PC Build/Pre-Build, looking for a suggestion.

[onebadveggie]

Wasn't sure where exactly to post this sorta thing, figured this would be the best place.

Obviously right now is the worst possible time to build a pc. Especially for emulation where it's not really necessary to make the biggest baddest machine to run most systems, yet it seems every part, no matter how old is some ridiculous price.

So, has anyone here had like any luck or suggestions or anything really? Seems like every search leads to another dead end, and I'd just love to have a machine dedicated for emulation that isn't like some overpriced thing.

[DeadVoivod]

How much is overpricing for you?

You could go with a NUC, had a Hades Canyon before and that was handling LaunchBox quite well. 

[Lordmonkus]

Every so often this question pops up and it's never a super simple straight forward answer of "buy X product".

I'll just repeat what I always say, buy the best modern CPU you can afford / willing to spend on. It doesn't matter right now if you buy Intel or AMD but if you are going older generation like pre Ryzen series AMD then you want Intel. You can never have too much CPU power with emulation, you can always push the extra CPU power into settings (frame delay) in Retroarch and Mame to reduce input latency.

Don't stress too much over the graphics card, they aren't a major factor in emulation unless you start talking about the newer systems emulators like RPCS3 and Cemu for example. Even a newer AMD Ryzen APU would be enough.

Hard drives are cheap, get as much as you think will need for your collection. If you are going for full sets (especially CD and DVD based systems) then you will want A LOT of drive space. But if you are only going to have hand picked sets then you can get away with much less space. Don't bother with having your rom collection on an SSD drive, an old fashioned mechanical drive is perfectly fine. Though I would highly suggest an SSD for the OS and maybe even Launchbox but keep in mind if you have a large collection and get all the media available then you may run into space issues on an SSD unless you are willing to splurge on a larger one like 2TB - 4TB.

[onebadveggie]

9 hours ago, Lordmonkus said:

Even a newer AMD Ryzen APU would be enough.

I wish I could find one! I was looking for something like 4700G but I know they're still sort of restricting those to OEM PC's (which is why I was looking into pre-builts anyway)

For the most part my storage isn't a problem, on my current system I have Launchbox running off an SSD, but the games are on a big ole HDD. I guess my post was built more out of frustration at the current market, and just was wondering if anyone was having any kind of miraculous luck or knew a product to point to.

[Lordmonkus]

AMD has the new 5000 series Ryzen APUs coming out soon.

From what I can see lately here in Canada is that things are slowly returning to normal hardware availability wise though GPUs are still tough to get.

Unfortunately if you need a complete system then buying a prebuilt is the only real option currently outside of paying scalper prices for GPUs.

[Hifihedgehog]

5 hours ago, Lordmonkus said:

AMD has the new 5000 series Ryzen APUs coming out soon.

This. They are coming out August 5th. In my case, I have one already as I harvest it from a prebuilt system back in late April. As for performance, it is quite zippy. At a mere 65W, it outperforms a 125W 10700K. With that perspective, that's quite something, especially considering it also comes with a GT 1030-level integrated GPU. In the past, the 4750G that I had before already ran significantly cooler than the 2400G. The 5700G runs even cooler and faster than my 4700G.

If you are doing emulation, though, I would recommend stepping up to a dedicated GPU and Ryzen 5000 series CPU. For most people, a 5800X is more than enough and will be even better than the 5700G APU, especially at Switch emulation. As for a GPU, that is currently a crapshoot unless you know how to set up a stock notifier bot. There is way too much latency with the Discord groups and the YouTube channels and you will be 15 seconds behind those who have notification bots running on their local machines. If you are up to doing some basic technical legwork, I recommend installing streetmerchant to notify you on stock changes. I was able to get an RTX 3000 series card that way from Best Buy.

Edited June 19, 2021 by Hifihedgehog

[rmetzger]

I actually built a PC for my machine this year.  I used the Intel I3 10-100 for a processor and it seems to run everything with ease that I throw at it.  I am running some teknoparrot games and all that I have done so far run great.  I am not running any windows PC games so if your looking at doing those you might need more power.  I see you can still get it for around and for the price it is a really good processor.  You can go I5 or I7 if you want but the cores won't matter with most emulation.  Again, unless you are going to be running PC games on your machine.  When looking for a CPU look at the speed, not the cores.   Graphics card wise, I would suggest looking out on FB marketplace or ask around the community.  I was able to get a  GEForce 1060 from someone on the mame cabinet builders FB page for $112.00.  Works great for everything I need.   One thing I did an would recommend is getting a small SSD drive or M.2 drives and putting your OS, Front end and emulators on it.  Buy a cheap large HD for your roms.  I have a 2 TB 7200RPM HD and it has no issues running the games.  

[Lordmonkus]

When it comes to CPU you also want to look at the IPC (Instructions Per Clock Cycle), it's arguably more important than raw speed but they both play off each other. A slower 5th gen Intel would be far better for emulation than a faster 1st or 2nd gen Intel.