Treble's Retro Gaming PC challenge... v2.0

[Treble]

You still get nagging prompts when using though, right? Very irritating IIRC. I bought another (successfully activated) key the other day, for £1.49 o_0

@bignige

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/GENUINE-WINDOWS-10-PROFESSIONAL-PRO-KEY-32-64-BIT-ACTIVATION-LICENSE-KEY-1-PC/301916089649?ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT&_trksid=p2057872.m2749.l2649

 

Right, my next thing laydeezangennlemen... a guide for which emulation platform to go for. This was really, really hard to formulate and I'm still not sure it's the right format. Please do give feedback: does it make sense? Is it clear? 

 

If the presentation is ok, perhaps we can collaborate on a copy and make it a definitive guide? Interested in what you have to say

 

 

[bignige]

2 hours ago, Treble said:

You still get nagging prompts when using though, right? Very irritating IIRC. I bought another (successfully activated) key the other day, for £1.49 o_0

@bignige

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/GENUINE-WINDOWS-10-PROFESSIONAL-PRO-KEY-32-64-BIT-ACTIVATION-LICENSE-KEY-1-PC/301916089649?ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT&_trksid=p2057872.m2749.l2649

 

 

All gone!

[Treble]

1 minute ago, bignige said:

 

I'd honestly just pick any of the cheap resellers on eBay. Make sure their feedback is positive and for under a fiver, you can't really go wrong :)

[Treble]

Guys, guys... I've just sorted out yet another build (this time AMD-based) so my current retro setup of Motherboard, CPU and RAM is up for grabs

 

I thought i'd put it in here before a sale thread. You'll need a case, cooler and PSU, but i'm more than happy to leave several emulators and "home brew" games on there, to get you started!

 

Windows 10 Pro

64GB SSD (mainly OS)

500GB HDD, with lots of software pre-loaded.

LGA 2011 Motherboard

Intel Core i7-3930K CPU

8GB Crucial Ballistix Sport DDR3 RAM @1600Mhz

 

I was thinking about £80 £70 + delivery. Give me a shout if interested or if you've got questions.

 

Edit: alternatively, I can buy-in the rest of the necessary components, put it all together then ship it out to you at cost. I enjoy doing that, so no additional charge for labour!

 

 

[Arn X Treme]

Inspired by the stuff you've posted i have given a PSCX2 a try on my i5 / Geforce 650 and i am happy with the results. 

 

Spoiler

 

[Kryptonian]

Whilst waiting for my new machine off eBay, I have been enjoying this on the laptop:

 

[Treble]

8 hours ago, Kryptonian said:

Whilst waiting for my new machine off eBay, I have been enjoying this on the laptop:

 

 

I used to have that stick! It's excellent (and very cute)

 

 

9 hours ago, The Eagle Lord said:

Inspired by the stuff you've posted i have given a PSCX2 a try on my i5 / Geforce 650 and i am happy with the results. 

 

  Hide contents

 

 

Nice one

Do you know which i5 you have?

[Treble]

I thought you might like a quick list of which software I use in the service of emulation - all legit/free.

 

Speccy - Shows a quick overview of temps and usage of your components. Also handy for finding out the manufacturer/part details.

 

 

MSI Afterburner & Rivatuner Statistics - Afterburner is a simple way to overclock your graphics card. I'll do a basic GPU overclocking guide very soon. You get the option to install Rivatuner at the same time, and it's recommended as it gives you the option of an overlay appearing in games showing FPS, CPU usage etc. The one you see on every Youtube PC performance video, basically.

 

 

Panda Dome Antivirus - When you're trawling dodgy sites for unusual ROMs, you want some protection. It's arguable that Win10's security (Defender) is good enough these days to not need one, but if you want belt 'n' braces, or are running older operating systems, Panda Dome is a lightweight AV that has fewer popup nags than Avast and the like. It also has two easily accessible switches for gaming mode and 'off', which are handy when mucking about with iffy/unsigned software.

