Looking for advice on getting used PC for Dolphin

[tim3829]

I know I made a post recently about building a new PC for emulation but I have decided that the cost for what I want to do is just to much for me right now. I am now looking into buying a used PC such as a Dell Optiplex with an i3 or i5 processor around 3Ghz. For example, something like this (https://www.kijiji.ca/v-desktop-computer...nFlag=true), is what I'm looking to get. If I throw in a GTX 1050 and an OEM version of Windows 10, the total cost might be around $330 or possibly less. I mainly want to emulate dolphin with ubershaders and PCSX2. I need an Nvidia gpu for PCSX2 to run well. From what I can tell, building a new budget PC with an Intel Pentium G series processor would cost me around $100 more and doesn't seem worth it when I just plan on building a new PC in a few years.

What does everyone think? Is this my most cost effective solution?

[TKSilver]

So here are the things to think about.

1. If you also want to do PCSX2 then the i5 3470 is right below the recommended performance level for demanding titles in PCSX2, so if you want consistent near 100% speed you should get it on a lot of games but demanding titles will have slowdowns. The i3 variant is just above the minimum recommended performance level so you will have lots of games where parts will not always be 100% speed. This will all depend on your tolerance to slowdowns and which games you want to play. Generally Dolphin is less CPU demanding so most games besides some high demand ones should be fine on the i5.

2. "Throwing in" a 1050 (or a 1050ti) si going to get you really really close to the max rating on the power supply on a 5 year old computer. If you want to or need to replace it then you have to find a mini itx supply to fit it (assuming the pictures are correct) or if it is the SFF factor then it is not happening... At that point you might get off better buying a case with an included power supply and slotting the components from the dell in it (if they fit).

3. The reason we generally recommend the Pentium G series or the AMD Ryzen series is that they are more powerful the G5620 is the same performance as the i5 and the 4600s are more powerful. The Ryzen 1200/1300 is a little slower out of the box, but overclocked are much faster with better multi threaded performance for non emulator things you might also want to do.

4. The last reason is that if you build a low end system on a new platform you can easily upgrade it in to a powerful system bit by bit and keep the parts that still work. With a platform as old as ivy bridge only the drives are really useful and that is only if you want an optical drive and a hdd in the future.

So my warning is that sometimes cheap initial cost is not cheap overall cost.

[KHg8m3r]

Those are 3rd gen i-series processors. They aren’t terrible, but you’ll probably want to try and find a system with a Haswell (4th gen) or better system because Intel did some magic trickery in that gen to make things like Dolphin like 20-40% faster clock for clock

[DJBarry004]

With all of that said, what games are you planning to play?

[tim3829]

With all of that said, what games are you planning to play?

For PS2, I'd like to play Metal Gear Solid 2 and 3, God of War 1 and 2, Burnout 3, Devil May Cry Trilogy, Prince of Persia Trilogy, SSX  Tricky, SSX 3, Ratchet and Clank Series, Tekken series, Katamari Damacy, Stuntman, and I will continue to look for hidden gems I have never played.

For Wii and Gamecube, I'd like to play F-Zero GX, Wind Waker, Smash Bros Melee and Brawl, Rogue Squadron 2, Mario Party Series, Mario Sports series, Metroid Prime Trilogy, Super Mario Galaxy, New Super Mario Bros, etc.

[TKSilver]

PCSX2: Ratchet and Clank will give the i5 CPU issues the rest should mostly be fine. Also for Metal Gear if you don't use a button pressure sensitive controller (like a PS3) and a workaround to get that functionality to work in the emulator then that will cause more issues then any hardware setup could for those games. (honestly since they use the pressure sensitive functionality to that extent they are some of the few games I just don't bother emulating and use the hardware for).

Dolphin: Rogue Squadron 2 will be hard even on a very nice CPU and Galaxy might hve some slow downs here and there, but the rest are generally not too bad to run on the i5. Some would run fine on the i3.