Dedicated Emulator PC 2013 Build Thread!

The new xbox 360 controllers with the rotating D-pads arent too bad, but I agree 6 button mapping kindoff sucks with them, how about something like the Mad Catz Street Fighter IV FightPad Ive never owned one, but a friend of mine swears by his

 

What are you even talking about?

We are talking about pads to use on a PC, no one has mentioned using a xbox pad on a saturn....

 

whut? why would anyone want to do that?

 

I have the stick. I should have picked up a pad too.

 

Sorry. Off topic then.

 

on the madcatz i wonder what the quality is like, some recent and even not so recent madcatz hardware has been god awful, the d-pad on them looks cheap and nasty, but thats just looking at it, i've not tried one. but isnt it just a overpriced usb saturn pad? then again streetfiighter is cool

*sends Lum back to the kitchen to make sammiches*

 

I was thinking maybe running with PS3 wireless pads, just needs a BT adaptor - there are drivers that let you run it in different modes including Xinput, so compatibility wouldn't be an issue. I just need to see how easy it is to reconnect them while the PC is in 'frontend mode'. Other than that i might just use the X360 pads but as Bad_Ad84 said, the D-Pad is shite. Really bad for games like Super Puzzle Fighter where you want a jewel to go straight down and it ends up moving to the side, lost a lot of games due to that!

I have the official Play Sega pad that has lots of buttons, but i wan't analogue for PS1,2 and N64,GameCube.

I also have a custom made arcade stick that is totally awesome (USB - PC/PS3) but it's only 6 button + Start so wouldn't be good for everything - but great for MAME!

Those SF4 pads looks pretty awesome, and would have enough buttons, just no analogue...

 

I assume this is somewhat on topic. For those on budget, here is a emulator solution that has worked very well. For my emulator setup, I am using an Acer netbook fitted with the AMD apu, which has the cpu and gpu combined on one chip.

I have a dual core, 1 ghz processor with 256 dedicated vram with 4 gigs of ddr3 memory ram. This combined has given surprising results, especially considering that these netbooks can be had either new for $250.00 or even less used. These particular AMD based netbooks have HDMI out.

So, I can run flawlessly, PSX emulation with essentially every game running with picture perfect frame rates.
Project 64 which offers perfect N64 gaming experience.
Fusion. Allowing for Sega genesis, 32x and Sega CD gameplay.
Super Nintendo, utilizing several different emulators.
Mame-can play all of the latest arcade releases except deathsmiles which runs in low framerates and a few others which need massive rigs.
Ootake. PC Engine , zero problem.
Winkawaks, which plays every Capcom cps1,2 and Neo Geo flawlessly.

Amazingly I can play Bioshock, Call of Duty modern warfare 2, oblivion and Fallout with medium graphic settings.

For PC fighting and Shmup games, I can play: Fighting: Melty blood act credenza

Hinokakera Chaotic eclipse
Guilty Gears X2 reloaded




I'll make a list for pc shmups in a separate thread. Anyhow, Saturn Cassini works but I am forgoing this for a modded console. In total, this netbook surprisingly works as a great emulator machine, of course it can't play PS2 or game cube emulation very well. It's below par, but surprisingly runs.

Just to be strict on topic, for my mame setup, I use an X-arcade stick which is great for fighters and shmups plus a PS3 wireless clone controller which works very well.
If you wanted to be technical, there are somewhat cheap console controllers available for every emulated console available. This would be ideal towards keeping with the traditional experience.


If you buy an AMD APU , at least in netbook configuration, use Brazostweaker, a program which allows the APU to be downvolted. AMD or Acer, or both has factory set the voltage to be ungodly high. When using Brazostweaker, you can downvolt quite a bit, taking the heat generated down off the chip plus extend battery life on a miniscule level. More than anything, you most likely increase the life cycle of the chip and hardware in general.

 

Sounds very simular to the two Revo machines i made, are you using any frontend?

I'm aiming for this: www.youtube.com/watch?v=53kg7Oabdno

 

No front end. I have my emulators and games on separate harddrives, actually many are on class ten SD cards, so they act as mini cartridges. So, zero front end.

It's not a replacement for what you are doing and in the beginning I posted that I'd be watching closely as I want a larger rig to get PS2 emulation and be able to play the more demanding mame games.

So, my setup may be somewhat ghetto but it works quite well. Initially I was using the netbook for streaming HD netflix and youtube, but kept experimenting, challenging the netbook to it's full extent.

 

There's the "special edition" 360 controller that I tried once and seemed pretty good: http://www.xbox.com/en-US/Xbox360/Accessories/Controllers/special-edition-chrome-wireless-controller

The d-pad twists and becomes a Saturn/MD-like plus shape. I've only tried it once for a few minutes in a shop, but I remember it being a huge improvement over my two controllers from launch day.

I keep thinking about grabbing one myself, because now I'm hooked on Spelunky and the old d-pad isn't cutting it.

 

Can you confirm that the psu fits inside the case because i checked the specs at the bitfenix site and it says that the psu must be a ps2 type not a normal psu.

 

It fits perfectly, in fact there are several inches all around it to hide cables.

This is the current state of the build, not finished. I ordered some braided cable extensions in white for the Main ATX, 4-Pin ATX and PCI-Express cables, just to tidy it up and because i freaking hate that bend in the main ATX cable! I have also just received my SSD back from Corsair, so should all be finished tonight providing the cables are there when I get home from work!

 

damn thats a big ass fan lol, looking good though

 

lol! Yeah, 230x200mm should be quiet with lots of airflow.

 

Update

Finally recieved the cables and SSD i was waiting for and finished the building stage. I'm quite please with what i have done with this build, looks pretty cool. The cable management was a bit of a nightmare - i might even go back and tidy it up some more. Didn't get time to do anything with it apart from fire it up to the BIOS screen, it was late...

Here are some pics, sorry for the quality...

(The 2TB drive is not installed as it was having a massive amount of data copied to it at the time :encouragement









With the Graphics card installed...





Next to my home-made Arcade stick!

 

That is seriously seriously cool!

 

Thanks, Scored pretty well on the Windows Experience Index



Just made a quick install of Windows 7 and tested a few things last night, just to see what it can do...

DreamCast - Perfect
Taito Type X2 (Super Street Fighter IV, KOFXIII) - Perfect
PlayStation 2 - As expected - mostly great, some slow (Although those games are also slow on my i7 PC)
GameCube - Almost Perfect, minor sound stutters in Metroid, others ran fine.
Wii - Ran really well, i tried Super Mario Galaxy and it was running smooth. Not going to be running Wii on the final build though.

Again, it was only a quick test. The emulators can be tweaked even further, but so far i'm happy.

I've noticed that my H60 fan is running flat out 2000rpm all the time, driving me crazy! it's so loud! - Apparently it could be faulty (Checking online)

 

is it connected to a fan control / speed dial or directly to the motherboard or just directly to power supply?

if it's connected to the motherboard i'd check the bios settings before writing it off as faulty.

 

Yeah, my bios in both pcs by default have the fans on 100%

You are looking for an auto option or similar.