Dolphin PC buying guide

[RLB31384]

Hi Everyone,

I am going to build my first pc here in the next month or two. Am trying to look up prices and everything on ebay as I figure it will be a lot cheaper if I just buy some lightly used things off sellers on ebay. Anyone else do this, or should I just get everything new...

I am looking to spend ~1000..but I may just go for more, I want a pc that can play Dolphin at max speed, but I will also use it for programming and watching movies, graphic design exc. So I want a bit bigger harddrive then the raptor thats posted on the enthusiast build.. Im thinking a bigger harddrive wouldnt cause much slower gameplay? maybe slower load times, but thats it? Im going to look for a blue case, but may get a different one. Anyways whats the opinion on used computer components from ebay, and anyone want to help me piece together a good pc for ~1000, I would like a motherboard that will let me upgrade quite a bit later as well.. Im assuming the EVGA E758-A1 $294 will let me upgrade it quite a bit, Its about 100 dollars cheaper then that on ebay I believe. Says it has a max of 24 gb of ram for future upgrading as well.

---

Also another question, I have a laptop at the house, whats the chances of it playing any wii games at decent speed?

It has AMD Turion 64 X2 Dual-Core Mobile Technology TK-57 Processor 1.9ghz
2 gig or ram, and ATI Radeonâ„¢ HD3200 Graphics

I would like to play Mario Kart Wii, im thinking ill have to wait for my new pc for that?

[abfab126]

1 - dont buy used component except from friends and under warranty if possible
2 - dont buy used components from ebay
3 - Buy a new computer / large drive samsung spinpoint F1 1 or 2 Tb are fine for gaming , gygabite x58a ud 5 , intel core i7 930 / 6 gigs of ddr3 1333 / nvidia geforce gtx 460 1gb / corsair 750watts PSU / lots of fans ^^

4- throw your laptop away

[hansenderek]

dont forget to lower the voltage on it with the how to speedup dolphin with no hardware upgrades forum will make it so you do not need so many fans lol

[turingpest]

an i5 is cheaper than an i7 yet will still get you fullspeed in dolphin, and uses a potentially cheaper motherboard which will also save you some money. a 750w psu is overkill for that sort of rig. 500w - 650w would be more than enough and as well as being cheaper will save you a few dollars on electricity costs compared to a 750w psu due to efficiency at the wattage you'll be running at. any recently released hard drive of 500gb or over will be fine, and about as fast as that raptor listed in the out of date enthusiast rig you referenced (except in seek speed but needs must). just get the size you require. also, lots of fans aren't necessarily necessary, and will only serve to make your rig louder. start with as few as possible and if your temps are too high then add more as you go.

and whilst i doubt that that laptop's much good for wii emulation, you will be able to play n64 and snes games on it so i wouldn't throw it away

[RLB31384]

(07-21-2010, 08:25 AM)turingpest Wrote: an i5 is cheaper than an i7 yet will still get you fullspeed in dolphin, and uses a potentially cheaper motherboard which will also save you some money. a 750w psu is overkill for that sort of rig. 500w - 650w would be more than enough and as well as being cheaper will save you a few dollars on electricity costs compared to a 750w psu due to efficiency at the wattage you'll be running at. any recently released hard drive of 500gb or over will be fine, and about as fast as that raptor listed in the out of date enthusiast rig you referenced (except in seek speed but needs must). just get the size you require. also, lots of fans aren't necessarily necessary, and will only serve to make your rig louder. start with as few as possible and if your temps are too high then add more as you go.

and whilst i doubt that that laptop's much good for wii emulation, you will be able to play n64 and snes games on it so i wouldn't throw it away

Thanks everyone, ill see what I can do, do I need to get anything else other then the hardware mentioned..none of the hardware comes with fans to keep it cool? How bout a liquid cooling system, should I bother? I may go smaller harddrive and just get an external drive later. Do I need to buy heat sinks separate as well? I have messed around my with old pcs a bit, but never put one together to know what I need to buy separate. What about thermal paste? anything else?

[Mequa]

(07-21-2010, 02:06 AM)RLB31384 Wrote: Also another question, I have a laptop at the house, whats the chances of it playing any wii games at decent speed?

It has AMD Turion 64 X2 Dual-Core Mobile Technology TK-57 Processor 1.9ghz
2 gig or ram, and ATI Radeonâ„¢ HD3200 Graphics

I would like to play Mario Kart Wii, im thinking ill have to wait for my new pc for that?

I have a laptop with similar specs to that. It's not quite up for running Wii games in Dolphin - although Super Mario Sunshine for Gamecube is playable on low settings (with some slowdown) at the native screen resolution. PCSX2 (for PlayStation 2) is also quite slow on this hardware. I'm not quite ready to throw it away, however - although I am hoping to get a more powerful rig within the next year.

Some other emulators which do run well on such a laptop are the recently open-sourced nullDC for Sega Dreamcast (the fastest version seems to be v1.0.0 beta 1.6), NO$GBA for Nintendo DS (the fastest version is 2.6a, I also recommend the NO$Zoomer patch), and the latest VisualBoyAdvance-M for Gameboy Advance (and Color/classic). There are also Project64 and 1964 for Nintendo 64, ePSXe for PlayStation 1, several Sega Saturn emulators (plus Jaguar and 3DO), and for the classic consoles Kega Fusion for Sega, and ZSNES and Nestopia for Nintendo. Add to that WinUAE for Amiga/CD32 and DOSBox/ScummVM for old PC games. Such a laptop is still quite an emulator-capable portable or semi-portable PC, however not quite up to running Dolphin or PCSX2 fullspeed.

