180 degrees to position the end where the data and power hook ups are, to point towards the rear so it's better aligned with one of the access holes along the bottom. I'm not sure if there are shorter PSU cables available on the market, but I'd advise against them unless they specifically say they work with your exact PSU model. You absolutely cannot get a cable out of PSU box A and use it on PSU B.....even if the connectors fit. here's a read for details on that if you're interested to learn why https://www.gamersnexus.net/guides/2702-psa-on-mixing-modular-psu-cables-dont-do-it You are right about extensions. They are more points of failure whether it's at the connectors or the cables themselves, the signal can attenuate the further the distance they need to travel, etc. Not saying extensions are bad, but they should only be used if necessary to minimize adding additional points of failure. If a single cable is long enough, then use that instead of two shorter cables hooked together. If the cables length is just giving you hassle to make things look neat and tidy then get yourself some velcro strips because you can adjust those as many times as needed and start tying down cables in the rear compartment since this will help squish them down to take up less space and could fit more back there, and hopefully in a more manageable and tidy fashion too.

I have not a clue to how I am making it happen, but I am very randomly finding myself backing out to platforms to see either the video as a black screen or playing the wrong video for the platform. when it plays the wrong video, it's always two platforms away in my list. As in I back out to platform C, it would be playing platform A's video. To clarify I cannot recreate the problems using the methods that were recently discussed in the last couple betas, those do seem fixed. I wish I could provide some better info on these newer random re-occurrences but I have not been able to connect any dots yet on what steps it takes to recreate these problems. It's weird because it's technically the same problem, but different and currently unknown (to me at least) steps are creating it. If I ever do start connecting these dots, I'll come back with details that are actually helpful lol. But just wanted to let ppl know since someone else may already know or figure it out down the road before I ever do.

The red arrows are where fans should be orientated as exhaust (rear of case, and top of case). The blue arrows are where fans should be intake (side panel, front of case, and bottom of case). So if you wanted fans on the bottom of the case, they should be intake, sucking in cool air into your case. If you added fans to top of the case, those should be exhaust, blowing hot air out of the case. No problem about the questions, hopefully you have come away with a little more knowledge and confidence in how to setup your cooling.

oh yea lol I forgot about that method. both achieve the goal, but it's easier to change those 2 options, rather than 4 individual controls for the analog stick.

you can select a hotkey in Big Box's controller mapping options. Go to the "close active window" option and set the hotkey on the controller there.

In Retroarch this is totally normal since there were no analog sticks on a NES or SNES controller. hence why the D-pad works, but the analog sticks do not create any input to the game. if you want to use the analog stick for those consoles you need to manually remap the analog sticks to also act like the same inputs as the D-pad. not exactly clear if you did that already (mapped for movement?), show some pics if you did so.

