Buying a dedicated box: SoC or PC?

Libretro Lakka
#1

Hi folks,

Been lurking around here for a while now and playing with Lakka by booting from a USB to my PC and I’ve installed it on an old pc too. I really, really like it and I’m curious to see how it develops, but I’m not the retro gamer in my family. My little brother owns most of the vintage consoles as well as hundreds of games for them all. I know he’d love Lakka, so I’m buying him a ‘console’ for Christmas (it’s also a sneaky way to prove the superiority of linux, but never mind). The problem is, I’m really confused over hardware. My main pc is 6700k/16GB DDR4/GTX760ti and my old pc is a Phenom Quad core with 8gb ram, so I’ve got everything working pretty well but I know that’s not the case for all.

I’ve got two options, I can either build him a pc or I can buy a preconfigured SoC system. the latter is the preferred option as I think they look more like consoles, and nobody wants a haphazard pc made from second hand components as a present. Having said that, I don’t see a point buying him something that can’t play the emulators he’d want. So, with max £150 to spend, what’s the best system for playing (ideally everything!) but at least the Playstation and N64 games?

Are Atom-based Z3735f boxes like this any good? Or what about a mini itx pc? AMD APUs (stick with Intel, right?) What about a ‘normal’ pc like this one? If it helps at all, I have a spare 9500GT card lying around that I could put in a mini itx board or a normal pc or I could buy a little low profile card like a GT610 to put in that i3 pc or similar.

Sorry for all the questions, I’m good with hardware, really! It’s just that Lakka and Libretro seem to have some very specific requirements. Basically, do I go for a SoC or a full pc?

Thanks in advance, Jack

#2

[QUOTE=ShakeyJake;29487]Hi folks,

Been lurking around here for a while now and playing with Lakka by booting from a USB to my PC and I’ve installed it on an old pc too. I really, really like it and I’m curious to see how it develops, but I’m not the retro gamer in my family. My little brother owns most of the vintage consoles as well as hundreds of games for them all. I know he’d love Lakka, so I’m buying him a ‘console’ for Christmas (it’s also a sneaky way to prove the superiority of linux, but never mind). The problem is, I’m really confused over hardware. My main pc is 6700k/16GB DDR4/GTX760ti and my old pc is a Phenom Quad core with 8gb ram, so I’ve got everything working pretty well but I know that’s not the case for all.

I’ve got two options, I can either build him a pc or I can buy a preconfigured SoC system. the latter is the preferred option as I think they look more like consoles, and nobody wants a haphazard pc made from second hand components as a present. Having said that, I don’t see a point buying him something that can’t play the emulators he’d want. So, with max £150 to spend, what’s the best system for playing (ideally everything!) but at least the Playstation and N64 games?

Are Atom-based Z3735f boxes like this any good? Or what about a mini itx pc? AMD APUs (stick with Intel, right?) What about a ‘normal’ pc like this one? If it helps at all, I have a spare 9500GT card lying around that I could put in a mini itx board or a normal pc or I could buy a little low profile card like a GT610 to put in that i3 pc or similar.

Sorry for all the questions, I’m good with hardware, really! It’s just that Lakka and Libretro seem to have some very specific requirements. Basically, do I go for a SoC or a full pc?

Thanks in advance, Jack[/QUOTE]

Soc: u can buy odroid XU4…cheap compact and powerful…but if you plan to have full sets of ROMs/game images…then may be repurposing your PC parts is easier…unless u wanna by a SoC and have an external USB Drive…

#3

you need good videocard if you want use sharder.

#4

Man… Those “sharder’s” ^^… they’ll shard and shart your video card up like you won’t believe! XD

…Anyway, Hi ShakeyJake!

