I need help with building an emulation PC!

[Its_Surreal]

Hello! For the past couple of years I've been using emulators on devices I have around the house such as my psp, vita, ds, and wii. But I want to switch to using a pc to emulate games. I don't know if I should build a pc and stream to the nividia shield for when I'm on the go, or if I should build a laptop. I'm new to emulating on computers and any help is appreciated. I need help with what I should build: a pc or laptop, what parts to get, and how much it would cost. I'm planning on emulating games from the nes up to the 3ds with citra. I'm also pretty sure that there's a wip of a wii u emulator so it'd be nice to run that too. Thanks in advance!

 

[TotalInsanity4]

Build a PC definitely. Laptops will almost always be either productivity oriented or PC gaming-oriented, so you won't get as great of performance per dollar as you would picking parts individually

For your CPU you're going to want to go as far down this list as your budget will allow, but be sure to stick with Intel CPUs whatever you do, they tend to emulate better

For GPU you're going to want to go AMD (again, just because of how emulation works). You can afford to go a bit lower here than most gamers would, I'd recommend at least a R7 270 or equivalent, make sure it has at least 2GB of VRAM, but preferably at least 4GB

If you need help with other parts or want specific suggestions feel free to reply here and some of the helpful people on this subforum (including myself) will be happy to give you a hand

 

[Its_Surreal]

Build a PC definitely. Laptops will almost always be either productivity oriented or PC gaming-oriented, so you won't get as great of performance per dollar as you would picking parts individually

For your CPU you're going to want to go as far down this list as your budget will allow, but be sure to stick with Intel CPUs whatever you do, they tend to emulate better

For GPU you're going to want to go AMD (again, just because of how emulation works). You can afford to go a bit lower here than most gamers would, I'd recommend at least a R7 270 or equivalent, make sure it has at least 2GB of VRAM, but preferably at least 4GB

If you need help with other parts or want specific suggestions feel free to reply here and some of the helpful people on this subforum (including myself) will be happy to give you a hand

Do you think the budget would be less than 1,000 for emulating 3ds and wii u? (Just throwing out a high number lol) And would streaming it to the nividia shield when I'm out of the house work? Like I said, I'm new to emulating on a pc and don't know how streaming to the shield works. I know you could install android emulators on the shield and transport the saves back and forth between the pc and shield... I'm used to running emulators on handhelds so I'd always use them out of the house, so portability is a concern.

 

[TotalInsanity4]

Do you think the budget would be less than 1,000 for emulating 3ds and wii u? (Just throwing out a high number lol) And would streaming it to the nividia shield when I'm out of the house work? Like I said, I'm new to emulating on a pc and don't know how streaming to the shield works. I know you could install android emulators on the shield and transport the saves back and forth between the pc and shield... I'm used to running emulators on handhelds so I'd always use them out of the house, so portability is a concern.

Ah, sorry, I completely missed the Shield requirement! In that case, go with a GTX 1050TI or GTX 1060 6GB

Yes, you could certainly build one for less than $1,000USD. If you plan it out right you can actually get pretty competent performance for $700-$800 or lower, it just depends on what your budget is and what kind of compromises you're willing to make

 

[Its_Surreal]

Ah, sorry, I completely missed the Shield requirement! In that case, go with a GTX 1050TI or GTX 1060 6GB

Yes, you could certainly build one for less than $1,000USD. If you plan it out right you can actually get pretty competent performance for $700-$800 or lower, it just depends on what your budget is and what kind of compromises you're willing to make

How does shield streaming work? Does it work off of wifi or cellular data? I sound like such a noob right now lol.

 

[TotalInsanity4]

How does shield streaming work? Does it work off of wifi or cellular data? I sound like such a noob right now lol.

Nah you're good! I've never personally used it but from what I understand it can be either. It effectively just grabs the image from your monitor and streams it as video to your Shield, and then the Shield sends controller info to the PC. It's all done through a dedicated NVidia app that runs in the background of the PC

 

[Its_Surreal]

Nah you're good! I've never personally used it but from what I understand it can be either. It effectively just grabs the image from your monitor and streams it as video to your Shield, and then the Shield sends controller info to the PC. It's all done through a dedicated NVidia app that runs in the background of the PC

Alright thanks! I'm pretty sure it runs on android and there are tons of emulators on there that I can use if I'm out and about. So if it's about $800 and the shield is about $200, it'd be about $1,000 dollars to build the ultimate emulation machine. Thanks for the help!

 

[TotalInsanity4]

Alright thanks! I'm pretty sure it runs on android and there are tons of emulators on there that I can use if I'm out and about. So if it's about $800 and the shield is about $200, it'd be about $1,000 dollars to build the ultimate emulation machine. Thanks for the help!

The Shield is Android, yes, so Google Play emulators will work, but keep in mind that if you want better performance (for instance, GameCube emulation or more accurate SNES emulation as a few examples), you can just stream from your computer, at the sacrifice of latency

Although, I suppose I should mention that GameStream works best (only?) when you're connected to the same router, so it may not be ideal for going outside of the house and playing it while you're on the bus or something

 

[Its_Surreal]

The Shield is Android, yes, so Google Play emulators will work, but keep in mind that if you want better performance (for instance, GameCube emulation or more accurate SNES emulation as a few examples), you can just stream from your computer, at the sacrifice of latency

Although, I suppose I should mention that GameStream works best (only?) when you're connected to the same router, so it may not be ideal for going outside of the house and playing it while you're on the bus or something

Yeah I figured that. But the one's I'd be using the most are gameboy and ds and there are already really good emulators for those on android.

 

[Yoguur8989]

I hate to revive this dead thread but I am interested in doing the same thing. I already have a 1050Ti I want to reuse from my current rig, but everything else will have to be replaced. I'm looking to emulate PlayStation 3 (more specifically LittleBigPlanet and Persona 5) and Nintendo Switch (as well as Wii U, 3DS, PS2, etc) What is the minimum spec I should go for? I only want to run the games in their vanilla state (so no crazy graphics mods) at the minimum resolution of 1080p. My budget is below $500 but I would like to go as low as possible.