# HTPCs and Emulation. Ryzen?



## ital (Jan 25, 2021)

Anyone using an HTPC for emulation? Mainly upto Dreamcast and PS2 but it must be flawless, smooth with no frameskip or judder. What have ye? 

Been looking at those new NUCs and Ryzen based small machines and they look great, if a bit pricey. Totally out of the PC loop in every sense of the word so aware me.


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## ital (Jan 30, 2021)

Anyone?


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## Tom Bombadildo (Jan 30, 2021)

Which HTPCs are you looking at exactly? Depending on the price, it may be better to just build a mini ITX PC instead. 

But generally speaking, anything that's running at least a Zen 2 CPU (so any 3000 series desktop CPU, and any 4000 series mobile SoC cuz AMDs naming schemes are dumb) should work just fine for PS2 emulation, though don't expect the iGPUs in them to do much more than maybe 1080p upscaling for PS2/Wii/GC depending on the game.


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## rmorris003 (Jan 30, 2021)

Go watch ETA Prime on YouTube, he reviews a ton of devices that are good and includes computers.


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## NNate (Jan 31, 2021)

rmorris003 said:


> Go watch ETA Prime on YouTube, he reviews a ton of devices that are good and includes computers.


This


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## notimp (Jan 31, 2021)

ital said:


> Anyone using an HTPC for emulation? Mainly upto Dreamcast and PS2 but it must be flawless, smooth with no frameskip or judder. What have ye?
> 
> Been looking at those new NUCs and Ryzen based small machines and they look great, if a bit pricey. Totally out of the PC loop in every sense of the word so aware me.


Higher Ghz is king, more cores less so.

So depends on how much money you spend.

Best budget solution currently is to buy an Xbox Series S and google around until you've found how to install retroarch in retail mode (needed for access to all ram, important for PS2 and later emulation - currently involves finding discord channels, and maybe even paying a 'transactional fee'.).

So as an overall guideline, Intel probably is the better solution. (Higher Ghz targets, lower corecount. Also currently becoming "the budget" option at many pricepoints (because 7nm manufacturing is limited, so Ryzens get a price premium at retail currently (demand is high)))

But since your top end is PS2 - depending on game, my 7 year old Intel 4440 with a GTX 970 could do this at higher than normal resolutions with anisotropic filtering - so you should be good anyhow.

Have a Ryzen 3700X HTPC system going currently (form factor, for HTPC purposes (non gaming) I use an android box, like a sane person..  ) - but interestingly not tested in terms of PS2 emulation yet.  I doubt that I would run into many issues that are not "emulation related".
--

edit:
On the NUC side - maybe still an issue. First - for NUC form factor you want current Ryzen chips, because of lower heat dissipation (7nm), and you are dealing with on board graphics. Dreamcast most certainly will be fine, PS2 less so. Might need more GPU performance than on board Ryzen graphics currently can handle. 

At that point we are back to - if you can get the Xbox Series S thing figured out (and again, installing it in User mode, not Dev mode is important - which involves going through someone who has retroarch greenlit to be featured on the microsoft app store.. - which is a little sketch, which is why obscurity is needed to protect the method (otherwise MS might be forced to act)) - thats the best solution currently for your purposes.

ETA primes channel can be your starting point to figure this out, as the others have suggested.


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## ital (Jan 31, 2021)

Thanks. I'm not PC in any respect so all of this nerd crap is generally beyond me.


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## notimp (Jan 31, 2021)

ital said:


> Thanks. I'm not PC in any respect so all of this nerd crap is generally beyond me.


If easy, then price premium. 

But in general - a decent 4 year old gaming system (GTX970) was enough to handle PS2 emulation sufficiently.

If you go the Intel route - with spectre and meltdown patches disabled (+15% more performance, less on site security). Use this program (two clicks) to disable those Windows patches:
https://www.grc.com/inspectre.htm

On a NUC with a chip thats relying on on board graphics - you still might not be there yet (ETA Prime videos will tell you).

