Hardware Emulation/Mini-PC

[Noctosphere]

Hello fellow tempers,

I'm currently looking for a mini-PC that I would convert into an emulation console (i saw tutorial online, it seems easy enough to do).
I'd just like to know what would be the minimum specs I should look for when shopping for a mini-PC.
My goal is to be able to run well-enough Ryujinx and, if possible, RPCS3.
From what I've read online, I should be focusing on a good CPU and not for a GPU (a good iGPU at most). Also, an 8GB of RAM is enough apparently. And finally, SSD storage (but I'm thinking that an Hybrid storage may be even better for me)
With all these, would you, first, agree with these i formations, and secondly, what would "a good enough CPU" be according to what I'm aiming for?
Thanks in advance

 

[Kiiro_Yakumo]

For CPU Ryzen sector, accept no substitutes. I'm not sure which exactly would be enough but 6C/12T or 8C/16T should be enough I guess? Ryzen has great IPC to spare for PS3 and Switch emulation.

8 GB RAM? I dunno, I've launched "random" game to check how much RAM will be taken and it sits at 4,8 GB for now. I guess 8 GB could work in a scenario where you do ONLY that one thing... oh and smack Windows in the face with "don't waste RAM you cretin!" kind of software and/or settings. Unless you plan to use Linux then it will not be a problem. I guess you could check if there will be more RAM option if your budget allows but 8 GB should fit I guess.

GPU is tricky but as bare minimum Vulkan more than welcome - or let's say "required" in a sense - but that doesn't narrow the options that much unfortunately. Radeon sector with 4 GB of GPU RAM would be nice but mini-PC will probably have something "integrated" which in turn would take us back to the RAM question with "12 GB would be good" in this case.

Something like that I guess could do the job.

EDIT #1 - Oh right I forgot to check others.
Ryujinx with "example game", 6,8 GB RAM used, wow.
Yuzu with the same game climbed to 6,8 GB RAM as well so there's that.
GPU usage was a bit more tricky to measure but I can honestly say that aproximately 1,2 GB GPU RAM was used for this.
So at the very least this proves that 8 GB RAM is not enough.

 

[Noctosphere]

For CPU Ryzen sector, accept no substitutes. I'm not sure which exactly would be enough but 6C/12T or 8C/16T should be enough I guess? Ryzen has great IPC to spare for PS3 and Switch emulation.

8 GB RAM? I dunno, I've launched "random" game to check how much RAM will be taken and it sits at 4,8 GB for now. I guess 8 GB could work in a scenario where you do ONLY that one thing... oh and smack Windows in the face with "don't waste RAM you cretin!" kind of software and/or settings. Unless you plan to use Linux then it will not be a problem. I guess you could check if there will be more RAM option if your budget allows but 8 GB should fit I guess.

GPU is tricky but as bare minimum Vulkan more than welcome - or let's say "required" in a sense - but that doesn't narrow the options that much unfortunately. Radeon sector with 4 GB of GPU RAM would be nice but mini-PC will probably have something "integrated" which in turn would take us back to the RAM question with "12 GB would be good" in this case.

Something like that I guess could do the job.

EDIT #1 - Oh right I forgot to check others.
Ryujinx with "example game", 6,8 GB RAM used, wow.
Yuzu with the same game climbed to 6,8 GB RAM as well so there's that.
GPU usage was a bit more tricky to measure but I can honestly say that aproximately 1,2 GB GPU RAM was used for this.
So at the very least this proves that 8 GB RAM is not enough.

Ryzen was what was recommended. I was just wondering if there were any type of Ryzen I should aim for (as minimum. Btw, i'm not familiar at all with AMD brand/numbering). Also, 6C/12T, 8C/16T, can I aim for anything budget friendly among these specs? Or should I watch something else precisely?

The 8GB ram is, I guess, to have some spare RAM just in case (?). Also, yes, the tutorial I was following was using a Linux-based OS to turn a PC into an emulation console. I guess I can do that with any Windows-based PC (right?)