In my humble opinion, I think buying one of those ARM devices is kind of a waste. ARM CPU’s are great in the mobile sector where low power consumption and multi-threading really enhance user experience, but for general console emulation - which is what you’re aiming for here - I’d say: stay away! I explain why and propose a “pre-configured” system in this thread -which was discussed previously: LINK

The Bay Trail Atom Z3735f you mentioned, is a decent little quad core for the money, but since these are rated for a 3w TDP and are generally found in tablets, you’re going to run into a similar situation as with the ARM based systems. I think you were on a better track with the custom ITX PC - the only negative though: it will no doubt cost more than your budget when you factor in, mainboard, RAM, CPU, storage device, case, power supply, misc. cables (if you don’t have them laying around that is), etc.

I really do think that the device I linked above will be sufficient for your budget, but do keep in mind that the newest CN62 series Broadwell based ASUS Chromebox will be hitting soon… Oh and also dropping now, new ULV and desktop variants of Intel’s “Skylake” CPU’s. I’m reading moderate gains from Haswell/Broadwell on the x86 side, but 2x-3x more GPU performance per watt! Although, I’m not sure what that means specifically for available “pre-configured” devices based on this tech by the end of the year; might be something worth looking into though. -Then there are the “MintBox Mini” PC’s - which are kind of like an unofficial AMD NUC… Lot’s to choose from! Anyway, good luck in your search!

#5

Thanks guys.

I know this is very late but I thought I’d share that we ended up with a i3-2120, 4gb ram and a GT210. Probably overkill but I found a local charity that sells office pcs that have been taken out of businesses. So we got a decent office machine (2120, 4gb ddr3 and a 500gb hdd) for £60 and then bought the GTX210 for £25 on sale.

Very nice machine, easily fast enough to be a normal pc, for way cheaper than any of the SoC options.

#6

I put together a few systems for friends running Lakka on Raspberry Pi3 SOCs, using PS3 controllers. Very cheap, runs most systems (up to PSX/N64/PSP).

#7

for lakka/retroarch i use a very small “desktop pc” at moment (asrock desk mini 110 + 8 gb ddr4 ram, pentium G4500 skylake cpu [2x3,5 Ghz] cooled by a Noctua NH-L9i) it can run most cores without “video threaded” at full speed. Including mednafen saturn (no frameskipping) and reicast (full speed in many games) and mupen64plus. Most Games i tried seems to run very fine.

#8

I have a dedicated RPi3, a dedicated XU4 and have two x86-64 boxes (LattePanda and an Asus Chromebox) for Lakka. If you can, get the PC. The performance is night and day between the SoC and PC versions. It runs like a champ on those and doesn’t stutter on later consoles like the SoCs do (Saturn, PSP, Dreamcast, N64). The R-Pi 3 will strain under full load on Rare games on N64 (Goldeneye). Even the XU4 has a hard time at times and it has 2-3 times the power of the RPi3. I would say it depends on what you’re in the market for. If you want the absolute best Lakka machine, choose PC, get a cheap unit off Craig’s List for $150 or less and go to town. By the time you put together a unit from a SoC with either an RPi3 or XU4, you’re going to be spending that much cash on hand (from scratch).

1 Like
#9

link is not working for me, btw i use a odroid xu4 with usb3 hdd connected for storing roms, most of consoles are working, i have problems (mainly stutter) with almost all sega saturn roms and 3do, some psp games and very few psx games (i have around 450 roms and i tested 80% of them, i founds a couple of problematic titles) . i didn’t noticed any stuttering/problems on nintendo 64 roms i tested… soc are really good for those old 8/16 bit consoles

ASUS Chromebox CN62 looks very interesting, especially if fitted with an i7 cpu and maximum ram possible, unfortunately it still miss an internal storage option so you have to add an external drive for roms. but i think i will give it a try when it will come out :slight_smile:

#10

Don’t with the i7. I know it sounds counterintuitive, but the extra cores aren’t going to help you out with most emulators. Either the Celeron, or the i3 variant of the chromebox will do wonders for you. Bump up to the i3 version if you want the speed boost.

#11

i agree but it’s firepower is not only the “core numbers”, it have high clock speed, high ram bus speed, more l3 cache ram.