 

Cinebench - This is a piece of benchmarking software that gives your CPU a (community-approved) score, and ranks you next to them. You can run it to tell you single thread or multi-thread performance, and is great for getting some idea of what your PC is capable of. A quick warning: as it almost maxes-out your PC usage, it's also a bit of a stress test (although a milder one than something like Prime95), so make sure your cooling solution is firmly in place, and adequate, before you get going!

[Arn X Treme]

3 hours ago, Treble said:

 

Nice one

Do you know which i5 you have?

 

Spoiler

 

Apologies it turns's out it's an i3 not and i5 that must be my laptop.

 

 

[Treble]

Graphics Card Overclocking: Pre-overclock to Overclock guide

 

When you see Youtube guides saying ‘simple overclocking guide’ this will likely mean they will explain things in basic terms and with lots of easy-to-follow examples. 

What i’ll do is get you to the point where you’re ready to follow one of these guides, confident your setup is actually ready for the increased power.

 

1) CPU Cooling 

PCs operate very much like a car engine, and have to balance-out increased performance with the amount of radiators needed to bring in cool air, and then exhaust the heated air out of the chassis.

 

Your PC most likely comes with the ‘stock’ cooler attached to the CPU - a basic unit with a small heatsink (a radiator assembly, usually comprised of a set of aluminium fans & copper pipes) that disperses the heat generated by your CPU, which is aided by a small fan.

 

Some of the best advice I can give on CPUs is: immediately fit an aftermarket cooler! Even if you are running your CPU at the out-of-the-box settings, cooler is better as it extends the life of the unit. For overclocking (even when the overclock is on the graphics card) it’s essential. Speaking as someone who fried a CPU when OC-ing a GPU, I can confirm that this will also give your CPU a bloody good schvitz at the same time...

 

Air cooling is absolutely fine - I have a water cooler on my retro build, and am happy with it (especially because it looks ace!) but a quality air cooler is equally as effective in most circumstances. £20 new for this one.

 

However, second hand is normally just as good, as coolers are very simple constructions. Consider spending £20 on eBay instead, to get an even better model. Just be aware and check it fits your CPU, and you'll be good to go.

 

Fitting them can be fiddly, so consult some vids to get the best hints/tips, and to understand how to replace thermal paste (nowhere near as scary as it sounds!)

 

2) Case cooling

As long as you have a decent case, cooling from this point is pretty simple: you want to have more output (exhaust) than input, ideally in a 2:1 ratio (although 1.5:1 is also OK) as flow is king:

 

 

Your PSU will have a fan (if it doesn’t, get rid!!!) and on modern cases tends to be mounted at the bottom, to draw air from ground level. The front of the PC should have a fan mounted, and also a main exhaust fan at the back. 

 

The main additions you’re likely to make are to the top of the case - hot air rises, and the heat generated by the PSU/GPU/CPU in sequence is considerable. Therefore adding either one or two fans at the top of the case is a great way to draw out the warm air produced by the fans of those devices.

 

3) GPU cooling

Thankfully, not a lot to consider here. Most GPUs come with huge heatsinks and huge fans. The main things to keep an eye on are:

a) That the card isn’t too large for your case. They are often the single largest component in your build, and squeezing a Titan into a mini ATX case will be comically bad. Airflow will be almost non-existent because of its bulk and its cables, so scale your card to your case.

 

b) If you want a bigger graphics card, buy a bigger case! There’s no hard and fast guide to this as there are so many variables, but there should ideally be minimum 12cm between the top of your power supply, and the bottom of the card’s fans

 

Some motherboards are pretty bad at physically supporting these hefty monstrosities, and let me tell you, graphics card erectile dysfunction is real!

 

Cards flopping around will damage the connector, but also damage air flow.

 

Hopefully you won’t need to go as far as @Thor and his Lego solution

But hey, don’t leave it off the table. If it works, it works! As in the vid, think about wedging something non-conductive between the card and the case to stop it flexing around.

 

Get your cool on, then move on to the OC:

 

4) Basic overclocking

So this guide is great, start around 2 mins in, or 4 mins to skip him explaining how to download and install MSI Afterburner and Kombuster if you're comfortable with getting those going.

