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Help Me Build a Dedicated Emulator Machine
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Help Me Build a Dedicated Emulator Machine
04-14-2015, 04:45 AM
#1
daudi81 Offline
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So I've been playing Xenoblade Chronicles on my (2014) Macbook Pro 15" , for the last few days. The game runs really well, but I'd like to get a dedicated windows machine to hook up to my HDTV in the living room and use it solely as an emulator and maybe some other storage / streaming related tasks that I've been meaning to set up. So this is more or less hitting a few birds with one stone - and being an old console emulator is a big bonus.

The problem is I need something that:
A) Is relatively portable so I can tuck it in the corner and/or move it around when I travel (which I regularly do). It doesn't necessarily need to be console portable, but as portable & small as I can get without sacrificing too much performance.
B) Is aesthetically pleasing - or as much as possible. My wife is a stickler for decorations, and I won't hear the end of it if I put something in the living room that resembles a bulky wonky PC.
C) I can run all emulators at max or near max settings.

I was thinking about just buying a Mac Pro (the new small / black ones) as they not only look good, but are fairly portable. That would also give me the option to use it as a media center among many other things. But I'd rather have a native windows machine to bypass any future headaches or problems, and a mac pro is probably complete overkill for something like this.

I don't really have a set budget in mind - I just want something that is fairly future proof, looks good, is small, quiet (or as quiet as something like this can be) and will run most emulated games in HD (wii, gc, ps2, older nintendo consoles, etc). Then again, I don't want to buy a $600 processor if I can get a $100 processor that will give me 85% of the performance I need.

I don't have a problem building it. I have not built a computer in a long time, but I do know how to. I've just been out of the computer shopping game for almost a decade, so I have no idea what to order, what's good, etc - and I'm sure there's certain configurations that work better than others for emulation. I think the small / portable thing will be more of a function of what case I buy - but I've been out of the game for so long that I could be wrong.

Let me know if anyone can help out.
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04-14-2015, 06:11 AM
#2
KHg8m3r Offline
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You'll want to look into the Intel Pentium G3258. When overclocked, it plays Dolphin (and PCSX2/PPSSPP/other emulators) like an overclocked i5-4690K/i7-4790K, since they rely on single-threaded performance. There are certain H81 boards that can overclock it, but I recommend a Z97 board to be safe.

And in PC games, it performs just as well as an i3-4350-ish

The Intel HD on it isn't great, so get a low profile graphics card as a supplement.
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04-14-2015, 06:32 AM
#3
daudi81 Offline
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Hi KHg8m3r -

Thanks for the response. I'd rather not overclock or deal with that if possible (unless somehow required to do this). I'd rather spend a few more dollars and not have to worry about messing with all that. I've done it before, but I want this to be as quick and painless as possible.

As far as video cards, I have a windows machine that has a Geforce GTX 660ti, but the thing is massive and LOUD and I was trying to keep case size down to a minimum anyway.
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04-14-2015, 06:43 AM (This post was last modified: 04-14-2015, 06:49 AM by daudi81.)
#4
daudi81 Offline
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To visualize what I'm trying to do, I found a complete wacko overkill version of what I'm trying to do: https://www.falcon-nw.com/promo/tiki-z

Sort of like a hybrid between those under-powered min-pc's with low wattage laptop CPU's and the overkill falcon tiki-z. More power than a mini-pc, but not over the top wacko overkill like the tiki-z. Hopefully that makes sense.

Does anything like this exist, or do I need to build this from scratch?

Something like one of these: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/mini-pc-round-up,3697.html  ....but maybe with a discrete graphics card (so the box would obviously need to be bigger).

Can I get away with integrated graphics or do I need something dedicated? I know the newest round of intel has fairly beefy graphics processors (at least compared to a few years ago).
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04-14-2015, 10:42 AM
#5
KHg8m3r Offline
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http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16856164012
The Gigabyte Brix is what you might like. The Iris Pro iGPU is pretty good, as from what I've heard it can reach up to 3-4x IR in Dolphin.
The i7-4770R is a good CPU, clocked high and whatnot. You may want to replace the thermal compound if it starts to run to hot.

I mentioned the G3258 because it's a cheap yet strong option, but it really shines when being overclocked.

You can always build an HTPC yourself like the Falcon Tiki-Z if that's what you want.
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04-14-2015, 04:01 PM
#6
daudi81 Offline
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(04-14-2015, 10:42 AM)KHg8m3r Wrote: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16856164012
The Gigabyte Brix is what you might like. The Iris Pro iGPU is pretty good, as from what I've heard it can reach up to 3-4x IR in Dolphin.
The i7-4770R is a good CPU, clocked high and whatnot. You may want to replace the thermal compound if it starts to run to hot.

I mentioned the G3258 because it's a cheap yet strong option, but it really shines when being overclocked.

You can always build an HTPC yourself like the Falcon Tiki-Z if that's what you want.

Wow, that is super cheap! Will that run pretty much everything I throw at it (emulation wise?). Do you think it's significantly quicker than my MacBook Pro as far as emulation is concerned?

I wonder if there is room for a dedicated v card in case I want to add one later to run pc games off of. Nice find.
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04-14-2015, 04:14 PM
#7
daudi81 Offline
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Nix that dedicated v card comment. Didn't realize how small it was, ha.
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04-15-2015, 02:36 AM
#8
NKF98 Offline
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Just get a bigger case lol. But the Pentium should run most Dolphin games in its path.
Arch
Intel Core i7 - 4510U
iHD4400
8GB RAM

Check here first:
wiki.dolphin-emu.org
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04-15-2015, 02:37 AM (This post was last modified: 04-15-2015, 02:37 AM by KHg8m3r. Edit Reason: Typos )
#9
KHg8m3r Offline
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The Brix CPU is way stronger than your Mac I'm guessing, but I would need the actual specs of your Mac to really compare them
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04-15-2015, 07:08 AM
#10
daudi81 Offline
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It's the late 2013 / early 2014 macbook Pro 15".....so it's got the 2.3Ghz haswell quad core i7 cpu (turbo'd up to 3.5ghz) 6mb l3 cache, 16gig ram, 512SSD, Geforce GT750M, etc etc.

Brix is probably a newer CPU and it's a 3.9Ghz - so almost double the speed. But I don't really know if that compares apples to apples since it's a much newer CPU with more bells and whistles...so it's probably at least double the speed of my Macbook.

The only thing I'm worried about is the GPU - should that matter? I may end up wanting to play some PC games on it every once in awhile - but I've heard the integrated graphics in these new intel CPU's are fairly beefy. How much does GPU even matter in emulation? I guess I could just take the specs of the Brix and get a slightly larger box that will fit a modern GPU just in case - but I REALLY like the size of the Brix. Reviews say it's noisy, so that's a little worriesome.
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