Building the perfect emulation machine (PC)?

[Majors]

I use an clone Apevia Qpack that works good for me. Fit's a mATX mb, 8600GT, 2 HDs and DVD just peachy. The handle is swell for taking places. I have put together many PCs for EMU over the years, but I usally just use spare parts I have lying arround rather than buy new shit.

I have had issues with the newer video cards not supporting low res, I hate the up scaling in most EMU's...give me the pixels, I say! But since you have a 40" LCD, some stuff is just gonna look bad IMO.

[404Ender]

Yeah I realize that anything older than SNES will look pretty poor all blown up/stretched out. They make special 2D filters for a lot of games though that do make them look better even at high resolutions so I might try those.

That case looks pretty good although it's still larger than I'm looking for.

Just out of curiosity, how much power from a power supply does that 8600GT require? I found a mini-ITX case and mobo that support a PCI card but I'm worried about being able to power the thing.

I guess if the mini-ITX thing proves to be too difficult I can just go for regular old micro-ATX like you suggested. At least that way I would have some room to expand in case I want to turn it into a media server, full-fledged HTPC with DVR and/or HD video playback, etc.

[Majors]

Just out of curiosity, how much power from a power supply does that 8600GT require?

It doesn't take much, in fact the card doesn't require a extra power connection. I'm running a 300w in it now.

[Flak Beard]

This topic makes me really want to build a mini-emu box, especially looking at those Apevia cases. Right now though, I just have to settle with my laptop hooked up to the TV.

[fastbilly1]

I am a big shuttle fan and almost built a "gaming" computer with one of their bases this week. With that e8400 being such a beast and allowing PS2 emulation at incredible speeds I thought why not, its a $200 chip. Then I realized that the shuttle case I want is only $400. What is the price point you are shooting for?

Also if you are worried about a ssf case's powersupply handling the load, get an actual shuttle made one. The 300 watt Silent Power psu's have been known to handle 8800gt's, overclocked quad cores, and three Sata II drives.

[404Ender]

I'm not looking to build a shuttle PC really though, I'm trying to keep it mini-ITX, where the power supplies are ~120W MAX.

[Phantom of Krankor]

If you must have a Mini-ITX motherboard your choices are going to be limited. For emulation you will want at minimum a Via CX7000 processor however you also want built in HDMI. A medium grade motherboard with those features will cost you about 200 euro. Emulation computers for Nintendo and Megadrive games are one device, but for Playstation, Sega Saturn, and Nintendo 64, they are more processor demanding and you may have problems with the lower end processors.

I recently built a machine powered by a CN700 (A jetway motherboard/cpu combination). After it was assembled I decided to “stress test” it with a playing of Sin and Punishment on Project64. It was running at 19.7 frames per second and was quite playable, but I imagine the more demanding games would become slideshows. Just so you know the machine had a gigabyte of DDR2 (533), a sata 150 harddrive, and was running Windows XP SP2 (without a virus scan at that time). I know the S3 IGP graphical unit supplied its own amount of problems, a real graphic card will make a difference but not enough that I will discover (the machine was for a friends home office and has been running since).

I wish you the best of luck on your project. What kind of casing will you be building this into?

[opticledilusi0n]

I'm giving my recommendation for a mac mini (because i use it !)

n64 emulation works dandy, snes and genesis work good (unfortunately no sega-cd support)

tg-16 works, mame works, nes works

neo geo... i'm not so sure