CPU for very low budget small form factor PC.

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sedateeddie

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Nov 11, 2014
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I recently built my first emulator retro gaming system using a Raspberry Pi inside an old Atari 2600 case which was great fun. However the Raspberry Pi is too underpowered for decent emulation of big SNES titles and PS1 N64 titles. I would like to build a small form factor PC that can fit inside an old NES or similar sized console.

My budget is very low, I would like to spend no more than £150-200 if at all possible.

My first issue is what CPU? I would like it to be cheap, and to have excellent thermal properties as the only fan in the whole system will be the CPU cooler and there will be no exhaust fan.

My second issue is PSU, are there any cheap and mini PSUs out there, I really wouldn't need much in the way of power 300w would be easily, easily enough.
 
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J
I would go for the older Intel Core 2 Duo as it is an extremely relyable Prosessor and if all you are doing is playing retro Games it should easy be able to cope with it. And you can generaly pick one of these up for 20$ on ebay

The PSU
After doing 10 mins of reasearch i managed to find this sweet deal a 430w psu for 40$!!

Hope ths helps,
Jaso
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Jasotufy2

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Mar 5, 2015
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I would go for the older Intel Core 2 Duo as it is an extremely relyable Prosessor and if all you are doing is playing retro Games it should easy be able to cope with it. And you can generaly pick one of these up for 20$ on ebay

The PSU
After doing 10 mins of reasearch i managed to find this sweet deal a 430w psu for 40$!!

Hope ths helps,
Jaso
 
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Benab3

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There are some decent cheap CPUs that will be more than enough for your purposes, only thing is the exhaust thing you mentioned. I would assume that it will be okay, but if you use it full load for a bit, the air in your case will get hot and so will the air trying to cool your cpu. If you would like I will put some parts together in pcpartpicker. What do you need, ram ? Gpu? HDD? Or do you have these things
 
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Jason Light

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Jul 23, 2013
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Have you seen the raspberry pi 2? It's much faster than the original. Not only does it have a higer clock speed, and more cores, but it also features ARMv7 and neon. I know that at least PCSX re-ARMed can take advantage of neon, and many other emulators probably can too (you need to compile pcsx specifically though). It also has 1GB of RAM which might be nice, though the platforms you are trying to emulate had less than 10MB of RAM so as long as you are only using it for emulation you probably won't notice much improvement as a result of that.
 
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sedateeddie

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I think that I am going to ignore the GPU in favour of just a processor using it's integrated graphics, heat I think will be an issue but it must be possible to cap a processor so that it doesn't operate at 100% I think laptops must do that so I would guess you could do the same with a normal CPU, I need everything, mobo, RAM, PSU, SSD or HDD, I would like to go for an SSD as it would give the appearance and feel of speed, but cost wise a laptop HDD might be a better choice, I have some old 5200 rpm 80GB ones lying around.

On the issue of RAM I was thinking that it would probably be best to go with a cheapo 4gb stick of DDR4 1330.

In terms of the motherboard, I am not really sure, obviously over-clocking is asking for heat trouble, the air intake will also be slightly obstructed, it will just be using some small vent holes in the plastic.

 
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sedateeddie

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Also not that your original answer was bad or anything, but I clicked best solution by mistake, if you were wondering about the randomness of that happening. Sorry.
 
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sedateeddie

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I have and it is almost twice as powerful as the one I used, but that is not really the point, I just want to build a PC to fit inside a NES...
 
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LucoTF

LucoTF

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Sep 6, 2013
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I've heard of people running N64 emulators on the Pi 2 :)
 
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Moonstick2

Moonstick2

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Oct 3, 2014
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Should do what? Melt it?

The OP wants to stick this in a NES case without any fans other than the CPU fan. A NES case has next to nothing in the way of ventilation - like my old 8-bit, it's got a vent on the top, a couple of tiny ones at the bottom and that's about it. And people are suggesting sticking an A8 in it??

To put things in perspective, the original NES external power supply took in 17 W and gave out barely 9 W. So the case is designed to cope with less heat than most RAM alone generates these days. The vents are designed for passive venting, in such a way that sticking a fan against them is going to have limited benefit.

Here's how to do it properly, for inspiration at least. That guy used a mini-ITX with everything on it including a VIA 1.5 GHz processor, and it still hit 70C and required extra fans. It also required an external power brick (he couldn't fit an ATX PSU inside).

This needs a lot of careful thought, not just cramming in a handful of PC parts. Absolute lowest TDP processor and integrated motherboard is the start. The OP also needs to consider how 'original' they want to keep the NES looking.

Edit: Here's one helpful quote from the comments:
If you're going to build a new NES PC, I suggest using a Zotac IONITX-A-U motherboard, since it comes with a 90W power brick that connects to the NES like the original NES power connector. It also has a dual core Intel Atom processor, and Nvidia ION graphics, which are capable of running 1080p Bluray movies.
Click to expand...
 
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Moonstick2

Moonstick2

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Following on, something like this maybe: Asrock AD2550B mITX

Dual core Atom, onboard graphics and sound, £40-£50, and most importantly fanless. You'll need a fan to get the hot air out of the box I'm certain, but you'll have a bit of flexibility at least. Something with high static pressure and high airflow.

Consider this as well: ZOTAC E2-1800 ITX

Looks more expensive at ~£100, but has better specs at a glance and WiFi built in. Still all passive - I think you really want to look at an all-passive system.
 
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