For a new "mid range" gaming PC, PS2 emulation should not be a problem (past emulation issues). But currently buying any 7nm components, CPUs (current Ryzen chips) or GPUs (current all graphics cards (with 6GB of video memory or higher.. )) comes at a high price premium (lockdown, production limits, GPU mining of asic resistant crypto currencies trended again...). So retailers are asking above MSRP.


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## ital (Jan 31, 2021)

This kind of stuff is the exact reason I'm not PC. The sheer amount of lingo and nerdosity one must stay on top of is an immense waste of the time. Obviously not everyone has to agree with this but its def for the younger folks with plenty of spare time to obsess about this hyperthreadeddotmatrixoverclockcachesuperturbo2x which is great for about 3 days until a new and improved version is released. 

Not to mention the sheer amount of faff you need to do to get the games optimized and working correctly which anyone who tinkers will admit:

They spend more time tweaking than actually playing. See what I mean? 

Think I'll just get a Shield for DC/everything before and use the PS3 for PS2.


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## ital (Feb 1, 2021)

Wow. Look at the power inside that tiny device. I don't think that it would work reliably long term used primarily as a plugged in emulation machine as it must generate some heat doing all that. 

Whats the equivalent of this but as an Android box or similar?


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## Deleted User (Feb 1, 2021)

just gonna point this out since nobody has, pcsx2 is a dogshit emulator still, so it won't be a "flawless" emulator, but it's still the only option available
just a head's up if you're not super informed


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## Tom Bombadildo (Feb 1, 2021)

Nothing, the closest you can get to a "high end" Android box these days is still the now 6 year old Shield TV, which is way weaker than current Snapdragon SoCs in smartphones like the S21. Android TV boxes didn't go "faster and more powerful", they went "smaller, cheaper, and more convenient", so you're really not going to find a TV box out there that's decent for emulating much more than PS1/N64/DC/Maybe GC depending on the game other than the Shield TV.

If you have the money to spend and want something that's just all in one, buy a NUC or SFF prebuilt, anything with modern specs these days is capable of what you want, you can basically ignore notimp's posts because they're not really that informative or helpful at all to someone PC illiterate as you claim. Basically look for anything mid-end (so Core i5+ or AMD Ryzen 3000), and that will work just fine for PS2 and up. Otherwise, buy a Shield TV and whatever additional consoles you need to get console games the Shield TV can't emulate.


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## notimp (Feb 2, 2021)

With android boxes, there are two performance specs currently out there on the market, that make sense:

1. NVidia Shield
2. This Chromecast with Google TV dongle: https://www.androidpolice.com/2020/...pcoming-android-tv-dongle-code-named-sabrina/ (respectively the chip thats inside, which also is in other devices)

None of which are sufficient for PS2 emulation.

The sad truth here is, that android boxes are on a regression slope.. 

My second (?) generation Amazon 4K Android TV box (btw - stay away from amazon boxes, if you cant root them - they are building closed ecosystems, have blacklisted launchers in the past, ...) is more performant than that google chromecast thingy that came out five years later.

The NVidia Shield is stuck on the same spec for over five years now.

Every manufacturer realized, that they only need so much GPU power, and no CPU power, to decode 4K 24 fps, and thats really all those things are sold for.

Which is really, really sad - but sadly the truth.

They are worse, than current generation smartphones. Which might change the earliest, when a Switch pro comes out (Nvidia would then produce those processors at scale - and probably also update their NVidia shield at that point).
--

On the PS2 emulation front - you need about 1.1 TFLOPs of GPU performance - see:


That handheld is using a 4500U Ryzen chip, but also has a graphics card in there. The Ryzen chip alone wouldnt even give you a third of the GPU performance needed.

The GTX 970 I mentioned had about 4 TFLOPs of GPU performance, which was more than enough.