You wouldn't want to try to install an AIO with the MB installed in the case. Or, at least not assuming you need to also install a support bracket on the rear of the MB for said AIO, because that must be done with it out of the case. Here I say avoid an AIO unless you want one for aesthetic reasons. (it looks cool sort of thing). 11400F can be cooled by Intel's basic included cooler so you don't necessarily need a better one unless you're trying to run with higher power limits....which is likely what was changed in UEFI (BIOS) since this is the only thing I know that exists that could make you hit 100C+ temps on such a run of the mill chip. (that is besides doing other mistakes that wouldn't go away from changing an option in UEFI) A standard fan is 25mm thick and can fit on either the back or the front of that side panel mount point. See those slots to either side of this area? (I marked one side of these slots in yellow) Those are the mounting points for fans and rads and any other standardized gear that follows the 120mm footprint. As far as intake or exhaust goes, that is decided by the orientation, rather than which side of a mounting point it is placed on. These pics below will hopefully explain how to tell which orientation creates exhaust or intake. Please note you mentioned "push air from front to behind", and if I understand that correct, it's what I am recommending against, as that acts as exhaust and you do not want hot air coming off the GPU and GPU etc going into the back compartment. I recommend making it intake. (Literally orientate your fans 180 degrees from my previous posts pic as another photo to reference). Intake in this context means a fan on the side panel will suck in cool air from outside the case and push it inside your case. This will create cool air flow into the back compartment which will help keeps the disks mounted back there cooler along with also helping cool the PSU. This means if your fan(s) are mounted to the side panel area and you are looking into your case, you will be looking at the rear of the fan, where the support braces and hub are Consider this pic. Notice you can see the "front" side of the fan facing the inside of the case? This side of the fan is where air will be sucked into, aka, the intake side. Meaning air from inside the case gets sucked into this fan, and then exhausts the hot air outside of the case. Considering all this as a whole, this fan is acting as an exhaust fan, which is perfectly appropriate. Notice how on these fans you do not see the "front" of the fan. Instead you see the "rear" of the fan from inside the case. Take notice of the yellow lines I drew over the support brace on the backside of the fan. This is an easy way to identify which side is the front or rear. The "hub" is on the rear. If you took those stickers off this is where you would place a drop of something like 3 in 1 oil to lubricate it. The rear side is the side with these braces. If you were to pick up a fan and look at the side with these braces, if that fan was turned on it would be blowing air into your face. If you then turned it around so the braces are facing away from you, it would be blowing air away from your face. So based on the orientation the fan is installed is what determines if it is acting like intake or exhaust. The front fans are therefore acting as intake, also perfectly appropriate Right now you have front to rear case air flow and more intake than exhaust which is good in my opinion. it creates more positive air pressure which means if there is more air coming in, than going out, it makes it much harder for dust to settle into your system. You have a problem if you're even close to 100C. Even though 80C is acceptable, 70C sounds more in line where you should be according to reviews. This is why I think the power limit was cranked to reach those high temps. https://www.techpowerup.com/review/intel-core-i5-11400f/21.html

got thinking about this more since I was reminded you cannot actually bulk edit the additional application field unless you get a plugin to do that. so it's doable, but you need the plugin to do it in bulk. otherwise you gotta do it 1 by 1 (which will take very long if you have a large library), sorry I forgot to mention that in my last post. the easier method I wish I shared from the start is creating a new instance of RocketLauncher in your emulator list. Name them per the emulator you want them to be used for. As an example "RocketLauncher - Dolphin" and "RocketLauncher - DuckStation" and so on. This way each instance of RocketLauncher in the emulator list can have its own unique script in the running script field. so pick whichever path makes most sense for yourself since you have options to choose from to get to your goal