Now, about the GPU, I'm not sure what you mean by this (see what I bolded in quote). I think it may be an english issue from my part (or you?)
Also, I'm not familiar with vocabular like Vulkan. All I know is that it's similar to OpenGL or DirectX, even if never knew what they were exactly.

 

[Quincy]

The 8GB ram is, I guess, to have some spare RAM just in case (?). Also, yes, the tutorial I was following was using a Linux-based OS to turn a PC into an emulation console. I guess I can do that with any Windows-based PC (right?)

8GB could work, but that's about the bare bare minimum. Take into concideration that a retail Switch has 4GB of RAM on-board which would leave you with 4GB for your operating system which isn't alot. I'd suggest doubleing the memory to 16GB (or at the very least, 12). Preferably with two (if possiblel identical) RAM DIMMs so that your memory is running in dual channel (which makes your memory run twice as fast, I mean DDR means Double Data Rate for a reason )

And yes, you can replace Windows for a Linux distro (or dual-boot Windows and Linux) on (almost) all Windows machines.

Now, about the GPU, I'm not sure what you mean by this (see what I bolded in quote). I think it may be an english issue from my part (or you?)
Also, I'm not familiar with vocabular like Vulkan. All I know is that it's similar to OpenGL or DirectX, even if never knew what they were exactly.

OpenGL DX and Vulkan are rendering engines, Vulkan being the most modern.

 

[SAIYAN48]

You could get a system with an iGPU then use either thunderbolt or a second NVME slot for an eGPU.

 

[Noctosphere]

8GB could work, but that's about the bare bare minimum. Take into concideration that a retail Switch has 4GB of RAM on-board which would leave you with 4GB for your operating system which isn't alot. I'd suggest doubleing the memory to 16GB (or at the very least, 12). Preferably with two (if possiblel identical) RAM DIMMs so that your memory is running in dual channel (which makes your memory run twice as fast, I mean DDR means Double Data Rate for a reason )

And yes, you can replace Windows for a Linux distro (or dual-boot Windows and Linux) on (almost) all Windows machines.

OpenGL DX and Vulkan are rendering engines, Vulkan being the most modern.

Ok, and just to be sure, @Kiiro_Yakumo said something about "Vulkan as a bare minimum" or something like that? That's what I didn't understand. Are there hardware that wouldn't support Vulkan? That's what I wasn't understanding there.

Also, from what I could read, I was thinking about going for a 16GB (just to be safe)

 

[tmnr1992]

I've been searching a bit about this as well for a PC build, and it seems like the Ryzen 7700x is an excellent option for emulating Switch and PS3 among other things, this video will give you an idea of its performance:

 

[Quincy]

Ok, and just to be sure, @Kiiro_Yakumo said something about "Vulkan as a bare minimum" or something like that? That's what I didn't understand. Are there hardware that wouldn't support Vulkan? That's what I wasn't understanding there.

Also, from what I could read, I was thinking about going for a 16GB (just to be safe)

Yes, Vulkan-support is through hardware, old cards do not support Vulkan (same for newer versions of DX like DirectX12) because they are lacking the actual hardware to use Vulkan.

(cards don't have to be recent to have Vulkan support though. My GTX660 which I still daily drive even though it's concidered to be ancient by now was one of the very first cards to support Vulkan and this baby launched well over 12 years ago, just to give an idea how (not) recent a card has to be to support Vulkan. )

(Intel intergrated gpus would support vulkan, as long as it's on an Ivy Bridge or newer cpu, For Ryzen, I believe that every vega intergrated gpu supports Vulkan)


Edit: regarding the memory, nowadays 16GB of RAM is concidered to be bare minimum for pretty much every build, even for low-tier low power builds (even though Windows 10 and 11 run perfectly fine on 8)

 

[Noctosphere]

I've been searching a bit about this as well for a PC build, and it seems like the Ryzen 7700x is an excellent option for emulating Switch and PS3 among other things, this video will give you an idea of its performance:

Thanks a lot. I think Imade up my mind for what I should be looking for.