A GTX 950 or 750Ti would be the equivalent at about 1.1 TFLOPs of GPU performance, which is as low as you should go for PS2 emulation.

So thats your GPU target for "how low you could go - buying a (used) gaming PC", and also your answer on - no, a Ryzen APU (what would be in a NUC style device) is not enough for PS2 emulation.
--

Dreamcast is one ARM development cycle away from being able to run on your calculator, so that wont give you many problems (see:  ).

And again, the best price performance device to emulate PS2 currently is a Xbox Series S - but you'd have to make sure to be able to get your hands on a non advertised method to install a copy of retroarch from a developer account that Microsoft greenlit for actual public distribution of software. And you arent getting more than hints here at the moment, because people dont want that method to be shut down. 


edit: 4500U (What would be in a Ryzen NUC) seems to be enough for some PS2 games - but only at 1x resolution, and not for God of War 2 f.e. - so... not ideal.


edit: Mistake - the handheld above only runs a Ryzen 5 4500U APU, which actually gets 1.1 TFLOPS of GPU performance - which is not enough to run God of War PS2 at full speed.

So maybe eying GTX 970 class GPUs for PS2 emulation isnt such a bad idea after all.


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## Jokey_Carrot (Feb 2, 2021)

I'd build something with itx a 3400g and maybe an external brick with a picopsu.


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## notimp (Feb 2, 2021)

Jokey_Carrot said:


> I'd build something with itx a 3400g and maybe an external brick with a picopsu.


Has 2TFLOPs of GPU performance, so probably would be enough for most PS2 games.

Performance vs current APU flagship:
https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/amd-ryzen-7-pro-4750g-renoir-review/3

Sounds correct. 
--

Or buy used gaming components of the GTX 970 aera, a SilverStone Sugo SG05-Lite case (price/performance) and build an ITX PC with the PSU integrated. 

See: https://www.overclock.net/threads/silverstone-sugo-sg05-06-owners-club.1446758/

f.e.

(Better (?) price performance, also itx formfactor.)

edit: B85M-ITX was the motherboard generation to get back then (Asrock B85M-ITX arguably the best price/performer). Ram are DDR3, Socket was LGA 1150 (maxes out with 4core 8thread intels).


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## Jokey_Carrot (Feb 2, 2021)

notimp said:


> Has 2TFLOPs of GPU performance, so probably would be enough for most PS2 games.
> 
> Performance vs current APU flagship:
> https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/amd-ryzen-7-pro-4750g-renoir-review/3
> ...


You'd get better price to performane with used parts however they run hotter, uses more power and the whole machine would just be bigger and louder.


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## notimp (Feb 2, 2021)

Jokey_Carrot said:


> You'd get better price to performane with used parts however they run hotter, uses more power and the whole machine would just be bigger and louder.


Not necessarily louder. 

https://geizhals.eu/silverstone-argon-ar06-sst-ar06-90115-a1179209.html
(Had this cooler in a Sugo case - that was pretty silent with a 84W TDP intel CPU (just on the silent fan profile preset on the motherboard) - GPU on a custom fan curve is a must though (MSI Afterburner) - so its 'fiddly')

For the front intake fan:
https://geizhals.eu/arctic-p12-pwm-pst-black-acfan00120a-a1920159.html
At 800rpm thats silent.


But you get faster ram performance with the newer Ryzen chips. 
And maybe better CPU performance. 
And lower power consumption. 

Intel chips to buy used on LGA 1150 would be
- i5 - 4460 (4 cores, 4 threads)
- i5 - 4570 (4 cores, 4 threads)
- Xeon E3-1231V3B (no GPU, so you are dependent on your graphics card) (4 cores, 8 threads (better))

or i5-4690 or i5-4690K (but may clash with the low noise profile target  (higher TDP))

edit: Performance comparison:
https://www.cpu-monkey.com/en/compare_cpu-intel_core_i5_4570-25-vs-amd_ryzen_5_3400g-953


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## linuxares (Feb 2, 2021)

Nvidia shield + Kodi with emulators. Problem solved.