Hi faeran, thanks for taking a moment to give me a hand here. I think I kinda need both abilities you just mentioned...combined in a way....I think but not sure. I did not do a great job explaining my scenario, so I put some photos together and hope I can tell the story clearer. Here are two examples of my platform view of WheelGamesView for Windows and Sega Genesis. These will look as desired with the correct photo elements being displayed and proper position of the main video Now here are the two exact same games being selected from within my Streets of Rage playlist. All of the photos will be proper due to dynamically going off the selected game's platform, but the video position and size is static and does not dynamically change based on what game is selected, based of the selected game's platform. You will notice my issue is the main video is no longer aligned with the display accordingly I am aware there are custom config views available for playlists, but this is sort of the same situation. It would not give the ability to dynamically adjust the video per game selected, per the game's platform. Basically it seems from what I've tried so far to produce the theme look I am going for, when going into playlists I would only have a single platform look appropriate as far as the video placement and size goes due to they (playlists) seem to use the Default config of the WheelGamesView even if there is an existing custom config for that platform. I tried some funky ideas like adding additional main videos ("selected item video" per CTC's terms) but it looks like there is only a single one allowed when it is published to use in Big Box. CTC is a bit deceiving here because you can see them in CTC and use visibility conditions on them. So I actually thought I found a workaround by adding a selected item video for each platform and sizing them and positioning them accordingly, as well as making them only visible per platform. Not until I published it did I find out this plan doesn't work since there is a disconnect between what is shown in CTC and Big Box in this particular situation. I then tried adding additional "user defined videos" but the Metadata options available in CTC for user defined video are not conducive to my goal. This pic on the left shows a 2nd selected item video displayed within CTC. Visibility conditions do work here also but for this example I made sure to not use any visibility conditions. This was edited on the Default configuration. This pic on the right is in Big Box in a Zelda playlist and selecting a N64 game just for consistency. The 2nd selected item video is nowhere to be found. Even if I go into the N64 platform it is not seen, or heard, in Big Box. It's like this additional element doesn't exist to Big Box. To clarify, I did delete the custom platform config for N64 to make sure it uses the Default config. So this is why this plan fell apart. I then went on to try the video mirror and didn't think much of it at first but then I thought I found a solution here too since I can place and size each individually. It gets muddy here, because I found a convoluted workaround, but it makes the system unusable or at the very least, not enjoyable to use. The first hurdle I ran into is there is no keep aspect ratio option for video mirror, it defaults to stretch and that isn't desirable, but I'd live with that if I had to. The second is many visibility conditions don't seem to work on video mirrors. I can make it visible, hidden or collapsed. But most actual visibility conditions seem to be ignored or not working, I tried several and after like half a dozen didn't work I started thinking none did. It didn't work with basic stuff like be visible/hidden if the platform or game name is ABCXYZ. Here's where I got creative. I the put in a text box that lists the platform name through metadata, and then used a visibility condition for the mirror video that makes it visible if the text of the text box is ABCXYZ.....and that type of visibility condition works for video mirrors. So now I'm thinking sweet, I figured this out.....meh....not quite time to celebrate. Even with the funny workaround, there's a pretty annoying problem, it seems to de-sync the video and audio which I assume is because I'm doing this for many platforms. Seems like it's trying to load up several instances of the same video simultaneously and acts like the system is getting bogged down. By the time I added like half a dozen I noticed navigating around in the playlists got super sluggish and it might take several seconds for a button input to be recognized if I hit it while it's trying to load all the videos. And when the video does become visible it's always out of sync with the audio. It got real bad by the time I got to 10 and I figured that was far enough to conclude the problem was from the qty of videos, it goes away when I deleted a bunch and only had one or two mirrors So at this point I'm not 100% sure if I am not setting something up right, or I am trying to do something that isn't offered in Big Box's features. I'd really appreciate if someone like yourself who's working under the hood of Big Box could offer some help on what setting I might have gotten wrong to make my plan work, or just let me know this idea isn't feasible with the features/options currently available. Or heck, maybe it is available, but I would have to do it through manual manipulation of the files, aka editing the code of the view files? As in, maybe it's just not been integrated into the current version of CTC? Thanks again for whatever help you can offer!

This spot, the Running Script field, will apply it to all games being launched through your RocketLauncher emulator in LaunchBox. Go to Tools > Manage > Emulators and then select RocketLauncher to get to this window. This would only be useful if you exclusively use RL for dolphin emulator games only. If you use more emulators through RL then you need it per game(s), proceed below. If you want to set it up per game(s) you need to paste it into an .ahk file. Paste it into a text file, but save it with the .ahk extension. Then in LB go into your game(s) edit window (select the game(s) and then hit CTRL + E or right click and then click on edit/bulk edit). Click on Add Application and add this new .ahk file you just created as an additional application by selecting it in the Application Path field. You must check "Automatically Run Before Main Application" for this particular script to work and lastly give it a name in the Application Name field. Here's an example of me using a script for another game like this. This assumes you have the .ahk extension recognized by Windows to run these files with AutoHotKey already. So if you need to do that, click on the .ahk file you created and since no program is associated with the file extension it will ask you what program you want to use to open it. Make sure you have the checkbox selected "Always use this app to open .ahk files". Click on "More Apps" then scroll down to the bottom and click "Look for another app on this PC". Browse to your LaunchBox folder LaunchBox\ThirdParty\AutoHotkey and then select "AutoHotKey.exe".