You could get a system with an iGPU then use either thunderbolt or a second NVME slot for an eGPU.

However, this is something I'd need more information about.
In @tmnr1992 video, it says that actual GPUs would be more useful for upscaling (a little boost if I want to play in 4k, for example). However, as I would be using a mini-PC, there are no room for an actual GPU inside of it. But it's not the first time I hear about external GPU. How do these work exactly? Is it through USB? or do I need to look for a mini-pc with a specific external port?

Thanks again for your help folks

 

[Kiiro_Yakumo]

Ryzen was what was recommended. I was just wondering if there were any type of Ryzen I should aim for (as minimum. Btw, i'm not familiar at all with AMD brand/numbering). Also, 6C/12T, 8C/16T, can I aim for anything budget friendly among these specs? Or should I watch something else precisely?

The 8GB ram is, I guess, to have some spare RAM just in case (?). Also, yes, the tutorial I was following was using a Linux-based OS to turn a PC into an emulation console. I guess I can do that with any Windows-based PC (right?)

Now, about the GPU, I'm not sure what you mean by this (see what I bolded in quote). I think it may be an english issue from my part (or you?)
Also, I'm not familiar with vocabular like Vulkan. All I know is that it's similar to OpenGL or DirectX, even if never knew what they were exactly.

I guess you could try to avoid Pluton-induced Ryzen CPUs so let's say anything with 6xxx / 7xxx and higher if existing. In other words you would want to aim for Ryzen 5xxx for example. Besides that it's not easy for me to do this estimation, my Ryzen is, to put it lightly, "quite a beast" but I have aimed for that many cores for compiling among others. For "just playing games" (TM) I think 8 cores - which in turn means for Ryzen 16 threads - should be good enough even with PS3 emulation in mind and maybe some "future proof" (TM) whatever it would mean in this particular case.

Yes, as far as emulation and some games go it doesn't matter if it will be Linux or Windows if you can go around and do some minimum tuning. Remember Windows is quite a resource waster if left unchecked. For Linux I guess you would want to aim for a bit "light" Desktop Environment or again, do some tuning to not use more resources than needed. Even then 8 GB seems so far to be a bit low if you want to go with PS3 and Switch emulation.

Vulkan is in a sense something like OpenGL or DX (or Glide) but it's more "direct" in communication with hardware. Basically if an emulator can utilise OpenGL and Vulkan - let's asume the code is well written - then Vulkan will get better results out of the two. In case of AMD - or back then ATI cards - I think Radeon HD 7xxx was first that could go for Vulkan (because of GCN architecture it proved to be compatible with Vulkan years later). That's why I said it doesn't narrow the options much. Hmm for now I would "risk" something around RX area so something like Radeon RX 570 as base for the integrated GPU in the mini-PC but that's estimation for now.

You could get a system with an iGPU then use either thunderbolt or a second NVME slot for an eGPU.

Ah that sounds interesting, that would expand GPU options a lot (even if the "physical space" will also increase )

Also, from what I could read, I was thinking about going for a 16GB (just to be safe)

Yeah if you can afford 16 GB it would be practically "instant victory" kind of bet here.

(Intel intergrated gpus would support vulkan, as long as it's on an Ivy Bridge or newer cpu, For Ryzen, I believe that every vega intergrated gpu supports Vulkan)

Vega yes, definitely can go with Vulkan comfortably.

EDIT #1 - As a little bit offtopic "trivia", Raspberry Pi 4 can utilise Vulkan as well, but obviously it's not strong enough for PS3 emulation.

 

[Quincy]

EDIT #1 - As a little bit offtopic "trivia", Raspberry Pi 4 can utilise Vulkan as well, but obviously it's not strong enough for PS3 emulation.

And that is 100% to blame to the Pi not having anywhere near enough power for PS3 emulation (that does require a little bit of juice, thumb rule is required power for emulation == about 10x the power of the system to be emulated.)