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## The Real Jdbye (Feb 2, 2021)

linuxares said:


> Nvidia shield + Kodi with emulators. Problem solved.


Except the Shield TV doesn't run Dolphin perfectly, and I can't imagine PS2 would run well if Dolphin struggles.


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## ital (Feb 2, 2021)

It would be great if these Chinese companies that keep cranking out Android/Linux handhelds would simply take the same chipset and whack it in a set top box thats open for us to do what we want with. 

Really should be so much cheaper as there are less parts/weight and portables are cool but a proper controller and couch are so much better. Wonder why no one is doing that as they usually try and one up each other for market share all the time and as mentioned the set top box market (Apart from the new Atari) is stagnant.


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## linuxares (Feb 2, 2021)

The Real Jdbye said:


> Except the Shield TV doesn't run Dolphin perfectly, and I can't imagine PS2 would run well if Dolphin struggles.


Meh it does it's job so far. But I mostly used it for HTPC options and Gamestreaming


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## The Real Jdbye (Feb 2, 2021)

linuxares said:


> Meh it does it's job so far. But I mostly used it for HTPC options and Gamestreaming


OP specifically wants flawless PS2.
For that, a proper PC is pretty much a requirement.

@ital Like @rmorris003 said, this sort of thing is pretty much ETA Prime's specialty. You'll no doubt be able to find the perfect thing for your emulation needs on his channel.


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## notimp (Feb 2, 2021)

ital said:


> It would be great if these Chinese companies that keep cranking out Android/Linux handhelds would simply take the same chipset and whack it in a set top box thats open for us to do what we want with.


They are doing what they can - access to ARM CPUs for chinese Android box makers (they are a niche business - the ones that would sell boxes with above that Google Stick thingy capabilities) is extremely limited. They often end up using Rockchip as a manufacturer for their APU (CPU and GPU combined), and those are still a little more behind, when it comes to performance per watt. 

Because its niche, the first manufacturer thats likely to produce an android box with the performance ceiling you'd need - probably will be NVidia - and only after Nintendo ordered chips from them for the Switch 2. Reading tea leaves at this point, but its not unlikely, that this will be the outcome.


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## ital (Feb 2, 2021)

Would a PC with an AMD E 350 processor and integrated Radeon HD6310 graphics be able to handle Dreamcast smoothly at 1080p in your opinion? 

https://www.notebookcheck.net/AMD-E-350-Notebook-Processor.40941.0.html
https://www.notebookcheck.net/AMD-Radeon-HD-6310.40952.0.html


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## Jokey_Carrot (Feb 3, 2021)

ital said:


> Would a PC with an AMD E 350 processor and integrated Radeon HD6310 graphics be able to handle Dreamcast smoothly at 1080p in your opinion?
> 
> https://www.notebookcheck.net/AMD-E-350-Notebook-Processor.40941.0.html
> https://www.notebookcheck.net/AMD-Radeon-HD-6310.40952.0.html


That is oddly specific.


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## ital (Feb 3, 2021)

Of course, I've a specific machine in mind with those specs.


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## Silent_Gunner (Feb 7, 2021)

Hey, just so happened upon this post here!

So, I have a few questions. What is your budget? How do you want your emulation solution to look on your home theater? Are you even going to be connecting this to a home theater in the first place?

Because, you see, right now isn't really a good time to be jumping into PC gaming with brand spanking new parts, IMHO. Video cards, especially the higher end ones, are, if not out of stock, very expensive, and even more expensive if someone is straight up scalping them on eBay. You could go with some used cards on eBay for sure and come out with a good video card...or you could risk getting someone's video card that they used for cryptocurrency mining. You're gonna want a dedicated video card of some kind to do everything you want on this PC, as I can tell you from my experience with building in three different mini-ITX cases that they are some of the more frustrating cases to work in. Cable management can be a no-sell depending on what kind of case you're working in.0

And then you have motherboards which, while not scalped to the extent video cards are, the higher end ones definitely aren't as available as the lower or mid-tier mobos atm. And if the motherboard on a PC dies, it's equal to tearing down a building; a PITA, a lot of time and money being spent to get everything in your hands, put it all back together, and hopefully not have it happen again.