 

 

 

One quick tip: saving settings is a bit odd in Afterburner, but easy when you know how:

i) Adjust the sliders

ii) Click the ‘check’ mark (tick) to apply

iii) Click the SAVE icon

iv) Click the slot to save the profile (settings) to

 

Points 3 and 4 are reversed from what you’re usually accustomed to, and I can’t tell you how often that catches me out and I lose some settings i’ve meticulously calibrated!

 

Final thought: buy right; buy once.

 

I advise buying a certain level of kit here, but i’m always aware of expense. Bear in mind, most of the stuff you buy can be re-used on other PCs in the future.

 

So get a good case, power supply, set of fans, CPU cooler and hard drives and this could set you up for years to come. Don’t be afraid to buy second hand on anything mechanically or electrically simple such as the case and fans. If you want a dirty great mechanical HDD to store replaceable stuff like ROMs, then second hand 'spinning rust' is a good idea, as it's dirrrrrrrt cheap.

 

7200rpm Western Digital Blue 500GB, £8.95 delivered

 

Maybe don't store your treasured family pix on it, mind

 

 I’m upgrading to a AMD Ryzen 7, 2700X build (circa 18 months old) and am reusing kit that has seen at least four different builds, that in some cases goes back ten years! Re-use and recycle

 

[Treble]

27 minutes ago, The Eagle Lord said:

 

  Reveal hidden contents

 

Apologies it turns's out it's an i3 not and i5 that must be my laptop.

 

 

 

Excellent stuff. 

 

The next level up in terms of a workout is Dolphin, but if you're getting good PCSX2 performance, I reckon the aquatic one will function great as well

 

The GTX 650 is a great choice for emu builds. It's slightly cheaper new, even, than the GTX 750 I normally recommend (if price is a critical factor).

 

This variant is £24 delivered from Aliexpress, small, low power draw (70w) and probably an easy overclocker as well - the 750 certainly is.

[Bluejam]

Just a quick post to say thanks for the pointers on the software above @Treble 

 

Excellent work 

[Thor]

Oh wow, thanks for mentioning me @Treble. I've been looking into overclocking recently to see if I can eke out "moar powah!" from my already excellent PC. This guide is just what I need!

[Treble]

No worries man. I was gripped by your whole 'new PC journey' in general, and the Lego part in particular. Awesome stuff

 

Edit: goes without saying, your new build is frigging amazing; mucho jealousy o_0

 

Let us know how it copes with Crysis...

[Thor]

Ha! I don't really have any interest in Crysis.  I did run the 3DMark Timespy test again last night though after tweaking settings in my bios for performance. That upped the score to 13,640(ish). My GPU also clocked a score over 14,000 for the first time (though only just). 

 

Room for more I reckon.

[Arn X Treme]

After @Treble linked his guide earlier i decided to have a play with my graphics card and settings.

 

Got to play this game again which i brought over a decade ago from a forumite. 

 

I'm really happy with the graphics. 

 

Spoiler

 

[Kryptonian]

12 hours ago, Treble said:

I used to have that stick! It's excellent (and very cute)

 

I was using the keyboard like a savage and then suddenly remembered it was in the loft. I hoped that these days you would just be able to plug it into a PC and off you went and I wasn’t disappointed  

[Treble]

Another emulator rundown

 

 

 

Sorry for the photos. Screen captures don't seem possible at the minute. 

 

 

 

 

[Kryptonian]

Well, we're up and running:

 

 

I've only played a couple of arcade and snes games that don't push it all all though...

[PikaStu]

I managed to get a nice LG Flatron CRT for a tenner. Set it up with an old Intel Atom based net-top I had in the loft. It’s now loaded with my GoG library and DOSbox to play the stacks of old cd games I’ve collected.

 

 

 

 

[Kryptonian]

I bought Monkey Island 2 too

[Treble]

On 30/08/2019 at 12:16, Kryptonian said:

Well, we're up and running:

 

 

I've only played a couple of arcade and snes games that don't push it all all though...

 

Hey, nice!! Is the GTX 750 the one I recommended? Either way, it's a great choice.

 

I'm prepping my next emulator review, but if anyone has a preference to do after that, let me know

[Kryptonian]

Just now, Treble said:

 

Hey, nice!! Is the GTX 750 the one I recommended? Either way, it's a great choice.

