Hi guys, I have been using a Raspberry Pi with Retropie for my emulation for ages. It’s used for games up to PS1 and it’s fine, but I wanted to upgrade my emulation to play games up to PS3/360. For that I think I need to use a PC right? What’s the recommended spec for that use case?
It’s gonna be used specifically for emulation hooked up on a TV on my basement and with Retrobat or some system like that
I appreciate your inputs.
You will definitely need a PC for PS3 and 360 emulation. The website for RPCS3 and Xenia should have the system requirements for the emulators that will be a good place to start.
Probably best find the docs for the emulators you’re planning on using and see if they have any minimum or recommended specs listed. I know a lot of emulators have really come a long way in the last few years some of them might support really low-powered machines.
Anecdotally, I recently built a PC out of old bits and leftovers from friends’ upgrades. I used it more for native PC games but it was an incredibly cheap way of playing anything that wasn’t a recent AAA resource hog, so maybe see if people you know have parts that are just gathering dust.
If you are comfortable with building a pc by yourself, you could try to get an older office pc and put a decent graphics card in there.
Most emulators rely more on CPU power over GPU though, right?
Often times, yes. Doesn’t mean that OP has to get one of the very old models. I was thinking of one from the last few years. The reason to go with an office pc is simply that you get a good starting point for a pc, so it’s probably cheaper than a full custom build, even if the pc isn’t that old yet. Though I also didn’t look at current prices either.
It’s quite a significant step up in hardware.
I’ve not gone as far as PS3 but for PS2 emulation I had an old PC with an i5 4670, GTX970 and 8GB DDR3 RAM and it worked well.
Why not just get the actual PS3 and 360? They’re pretty cheap nowadays, both have HDMI output, and PS3 is easy to softmod
I just like the idea of have everything in one place
A modded PS3 can be “one place” 😉
Really? I didn’t know about that. I’ll look into it
I’m looking into emulation for 360, myself, because I know that actually running my 360 is a timer counting down to the red ring of death.
red ring of death.
This gave me some weird nostalgic vibes lol
Jasper motherboard and later 360s don’t get RRODs (at least that most common one), I’d even say they’re more reliable than fat PS3s
Basically any 360 but the oldest two fat models will serve you a very long time, I’m rocking a Trinity with RGH installed
Oh cool. I’ll do some research. Maybe I can pull mine out of storage and enjoy it, then. Thanks!
Steam Deck
You can plug it on a TV and multiple controllers? To play as a regular video game
Id recommend an Intel NUC, but Intel isnt really making them anymore and the old ones have for some reason jumped in price drastically. But even the old NUC7s can go all the way up to PS3 and X360 technically, but unless its a simple game there will be slowdowns. Demons Souls runs at about 20fps at 720p, for example.
However, a PC that you’re building can have the following specs that will emulate everything currently available:
intel i5 12000 or higher CPU
nVidia RTX 2070 Super or higher GPU
16Gb RAM
Its possible that you might be able to squeak by with a GTX 1050Ti GPU, but I cannot confirm if that is true.
Thanks :)