 

[SAIYAN48]

This is the best place for learning about eGPUs: https://egpu.io/best-egpu-buyers-guide/#m2-interface

 

[Kiiro_Yakumo]

And that is 100% to blame to the Pi not having anywhere near enough power for PS3 emulation (that does require a little bit of juice, thumb rule is required power for emulation == about 10x the power of the system to be emulated.)

Considering how mad PS3 internals are, I wonder when it will be the time for SBC to be able to emulate PS3 at least decently.
For now I think PS2 is close to be doable... or maybe already is?

 

[Noctosphere]

I guess you could try to avoid Pluton-induced Ryzen CPUs so let's say anything with 6xxx / 7xxx and higher if existing. In other words you would want to aim for Ryzen 5xxx for example. Besides that it's not easy for me to do this estimation, my Ryzen is, to put it lightly, "quite a beast" but I have aimed for that many cores for compiling among others. For "just playing games" (TM) I think 8 cores - which in turn means for Ryzen 16 threads - should be good enough even with PS3 emulation in mind and maybe some "future proof" (TM) whatever it would mean in this particular case.

Hey, I just looked up at what you said about "Pluton-based" CPU. Just to be sure, there are anti-piracy stuff in there? So that mean I wouldn't be able to play emulator stuff on it at all?
Also, the video @tmnr1992 shared show gameplay using a ryzen 7700, does that mean there is a way to "turn this off"?
And finally, if I want similar performance, what is the bare minimum I should be looking for (CPU-wise) before it makes performance drop in an irreversible way (where even the best GPU would not be enough to compensate)?
Also, in the same video, it said that an old GPU would be more than enough to upscale most games. So, if I go for a used GTX 10XX or a high end 9XX (like a 980), would that be enough to be able to play in 4k in most games? (Excluding latest emulators, like ryujinx, rpcs3 and xenia)

 

[Kiiro_Yakumo]

Hey, I just looked up at what you said about "Pluton-based" CPU. Just to be sure, there are anti-piracy stuff in there? So that mean I wouldn't be able to play emulator stuff on it at all?

That would be only the tip of the iceberg at best. On the surface Pluton is "cool feature" that allows to pull system updates (and probably others?) 24/7 even if PC is supposedly turned off as long as the power plug remains. However what does that mean in reality is access to the PC from the outside 24/7 by M$, probably other corporations and whoever can "ride" on the signal so in theory crackers as well. It's basically like destroying whole wall in your house and putting a sign "authorized personel only". Basically rendering any usage of word "privacy" for such a PC as completely non-existing.
Can it be turned off? Unfortunately there is still no answer to it. There IS a switch in the BIOS UEFI sure but how can you be sure the switch is real? The source code behind it is closed so you can't be sure if it's real or just an empty switch for a show.
Can it be used as "anti-cheat" or "anti-piracy" measure? Quite possibly because on the pretext of pulling system update, RAM will be scanned and in theory it could be used as a measure for "this guy is cheating!" / "this guy is a pirate!" kind of thing.
The biggest problem with it is that it resides in CPU so even if you will install Linux and arm it up for security it won't help because CPU is ON TOP of the OS in this hierarchy, it will just send signal "give me these files" and that's it.
Putting aside of course that they are using the word "pirate" incorrectly...

 

[PityOnU]

Everyone here seems to be getting way too sweaty and going off into the weeds on this one.

OP, you can pick up an N100 mini PC for about $150 any day of the week. In terms of price performance, that is really hard to beat. Apparently those are good for anything up to and including the Wii U.

You mention you want to emulate Switch and PS3, though. The reality is that with mini PC's (which is a hard desire of yours), you are paying for the form factor, and the kind of performance required for those still doesn't come cheap. You can check here for what is going on sale and at what prices. Then you can just YouTube performance levels and go from there. Your search should actually be rather straightforward as any mini PC which will meet your goals is basically going to be running a high-end laptop chip, and the SKU's for those (in the form factor you want) are minimal.

FWIW, if you really want to emulate more recent systems, it just isn't cost effective to get an entirely standalone mini PC to do it. It's possible, but you're just burning money. Better choice is just get a N100 box, install some network streaming software, and then take the difference and invest it in you main PC, which can run your games as well as do basically anything else you want.