And then, what kind of case are you looking to get? Depending on what you get, you may have to either get a mobo with Thunderbolt 3 support for an eGPU if you want a dedicated video card that simply won't fit into the case. 

These are the kinds of things you'll want to consider, and you can never do too much research on possibilities for this build you want to put together. Trust me when I say there's been times where I put together a build, I learn about a new thing here and there, and go, "why didn't I consider THAT!?" when putting a build together.

If I were you, I'd go to PCPartPicker.com, create an account, and put something together for us to look at. It will tell you what's compatible with what, list out the different retailers, both online and local, that carry the item, their prices, even the price history, reviews on different products, the whole nine yards. It's really been a help to me in my time as a PC gamer, and I think it will help you as well!


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## ital (Feb 7, 2021)

Very helpful. This is why I say that the PC side has increased exponentially since the days of EMS/XMS memory and wrestling with base 640K.

I'm looking at spending around £500 tops, preferably pre built new but I'm not averse to getting a second hand one. Spec wise I want something that runs Teknoparrot properly so its got to have an Nvidia GPU. Probably a GTX 1650 in a small Mini case like this:


CPU *Intel Core i7-9850H*
Core *6 Cores 12 Threads, 2.6GHz, Up to 4.6GHz*
Cache 16M
Display core *NVIDIA GTX 1650 4GB (soldered on board, Can not upgrade)*
RAM 16GB DDR4-2666 included
Solid State Disk Support 1* M.2 2280 SSD, (NVME 512G SSD Included)

These are currently going for around £800 which is out of my budget but it seems like it should be perfect for emulation and should easily handle stuff like Lindbergh, PS2, GC, Wii and even higher stuff for quite a while. What say?


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## Silent_Gunner (Feb 7, 2021)

ital said:


> Very helpful. This is why I say that the PC side has increased exponentially since the days of EMS/XMS memory and wrestling with base 640K.
> 
> I'm looking at spending around £500 tops, preferably pre built new but I'm not averse to getting a second hand one. Spec wise I want something that runs Teknoparrot properly so its got to have an Nvidia GPU. Probably a GTX 1650 in a small Mini case like this:
> 
> ...



Get a job, and get the PC you truly want out of the gate. I made compromises back in 2016 thanks to false expectations that I had back then about my life and what I was capable of.

You may not be able to afford it financially atm, but you can get a job to where you'd be able to.

Also, and this is just my opinion, but don't go the pre-built route if you can. You have no idea what kind of hardware is in there, and are limited by what that market offers. 

And not to mention, I thought you were aiming for a Ryzen setup?


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## ital (Feb 7, 2021)

I'm not that much of a nerd and this isn't really important for me to sweat like that because I'm literally going to emulating a handful of newer games as the PSC handles pretty much everything upto PSX perfectly. Therefore this isn't some ePeen polishing contest for me, just a question of functionality and one that I'd rather not devote any more money or attention to the specifics than I have to as there are far more interesting things in life one can devote their attention to. Definitely not going to faff around with building one, my time is worth far more than the money saved. 



As for Ryzen, apparently Teknoparrot only works with NVidia GPUs for some of the titles so that is an essential, everything else is flexible.

The issue with PCs - and one of the reasons I walked away - is everything has an incremental alternative so you can wish to spend £100 then think "Well, this Turbosuperflapperdapperbitchslapperpimpmacker 2.0S is only an extra £10 but the upgrade after than is only another £20 so if I spend £130 I'm actually saving money... but then look at...". This craziness applies across the board and the entire field moves ridiculously fast in pursuit of shiny when all I want is a machine to run a handful of new emulators with no frameskip and 1-3 times resolution boost. 

