Basic Specs Suggestions

[Nintendo Maniac 64]

I can't really help you much with used components, but for new components, if you don't need anything immediately then it might be wiser to wait a few weeks for the release B450 motherboards or Pentium Gold CPUs (with the sole exception of DDR4 RAM － that stuff's expensive, so if you see a good deal on fast 2x4GB DDR4 such as this then you might want to get it anyway.

Basically B450 motherboards would provide guaranteed out-of-the-box support for the Ryzen 2200G (otherwise AMD can loan you a free boot kit to update your BIOS) while the Pentium Gold CPUs (particularly the G5400) would be cheaper than the Pentium G4560 but would provide the faster iGPU of the Pentium G4600 as well as having a better upgrade path into the future).




Nevertheless, if you want to buy the stuff now, then consider one of the following two CPUs & motherboard combinations:

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant
CPU: Intel - Pentium G4600 3.6GHz 2core/4thread Processor  (£57.99 @ Aria PC)
Motherboard: ASRock - B250M Pro4 Micro ATX LGA1151 Motherboard  (£63.73 @ YoYoTech)
Total: £121.72

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant
CPU: AMD - Ryzen 3 2200G 3.5GHz 4core/4thread Processor  (£77.99 @ Aria PC)
Motherboard: ASRock - A320M Pro4 Micro ATX AM4 Motherboard  (£57.99 @ Amazon UK)
Total: £135.98


If you want to overclock the CPU, then get this instead (note the Pentium G4600 will still be faster in Dolphin even with the 2200G overclocked since Dolphin doesn't really care for more than 2 cores, but the Ryzen 2200G has a much faster integrated GPU for rendering at high resolutions or playing PC games and such):

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant
CPU: AMD - Ryzen 3 2200G 3.5GHz 4core/4thread Processor  (£77.99 @ Aria PC)
Motherboard: ASRock - AB350M Pro4 Micro ATX AM4 Motherboard  (£69.26 @ More Computers)
Total: £147.25



And regardless of which CPU + motherboard you go for, the following components are what I personally feel are ideal.  Note that the RAM I chose seems to be on sale, so you may want to get that sooner rather than later (especially since RAM is stupid expensive right now).  Also storage is kind of small, but will still be enough for the OS, a couple programs, and a couple GameCube games (especially if you use Linux instead, such as Ubuntu LTS 18.04 when it releases sometime this month), and adding a secondary mechanical hard drive after-the-fact is really easy (much easier than upgrading your primary drive with an OS and stuff to an SSD).

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant
Memory: Team - Vulcan 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR4-3000 Memory  (£79.99 @ Overclockers.co.uk)
Storage: Western Digital - Green  120GB 2.5" Solid State Drive  (£31.99 @ Aria PC)
Case: Zalman - ZM-T3 MicroATX Mini Tower Case  (£25.99 @ Amazon UK)
Power Supply: be quiet! - Pure Power 10 400W 80+ Silver Certified ATX Power Supply  (£45.87 @ Ebuyer)
Total: £183.84