Edit: As a bonus, here is (apparently) the go-to tool for getting your game collection and emulators hooked into Steam so they are easy to launch with Steam Remote Play.

 

[console]

Don't buy CPU have 6C/12T because not future proof. In few years then most video games will require 8 Cores (16 Threads).

Please avoid Intel gen 13th and 14th have serious problem with voltages are high.

Buy CPU have 8C/16T in year 2023, now (2024) and few years. I glad own AMD CPU with 8 Core (16 Threads), it's more powerful enough for everything running super much fastest without wait time like load time on operating system, internet, movies, games, etc.

Around in year 2026 or later then I will have force to buy another computer with AMD CPU with 12 Cores (24 Threads) or 16 Cores (32 Threads) for more powerful enough for everything at max speed without loss performance. I would choose AMD again over Intel. Intel can't reach much performance like AMD did for gaming.

 

[Noctosphere]

Don't buy CPU have 6C/12T because not future proof. In few years then most video games will require 8 Cores (16 Threads).

Please avoid Intel gen 13th and 14th have serious problem with voltages are high.

Buy CPU have 8C/16T in year 2023, now (2024) and few years. I glad own AMD CPU with 8 Core (16 Threads), it's more powerful enough for everything running super much fastest without wait time like load time on operating system, internet, movies, games, etc.

Around in year 2026 or later then I will have force to buy another computer with AMD CPU with 12 Cores (24 Threads) or 16 Cores (32 Threads) for more powerful enough for everything at max speed without loss performance. I would choose AMD again over Intel. Intel can't reach much performance like AMD did for gaming.

Just to be sure, when you say "future proof", does that mean "to not have a need to upgrade sooner than later"?
Because if so, I don't intend to upgrade the CPU at any time. What I'm looking for, at most (when talking about future-proof), is for what I'm already aiming for (ryujinx/rpcs3/xenia) and their potential future updates. That's it.

Everyone here seems to be getting way too sweaty and going off into the weeds on this one.

OP, you can pick up an N100 mini PC for about $150 any day of the week. In terms of price performance, that is really hard to beat. Apparently those are good for anything up to and including the Wii U.

You mention you want to emulate Switch and PS3, though. The reality is that with mini PC's (which is a hard desire of yours), you are paying for the form factor, and the kind of performance required for those still doesn't come cheap. You can check here for what is going on sale and at what prices. Then you can just YouTube performance levels and go from there. Your search should actually be rather straightforward as any mini PC which will meet your goals is basically going to be running a high-end laptop chip, and the SKU's for those (in the form factor you want) are minimal.

FWIW, if you really want to emulate more recent systems, it just isn't cost effective to get an entirely standalone mini PC to do it. It's possible, but you're just burning money. Better choice is just get a N100 box, install some network streaming software, and then take the difference and invest it in you main PC, which can run your games as well as do basically anything else you want.

Edit: As a bonus, here is (apparently) the go-to tool for getting your game collection and emulators hooked into Steam so they are easy to launch with Steam Remote Play.

Thank you for your information. But from what I saw on youtube, it seems like the N100 struggles on emulators like Dolphin. I think I'll have to pass on this one^^

 

[console]

I means future proof is target to PC games only due to improve in Ray Tracing from Nvidia/AMD/Intel in next few years for CPU will have more bump up for to use extra cores to use them. Not for emulators right now.

I not sure if Nintendo Switch 2 emulator, PS4/PS5 emulators and other future emulators maybe require more powerful CPU and GPU video card. More news will come up on front of Gbatemp forum in near future. I would have force to upgrade or buy whole new gaming computer again because of system requirement will climb up slowly over few years and time to move on.

Just play any video games and help us relax down. Don't worry about it. Cheers

 

[Noctosphere]

Ok, just to be clear, when I say "aiming for ryujinx, rpcs3 and xenia" I mean this would be the best scenario. But again, I'm looking for a budget-friendly hardware to turn into an emulation console.