Also amusingly my initial budget was around £250 which then doubled to £500 just looking around so LOLs all round. The PC world doing what it does best.

Just looking back at the PC field with its acronyms, multithreaded core options and various other BS is just so eugchk as you need a PhD in nerdom just to comprehend the crap (not to mention all the time tweaking and configuring to get it just right) whereas Macs and consoles just work but all of the emulators I want are on PC so here we are...

Someone could clean up if they made a high power all in one emu box which was all preconfigured with all the crap hidden out of sight. I'd buy one.


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## Silent_Gunner (Feb 7, 2021)

*inhales deeply*

*exhales the same*

So, here's the part where I have to be upfront with you, to ask you how much you want this PC.

For one thing, you don't need a "PhD in nerdom". Every mainstream CPU in a modern gaming PC these days are multi-threaded. Really, as long as you're getting something that has 8 full-on cores, with or without hyperthreading (or SMT as it seems to be known as nowadays, and that's not referring to the series of RPGs with teenagers using computers to recruit and summon demons), and running at 4.0+ GHz base or boosted, you should be able to emulate anything that's on PC atm in terms of the "processing power required to translate proprietary console CPU code into x86 Windows/Linux/Mac/*insert any other OS* code" here. 

When you're emulating mainstream systems (as in, not handhelds, as they tend to be somewhat easier to emulate until you get to the 3DS/Switch/maybe the Vita) past the PS1/N64, you're gonna want a CPU with a strong IPC (instructions per core) count, as they usually are coded to take advantage of only one or two cores unless if you're playing around with some very specific settings in PCSX2 to get it to use every CPU core it can.

The video card is just there to provide some more muscle to enhance the graphics beyond their original resolution. Where it becomes necessary is at the top ends of emulation; think RPCS3, Xenia, running Wii/GC games with HD texture packs.


And as for tweaking and configuring things to get them just right...welcome to PC gaming. That's just sort of the name of the game. That being said, it's not as complicated as you're making it out to be. There's programs like GeForce Experience you can use to go and fine tune a good set of PC games that you may have on Steam to run optimally on your PC. Personally, I find it to sometimes be a bit more conservative when it tries to configure things for my tastes, so I personally just configure it myself, which isn't too hard for most of the games I'm playing on PC. 

But I digress; I haven't used Teknoparrot myself. As far as arcade ports of games, a lot of the more "arcade-y" games that I imagine I'd want and actually play are either on Steam, or can be played to what's probably arcade perfection on other emulators, as part of the reason arcades have and currently are dying out is that the "arcade experience" for a lot of the games isn't as necessary hardware-wise outside of maybe including a special control interface. It used to be that the arcade far outpaced what a console could output in terms of graphical and sound fidelity back in the 90's. But now? With modern PCs, let alone consoles? It simply isn't necessary, and if it was me, I'd rather just play the PC ports if they're available just because I can imagine it'd be less hassle to do that as opposed to doing everything one has to do to get what is ultimately probably another Windows .exe file with a specific hardware configuration in mind to work on a hardware configuration it wasn't coded for.


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## ital (Feb 7, 2021)

Very handy, thanks for sharing your insight. 

The nerdom part comes in the sheer amount of variables and acronyms. i7 being better than i9, hyper threaded, GPUs with lower numbers being more powerful than those with larger numbers, different memory types etc...

There is simply way too much info that you need to know to navigate this sphere for something like emulation compared to the ideal solution which would be an Android box with a lot more grunt. That alone would take out so much of the faff but it doesn't exist yet so here we are. 

Ideally what I'm looking for is something around about the size of PS4, about as quiet and powerful enough to emulate everything perfectly upto PS3 at 1080p/60FPS output for around £500 max.


