p03t13 Posted August 4, 2017 Share Posted August 4, 2017 (edited) Hi all, new member. I am in the early stages of planning a project. I will be building an 80s/90s style arcade cabinet that uses a pc to run emulators and a front end like Lunchbox to select system/game. I want to be able to run games from many different systems that I'll list shortly. I'm looking for advice on system specs for the PC and y'alls preferred emulators for each system. System list: NEW, SNES, GB/C, GBA, SEGA Genesis, SEGA Saturn, SEGA Dreamcast, SEGA Game gear, PlayStation 1 Any advice helps, this is the extremely early stages of planning. Edited August 4, 2017 by p03t13 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
neil9000 Posted August 4, 2017 Share Posted August 4, 2017 Welcome to the forums. As for the emulators i would use Retroarch for all those systems except for Dreamcast for which i would use demul for it. As for the system that is a difficult one to answer, it will depend on multiple things, most importantly what sort of budget do you have for it? Are you looking for as cheap as possible, or a powerful rig that will play current PC games as well? Are you looking to emulate PS2, Gamecube/Wii or wii u as well? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
p03t13 Posted August 4, 2017 Author Share Posted August 4, 2017 (edited) It doesnt need to be super powerful. This pc will be dedicated to this arcade machine project. After initial setup it probably won't even be on the Wi-Fi. I do know that Dreamcast and ps1 emulators can be a bit demanding I have a "working" Dreamcast emulator on my current gaming rig. (Sorry I should mention I'm not TOTALLY new to emulation, just to trying to emulate using a front end, and using systems beyond snes.) As far as budget, I haven't gotten to that point as of yet. I'm gonna say around $1000.00 max for the pc (I can be flexible with it but I think that much should be able to make something that can run ps1 stuff) Edited August 4, 2017 by p03t13 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Charco Posted August 4, 2017 Share Posted August 4, 2017 (edited) A budget in the thousand dollar range would get you a decent PC that should be able to handle everything up to Gamecube/Wii and PS2 in my opinion. Edited August 4, 2017 by Charco Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
neil9000 Posted August 4, 2017 Share Posted August 4, 2017 Oh right yeah, if you are looking to spend that sort of money then you won't have any problems building a machine to run those systems. I would just go with the latest i5 or i7 with 16gb of ram, a ssd for windows, and a mechanical drive for Launchbox and all your roms. If you wan't to upscale PS1 to a higher resolution or emulate gamecube/wii or wii u then you will need a graphics card also, but that won't be necessary if you are going to emulate the older 8bit and 16bit systems as they use cpu only. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DOS76 Posted August 4, 2017 Share Posted August 4, 2017 (edited) Well 1G for a PC is different than 1G total for an arcade project as a few of the cost don't involve the PC side Edited August 4, 2017 by DOS76 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
p03t13 Posted August 4, 2017 Author Share Posted August 4, 2017 I just looked up retroarch (very breifly) is it actually an emulator or just another front end? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
p03t13 Posted August 4, 2017 Author Share Posted August 4, 2017 2 minutes ago, DOS76 said: Well 1G for a PC is different than 1G total for an arcade project as a few of the cost don't involve the PC side Yeah, the other stuff will cost more on top of the pc cost Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DOS76 Posted August 4, 2017 Share Posted August 4, 2017 Its both really but when you use it in LB you really only use the emulator part of it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
neil9000 Posted August 4, 2017 Share Posted August 4, 2017 Yeah as @DOS76 said Retroarch is both a frontend and a emulator suite. It includes dozens of different emulators and will unify your controlls across all the different systems. If you use it with launchbox you don't ever have to see the frontend part of it, it will just be used as a emulator. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
p03t13 Posted August 4, 2017 Author Share Posted August 4, 2017 Out if curiosity, why does the drive for the emu/roms need to be a mechanical one? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
neil9000 Posted August 4, 2017 Share Posted August 4, 2017 4 minutes ago, p03t13 said: Out if curiosity, why does the drive for the emu/roms need to be a mechanical one? It doesn't "need" to be, but depending on how many systems and games you are going to setup it could be a lot of space, and traditional hdd's are a lot cheaper. For reference i have about 12,000 games in launchbox with all the images an video's and i'm close to 1.5TB, that would need a very expensive ssd to fit it all. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DOS76 Posted August 4, 2017 Share Posted August 4, 2017 yeah I prefer to have my OS be on my SSD and use a mechanical to store my stuff Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fromlostdays Posted August 4, 2017 Share Posted August 4, 2017 I'm not to good with spec, but can confirm the i5 and gtx 660 will run ps1.Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-N910A using Tapatalk Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fromlostdays Posted August 4, 2017 Share Posted August 4, 2017 In terms of the systems you want, they are all really easy and you can get most of them in no intro sets. Do thatSent from my SAMSUNG-SM-N910A using Tapatalk Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lordmonkus Posted August 4, 2017 Share Posted August 4, 2017 The most expensive component in your system should be the CPU especially if you are wanting to do Saturn, Dreamcast and newer systems. You certainly do not need a high end GPU at all but a relatively modern one (1 gig of GDDR5 vram) would be nice to have. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Teusan Posted August 4, 2017 Share Posted August 4, 2017 For ps1 I'd pick epsxe over retroarch. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lordmonkus Posted August 4, 2017 Share Posted August 4, 2017 Just now, Teusan said: For ps1 I'd pick epsxe over retroarch. Why though ? I am just curious why you would choose it in such a broad and non specific way. Both are very good and each have their pros and cons. I wouldn't say it is a clear cut winner in which is better or worse. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
neil9000 Posted August 4, 2017 Share Posted August 4, 2017 The retroarch core is actually very good these day's if you use the hardware version, and can upscale up to 32x native resolution if you have the hardware. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Teusan Posted August 4, 2017 Share Posted August 4, 2017 I had difficulties to launch some of my games, I downloaded both beetle and pcsx cores. Beetle is for having original resolution I guess, graphics are closer to original. And I could not make pcsx work so I dropped it since epsxe was working for me, I didn't want to bother. Also I have epsxe on android and I sync both system's save files. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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