PC Specs for living room Emulation setup

[MikeHK84]

Hello,

 

I haven't seen a similar thread in the forum, so hopefully, this is not a duplicate. I've been playing around with launchbox/bigbox for a few days now on my gaming PC. My next step would be to migrate my launchbox folder to a new PC that will be in the living room and I'm struggling to chose an adequate machine (I've watched tons of video from ETA Prime but can't make my mind).

Not sure if it exists somewhere in the forum (or online), but ultimately it would be great to have a "minimal requirements" list for each platform (nes, snes, wii, etc.) with CPU/GPU minimal/recommended.

Back to my requirements:

- usage: in living room on 4K OLED TV

- platforms used: MAME, Naomi, N64, Dreamcast, PSX, 3DS and all the olders platform (from sega and nintendo) - I don't intend to play the "newer" platforms anytime soon as I've already Switch, PS5, Gaming PC for that

- form factor: micro PC or mini PC

- storage: not sure if external hard drive would affect speed but ideally internal ssd of 500Go minimum

- "quality of life" requirements: I'd like my system to load "fast" and play the games at the highest resolution/framerate possible (and to note that most of my media has videos associated to them)

Note that I live in China, so I virtually have access to all hardware imaginable...  From the videos I've seen, it seems a micro pc similar to the one ETA prime reviewed would be ok spec wise but the m.2 spec is 2242 (sow lower writing/reading speed - not sure if it would affect the performance).

Any advice would be appreciated!

[Lordmonkus]

There have been many threads about this over the years and the answer is always the same.

Get the fastest CPU you can afford, CPU power is the single most important factor when it comes to emulation. Modern Ryzen AMD or Intel are both perfectly fine, pre Ryzen AMD CPUs are not recommended at all.

A video card is less important but you should get something reasonably modern. For most emulation it won't have much impact but anything that is 3D and if you upscale the resolution the video card will have an impact.

As for storage I would use an SSD for the OS, Launchbox and all the emulators but for all your games a large HDD will be perfectly fine. External drive for game storage shouldn't have much of an impact but I am only relaying what others have said, I have never used an external drive for anything other than backup storage.

[neil9000]

9 minutes ago, Lordmonkus said:

There have been many threads about this over the years and the answer is always the same.

Get the fastest CPU you can afford, CPU power is the single most important factor when it comes to emulation. Modern Ryzen AMD or Intel are both perfectly fine, pre Ryzen AMD CPUs are not recommended at all.

A video card is less important but you should get something reasonably modern. For most emulation it won't have much impact but anything that is 3D and if you upscale the resolution the video card will have an impact.

As for storage I would use an SSD for the OS, Launchbox and all the emulators but for all your games a large HDD will be perfectly fine. External drive for game storage shouldn't have much of an impact but I am only relaying what others have said, I have never used an external drive for anything other than backup storage.

I concur with all of that.

24 minutes ago, MikeHK84 said:

- form factor: micro PC or mini PC

A mini PC will not usually have a dedicated GPU (unless you spend significally more money on it, and at that point you may as well go micro ATX for less money).

26 minutes ago, MikeHK84 said:

and play the games at the highest resolution/framerate possible (and to note that most of my media has videos associated to them)

2D systems can not have there resolution changed, 3D systems can, but will need a dedicated GPU usually, as for framerate, that will be dictated by the original game, so mostly always 60, until you hit the 3D era and you will see a mixture of 30 and 60, but again if trying to up the resolution on those you really do need a dedicated GPU.

[MikeHK84]

Thanks for your prompt answer. Obviously, the higher specs, the more "future proof" it would be, I could buy a NUC with a mini RTX 3060 and I have no doubt it will run well but it would defeat a bit the purpose of building a good value for money system (ie. ability to run the platforms mentioned above).

Thanks for clarifying the hard drive "questions". In order to fit my requirements, I believe a mini/micro PC with integrated graphics would be my choice (especially with the progress made by AMD/Intel in that regard), however the more I research, the more lost I am. Technically speaking a dual core CPU should suffice from what I read, however I wanted to check from the forum members experience, what would be a good choice (as of January 2022): AMD? Intel Celeron? i3? i5? i7?

Apologies for my noob questions, I'm quite new to all this.

 

[Lordmonkus]

If you go with an integrated CPU / GPU go with an AMD Ryzen system, Intels integrated graphics is trash.

You obviously do not need to get the highest end CPU possible, I only say get the most you are willing to spend on. More CPU power than required doesn't go to waste when you use something like Retroarch or Mame with frame delay. You can dedicate the extra power to higher frame delay setting to reduce input latency.

[neil9000]

1 minute ago, MikeHK84 said:

I wanted to check from the forum members experience, what would be a good choice (as of January 2022): AMD? Intel Celeron? i3? i5? i7?

I would ignore celerons to be honest, I see people online saying they can do up to gamecube, if you consider 15fps playable then i guess thats right. I personally as well as my main gaming rig i use for Bigbox and PC gaming have a Celeron j4125 mini PC with 6GB of RAM, it does all the 2D stuff no problems at all, but when you start to push 3D stuff, its much more troublesome. It can push Playstation 1 just fine at native res, and maybe a 2X increase to res in some games, but thats about it. N64 you will have to put up with native res, unless you use the less accurate parallel core. I should mention also this is using a OS called Batocera, so no Windows overhead either, dreamcast should be mostly fine, as will arcade stuff as long as its not 3D. If going with that sort of device you will need to temper expectations with and 3D system, and dont even think of something like PS2, or 3DS on it.

[DeadVoivod]

I would get a NUC. I used a Hades Canyon before, and everything ran perfectly fine, that uses a Radeon RX Vega M GH GPU, no need for a RTX3060. Plus it looks great for living room purpose, small form factor and nice visual. You can get it also now for a fair price. 

Look at my old thread here: 

 

 

[SimonLev]

I bought a used HP Elitedesk 800 G3 35W mini PC. It has an Intel i5 6500T CPU with onboard Intel graphics. It's by no means a recent model and cost only £145 here in the UK ($190). 

I'm really happy with performance. I've got lots of machine emulators and ROMs running perfectly up to Wii, GameCube, PS1 and PS2. Every game I've tried runs perfectly. Certain Wii games need the resolution turned down to native (eg Mario Kart) and slow down on 2x and above.

The performance on more recent consoles is much better than the Nvidia Shield Pro I have which proves that the CPU factor is more important than graphics card(?).