 

I'm prepping my next emulator review, but if anyone has a preference to do after that, let me know

 

It was a different one after a bit of faffing, thanks for your help with this though - I appreciate the guidance. I’ve been pleasantly surprised what you can do/get with a relatively small outlay too.

[Kryptonian]

Oh and after the previous picture I opened the case again and gave everything a good clean which made the temperatures drop by about 8-10 degrees

 

 

Now I suppose I should look at some more arcade games that would work well or something.

[Treble]

Yup, dust is death! Those are good temps, the case must have decent air flow and fans. 

 

If you want to test it purely on arcade games, the only things it will struggle with are those poorly emulated

 

You probably want to download a Supermodel package Inc. ROMs so you can try out Daytona, SEGA Rally 2 and stuff.

 

But in all honesty, I'd go straight for a copy of Outrun 2 on PC. It's just the best, man. The best. So damn good it makes me cry :'(

 

Oh and:

1) get Steam and GoG accounts

2) realise how many old games you love are available for 50p

3) weep with joy

[PikaStu]

1 hour ago, Treble said:

 

But in all honesty, I'd go straight for a copy of Outrun 2 on PC. It's just the best, man. The best. So damn good it makes me cry :'(

 

 

The force feedback mod is pretty good, but if you have an Nvidia card you can easily emulate the arcade Rom.

[Kryptonian]

 

I’ve just inherited this case from my father in law as he was going to chuck it out. The innards were from the Core2Duo era I think so I reckon I will transplant my stuff from my HP business mini tower into this. Going to make sure there are connectors on the motherboard I have that will work with the sockets etc on this before I make 2 PCs unusable...

[Das]

Great thread, Treble.

 

Now, here's a question...at what point is PC gaming going to satisfy a retro gamer enough to ditch all his/her old consoles? 

 

Retro-wise, right now I genuinely have all of these setup:

 

Super Fami Jr with RGB mod + SD2SNES

JAP Gamecube, GBA player with Xeno chip

Original Xbox with Alladin chip and 500gb HD (Coin-ops etc)

JAP White Sega Saturn with modchip

JAP Megadrive 1 with Mega Everdrive

JAP Dreamcast with GDEMU

PS2 slim with Matrix 4 chip

PSOne with modchip

Wii with HB Channel etc

 

+ 1 million handhelds including official Nintendo/Sega stuff and PC/Android type stuff (GPDWin etc).

 

My wife would love me to sell it.  Convince me I could...and, say, just have a PC for 'sit down' gaming and keep my GPDWin for 'on the go' gaming.

[watusi]

1 hour ago, Das said:

Great thread, Treble.

 

Now, here's a question...at what point is PC gaming going to satisfy a retro gamer enough to ditch all his/her old consoles? 

 

Retro-wise, right now I genuinely have all of these setup:

 

Super Fami Jr with RGB mod + SD2SNES

JAP Gamecube, GBA player with Xeno chip

Original Xbox with Alladin chip and 500gb HD (Coin-ops etc)

JAP White Sega Saturn with modchip

JAP Megadrive 1 with Mega Everdrive

JAP Dreamcast with GDEMU

PS2 slim with Matrix 4 chip

PSOne with modchip

Wii with HB Channel etc

 

+ 1 million handhelds including official Nintendo/Sega stuff and PC/Android type stuff (GPDWin etc).

 

My wife would love me to sell it.  Convince me I could...and, say, just have a PC for 'sit down' gaming and keep my GPDWin for 'on the go' gaming.

 

I'm going the other way, I have a posh(ish) pc but have started building up a collection of old consoles, partly to play on a CRT, partly for odd controllers and shooty shooty games, and partly because I can!

 

It was your fault for selling me an xbox...

[Das]

14 minutes ago, watusi said:

 

I'm going the other way, I have a posh(ish) pc but have started building up a collection of old consoles, partly to play on a CRT, partly for odd controllers and shooty shooty games, and partly because I can!

 

It was your fault for selling me an xbox...

Haha!! I do LOVE a CRT. And I do love just looking at the consoles and occasionally stroking them...sometimes I even have time to PLAY them can you believe?