For your current laptop, you could try Mario Kart 64 in Project64, Mario Kart DS in NO$GBA+NO$Zoomer, and both the Gamecube and Wii versions of Mario Kart in Dolphin, and see which gives the best Mario Kart experience on your laptop.

When/if I eventually get my rig, I will gaming-wise use it largely for native PC gaming, although the #1 emulator on it will be Dolphin, mainly for Wii as well as Gamecube. As well as my primary platform for running Dolphin, it will also be my primary platform for PCSX2 for PS2, as I don't currently have another system capable of running these full-speed. Other promising (but not quite there yet) emulators I'll try will be Cxbx/Xeon for the original Xbox and PCSP/JPCSP for PSP.

Other emulators which run well on my current laptop but will benefit from a faster PC are nullDC, with its newer builds with advanced options which will run faster (getting fullspeed currently requires using the older build above), and also NO$GBA for DS and other DS emulators which currently require a fast PC to utilize GPU 3D rendering and to run at double speed. Not many of the other emulators on my list will show that much benefit from a faster PC, though, and these get the benefit of being able to run on a (semi-) portable machine, as well as a reasonably decent DS and Dreamcast experience. So I won't be ditching the laptop soon, just supplementing it with a rig.

[RLB31384]

(07-21-2010, 04:36 PM)Mequa Wrote:

(07-21-2010, 02:06 AM)RLB31384 Wrote: Also another question, I have a laptop at the house, whats the chances of it playing any wii games at decent speed?

It has AMD Turion 64 X2 Dual-Core Mobile Technology TK-57 Processor 1.9ghz
2 gig or ram, and ATI Radeonâ„¢ HD3200 Graphics

I would like to play Mario Kart Wii, im thinking ill have to wait for my new pc for that?

I have a laptop with similar specs to that. It's not quite up for running Wii games in Dolphin - although Super Mario Sunshine for Gamecube is playable on low settings (with some slowdown) at the native screen resolution. PCSX2 (for PlayStation 2) is also quite slow on this hardware. I'm not quite ready to throw it away, however - although I am hoping to get a more powerful rig within the next year.

Some other emulators which do run well on such a laptop are the recently open-sourced nullDC for Sega Dreamcast (the fastest version seems to be v1.0.0 beta 1.6), NO$GBA for Nintendo DS (the fastest version is 2.6a, I also recommend the NO$Zoomer patch), and the latest VisualBoyAdvance-M for Gameboy Advance (and Color/classic). There are also Project64 and 1964 for Nintendo 64, ePSXe for PlayStation 1, several Sega Saturn emulators (plus Jaguar and 3DO), and for the classic consoles Kega Fusion for Sega, and ZSNES and Nestopia for Nintendo. Add to that WinUAE for Amiga/CD32 and DOSBox/ScummVM for old PC games. Such a laptop is still quite an emulator-capable portable or semi-portable PC, however not quite up to running Dolphin or PCSX2 fullspeed.

For your current laptop, you could try Mario Kart 64 in Project64, Mario Kart DS in NO$GBA+NO$Zoomer, and both the Gamecube and Wii versions of Mario Kart in Dolphin, and see which gives the best Mario Kart experience on your laptop.

When/if I eventually get my rig, I will gaming-wise use it largely for native PC gaming, although the #1 emulator on it will be Dolphin, mainly for Wii as well as Gamecube. As well as my primary platform for running Dolphin, it will also be my primary platform for PCSX2 for PS2, as I don't currently have another system capable of running these full-speed. Other promising (but not quite there yet) emulators I'll try will be Cxbx/Xeon for the original Xbox and PCSP/JPCSP for PSP.

Other emulators which run well on my current laptop but will benefit from a faster PC are nullDC, with its newer builds with advanced options which will run faster (getting fullspeed currently requires using the older build above), and also NO$GBA for DS and other DS emulators which currently require a fast PC to utilize GPU 3D rendering and to run at double speed. Not many of the other emulators on my list will show that much benefit from a faster PC, though, and these get the benefit of being able to run on a (semi-) portable machine, as well as a reasonably decent DS and Dreamcast experience. So I won't be ditching the laptop soon, just supplementing it with a rig.

I can get super mario wii to run at about 80-100%...im doing a few more tweaks to it to see if I can bump it some.. I have played Mario Kart double dash and Mario Sunshine on it with pretty good results. I havent tried a Dreamcast emulator, ill have to take a look at it. I have played most of the rest, im waiting for DS to make it where I can link the emulators together to play 2 players, like the gba does...the ds emulator looks like its dead though..but who knows.

[dxx_21]

which is better to run dolphin i3, i5 C2D (E8400)? important as the graphics card?

[obscured]

Get a decent gpu and a i5 thats 3ghz+

[dxx_21]

decent gpu? ati 5670 is ok?