Building Wii 1080p Box, recommended hardware?

[laoshanlong]

Hey guys. I've decided to follow some others and attempt a fun little project. I'm planning on building a small HTPC in my old NES' shell, and I would like to be able to play a decent amount of Wii games at 1080p. Here's the problem though: I don't know what specs I should aim for.

My biggest question is whether or not any socket LGA 775 CPUs can hack it or not. Also, does anyone know what the most capable low-profile GPU is?

[Clessy]

I think you're gonna be up shit creek in terms of gpu power in something that tiny. But i'll give it a go and try to find something that may work.


http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131659 Only choice for a AMD Motherboard
The reason I say go with the AMD is because it has a built in GPU that will Xfire with the pcie card you use giving you
extra gpu power boost.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103846 This is your best bang for buck CPU for emulation of the
Wii / GC. Now its only a dual core so for over all PC game performance its not the best choice. However since wii emulation
doesnt seem to support Quads or 6's yet there is no point in spending the extra money on it.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148591&cm_re=seagate_momentus_xt-_-22-148-591-_-Product This is the best of both worlds as far as hard drive technology is concerned. Its part solid state and part HDD
The solid state learns whats being accessed the most and moved it to the SSD part of the drive giving your core parts
SSD like speeds while your file storage needs is covered by the hdd.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814133356 So I couldnt find a single low profile card that was Xfire compatable so maybe the point of the Mobo is useless but, i still think AMD cpus are more bang for your buck.
This seems to be the only low profile card that isnt a absolute pos. The low profile card is gonna be your bottle neck.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820145280 2 of these bad boys should do the trick.


All you have to do is find a PSU that you can jam into an NES now. You're gonna have such a hard as shit time jamming
these real pc parts into a nes. Most people use micro itx boards but, they dont support cpu's powerful enough for anything
except old school emulators.

[ExtremeDude2]

(05-06-2011, 02:15 PM)Clessy Wrote: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814133356 So I couldnt find a single low profile card that was Xfire compatable so maybe the point of the Mobo is useless but, i still think AMD cpus are more bang for your buck.
This seems to be the only low profile card that isnt a absolute pos. The low profile card is gonna be your bottle neck.

Or you he could go with this one http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814121441 since he MIGHT still be able to use the hybrid crossfireX, and even if he could not he still would not lose anything.

(05-06-2011, 02:15 PM)Clessy Wrote: all you have to do is find a PSU that you can jam into an NES now. You're gonna have such a hard as shit time jamming
these real pc parts into a nes. Most people use micro itx boards but, they dont support cpu's powerful enough for anything
except old school emulators.

He could use an external power supply SIMILAR to this one http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817129006 but I would not use that one because it probably would not have enough power.

[laoshanlong]

Do the Phenom IIs really perform that well? If so, I'll definitely pick those up; they're so much cheaper than any i7/i5/i3 chip. As for the low-profile card, I was looking at a Radeon 5570 for use. I didn't see the 430 GT when I was looking, so I didn't look up its benchmarks. Also, does Dolphin really run best with 4GB of ram available? My home computers have 6GB and 8GB each, so I've never really given it much thought.

As for the PSU, that'll probably be the hardest part, I admit. However, this guy got it to work with an assortment of parts including a PSU, so I'm hopeful:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LatPSJn8nSs

In addition, I might go with a PCI-E Riser + Full-sized Card if I somehow have enough room; I'd have to check out the dimensions of the case more fully.

[Clessy]

(05-07-2011, 03:50 AM)laoshanlong Wrote: Do the Phenom IIs really perform that well? If so, I'll definitely pick those up; they're so much cheaper than any i7/i5/i3 chip. As for the low-profile card, I was looking at a Radeon 5570 for use. I didn't see the 430 GT when I was looking, so I didn't look up its benchmarks. Also, does Dolphin really run best with 4GB of ram available? My home computers have 6GB and 8GB each, so I've never really given it much thought.

As for the PSU, that'll probably be the hardest part, I admit. However, this guy got it to work with an assortment of parts including a PSU, so I'm hopeful:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LatPSJn8nSs

In addition, I might go with a PCI-E Riser + Full-sized Card if I somehow have enough room; I'd have to check out the dimensions of the case more fully.

I've got 8GB of ram. I've never seen my computer use more than 5 and thats with heavy multi tasking. If you're just using dolphin by itself I cant ever imagine needed more than 4. Plus when you built machinese like these you're gonna strip your OS bare. You'll remove all unnessary running task. You might wanna try using Gamebooster. It gives you an idea of how much unnessassary ram is being used. It normally cuts my ram usage from 1.8gb down to around 1.1gb. When using dolphin im normally around at 1.8 to 2gb max it seems.



Btw the Ati card he recommend is the better choice than what I picked out. On the off chance that they can software Xfire you'll get a pretty nice advantage.

Building a system to play emulators is so different than to play pc games. Pure clock speed is the only thing that matters.

Technically a 5ghz OC single core cpu could kick some ass if you're trying to do something novality.

[laoshanlong]

Well, I've taken a look at a few Micro ATX Motherboards and determined some of them would be a tight fit (The NES case has approximately 10 inches of space across, Micro ATX boards are 9.6 inches across), but they'd be doable. The main advantage to them would be that they're cheaper. The biggest problem with such a thing would be the PSU, as previously mentioned, because the Motherboard would then be bisecting the space inside the NES. That Mini ITX Mobo is very nice; I didn't spot that on Newegg earlier, so I assumed all Mini ITX Mobos came with those silly Atom processors. The Mini ITX would provide more space for a PSU, but I still need to find out how much power I'd be drawing first.

Also, somehow I missed that link to a low profile 6570. That's certainly a better card than the 5570 I was looking at, and I'll pick that one up.

I'm planning on using some RetroUSB Adapters to replace the NES ports for NES Emulation, too.

At this point, though, my biggest concern is the CPU. Has anyone put it to the test? How well does it handle Dolphin? I'd rather be bottlenecked by the GPU than the CPU.

Considering all these parts, right now I've put together this build:
http://secure.newegg.com/WishList/PublicWishDetail.aspx?WishListNumber=16061065

I could easily just get a barebones HDD or use a thumb drive (I have 2 32gb ones, though they're rather slow). Then I'd run the games off a USB HDD. Or I could get crafty and put a slim 2.5" HDD in an old NES Game Shell and somehow make it work through the cartridge slot...

This'll be a fun project to put together.

[Clessy]

If you're really wanting to save space you could use a PITA type drive. They're very slow but emulators really dont need that fast of HDD. They're 1.8' in form factor. They're as thin as a CD case and smaller than one too.

That CPU will not bottle neck you its 3.2ghz dual core. Think about it im playing plenty of games fine on a 1.3ghz dual core....

Also if you're truly worried those can OC to 4ghz. Though proper cooling in an nes might be hard.

[laoshanlong]

Well, I've got a laptop that tends to have issues with Wii Emulation with these specs:

Core i7 1.6ghz
Radeon 5870m
8GB RAM

And my desktop does as well:

C2D e6750 @ 2.66ghz
2x 9800gt
6GB RAM

So I really don't know where the CPU stops being a bottleneck.

[Clessy]

Its gotta be the settings you have for the emulator then. You can pretty much turn everything off until you notice the game glitching. GC games will also run better than Wii games.

[Desmond2708]

Anything at 1.6 GHz will stuggle to run Dolphin, even an i7. Recommendation is ~2.5GHz.