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## Silent_Gunner (Feb 7, 2021)

As far as cases like the PS4 goes, closest thing I can think of is the Sentry by Dr. Zaber (which you basically need to pre-order on the Indiegogo page to get your hands on, and requires one to really plan around its unique setup to get something that'd work. Unfortunately, none of these cases have ever appeared on PCPartPicker last I checked, which would have been recently) or the Fractal Design Node 202...which is more of the size of an OG Xbox One, except with more of a reason to be the size that it is. The only other option would be the Silverstone RVZ02/03. You could even go with something so small that it had me envious of it like the Ghost S1.

But let me paint a picture for you as to how outmatched your price point is to your expectations, assuming that nothing in this build is coming from a previous build, which you seem to imply, but haven't outright stated, so please correct me if I'm wrong in that assumption:

https://pcpartpicker.com/user/Silent_Gunner/saved/DgbkJx

When I went to go and to a conversion of 500 pounds to USD, it came out to $686.80. Now, PCPartPicker doesn't have the i7-9850H even listed. And here's where I should stop and inform you that, while I have never personally used the and i7 CPU that goes beyond the x7x0 numbers in a given Intel CPU generation, I have read that those CPUs have compromises and don't support some of the standards that, say, a full fledged i7-9700k would, in this case. It's something I read on the PCSX2 forums long ago back when I was building my first PC.



Personally speaking, it sounds like what you want simply doesn't exist. Android TV boxes aren't sold to enthusiast gamers like you and I; they're sold to a family or someone who doesn't have a smart TV and wants to add "smart" features to it. They aren't decked out with some x86 processor; if anything, its some mobile chip or an ARM processor that simply isn't strong enough to approach what a full-fledged PC can, and while it may get the emulation capabilities to do so one day, that day is very far off from even being something that I would classify as being practical as opposed to experimental like Dolphin is on the Nvidia Shield and the Nintendo Switch.


Are you looking for an AIO box to do everything? Or are you just wanting to be able to play everything in HD? Because a PC running an Intel or Ryzen chip like what you got listed is your only bet. With the latter, all you need are the OG systems themselves, and a willingness to figure out how to homebrew them, convert their video signals to HD, and everything else in between, which is easier to do nowadays compared to how it used to be thanks to various devices, like ODEs for the GC, Saturn, DC, PS1, and the ability to run games off of an OG Xbox HDD. To play these games in HD, you have options like the RetroTINK to go and upscale these old games to TVs and to convert their video signals to an HDMI connection. You might have to be willing to invest in some switchers and a bunch of cables if you want to do this, tho. And have a bunch of controllers, memory cards, a bunch of tools to disassemble old consoles that only work with those old systems specifically, etc..

All of this is gonna require some introspection and research on your part. I can't make that decision for you. I would strongly encourage you to grab your favorite drink, play some chill music playlist, open a bunch of tabs on your current PC, and do some research on the more demanding emulators and what the requirements are to run those games. Or, if you decide to just rig a bunch of old systems and have a retro setup of sorts to have a "it just works" solution like what you seem to imply you really want, get a RetroTINK, a switcher, and see what else one should do if they want to get the most out of those systems. In the case of the OGXbox, PS3, Xbox 360, PS2, etc., just get the original systems themselves, (tho avoid the Super Slim PS3s, as I've heard their homebrew options are the most limited out of the three PS3 models. I'd say the regular Slim is the best one tho) as they're easy to modify even nowadays, and we even have forums for those who still use those systems to this day here on GBATemp!

Best of luck, ital!


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## Jayro (Feb 7, 2021)

There are finally some good Ryzen APUs out now and NUC-sized computers to house them. ETA Prime makes TONS of videos on these with full specs and emulation testing. He likes to test known games that normally struggle the most on certain emulators, so you'll have a good idea of the hardware limitations.

Here's one of my favorites:


And another killer one:


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