Just finished cabinet, now i need to build a better pc, suggestions?

[whitiex]

I just finished building my first arcade cabinet and the pc I got for free works for most games, but the power supply is getting pretty hot.  since we put so much work into building everything from scratch to look good, might as well build a better pc too (here are a few pics of the cab)
I used to build PCs 10 years ago, so i'm a bit outdated. lol. 

i have an actlab gun with s-video to my 27in crt tv, so gun games are a must.
HOTD 1 and 2 play on the current pc, but #3 is slow, also area 51 and time crises are slow.  i also want police trainer.
and future pinball to look good

I just had a few simple questions to make my part search easier

I don't want to go crazy with $. maybe $300?  i already have 500gb e-sata HD

i'm thinking a mobo with onboard video might be a good route, or should i get a separate card?

AMD vs Intel
nVidia vs Radeon

any input would be much appreciated

[404]

if you are just specifically using mame here are some general guidelines.

mame relies heavily on CPU and FSB speed. Realistically however, mame really doesn't rely much on multi-core processors. 2 cores is enough. Someone mentioned here that a nice spot would be something like a newer gen Intel core i3 with a high clock speed and some speedy ram. This way you have good clock speed and a second core to fall back on for the few games that can properly utilize them.  You can still get a bare i3 board, cpu and processor for just a little more than your target budget if you really look and shop around.


As for the graphics card, Here are my general findings

Standard VGA, DVI, HDMI screen: use Nvidia cards 9/10 times i just preferred them over AMD cards. That's just me.

CGA arcade monitor: Use Radeon cards, Soft 15khz and other CGA mods just seem to have a better compatibility rate with ATI/AMD cards.

Old component television: Use Radeon cards. I found that the component out just works better on ATI/AMD cards, especially the older units. Newer cards with component out are hard to come by these days. Mass production of component out on video cards basically cut off at the Nvidia Geforce 9 line of cards and at the Radeon 4 series cards. There are still some OEMs that have made a handful of past that but they are hard to come by.

[BadMouth]

It depends on what you want to play on which emulators. 
"Everything" is not an acceptable answer.
Not even the most powerful systems on the market can run "everything" at full speed.

There is some useful info in this thread:
http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php/topic,137721.0.html

OP ended up spending just over $400.

AMD vs Intel - the standard MAME build is optimized for Intel.  (that said all my emulator machines are budget builds and use AMD, but they're outdated.  My next one will use an Intel processor.)

Radeon vs Nvidia - For PC gaming Radeon probably provides better value for the money, but some of the Taito Type X games aren't playable with most Radeon cards.  It's only a few games, but it's still enough to make me go with Nvidia every time.  The Nvidia software just gives you more control.  You can disable or enable settings per game.  It's useful to turn off Antialiasing on those Taito Type X games and enable vsync on Makaron emulator to get rid of tearing.

You'll probably have to stick to last generation cards for the s-video output.
All my cabs are currently running 9800GTs.  They can play modern steam games at 720p with the settings about halfway.
It would perform even better at the lower resolution of s-vid.

There are some great light gun threads here in the main forum that list all the emulators and games that are playable.
Search and ye shall find.

[Generic Eric]

There are decent bundles on newegg.  What 404 said is sound.

Here is my shopping list.

Gold series psu with the separate connectors so I don't have unused wires.

I haven't picked a board, but Intel is supposedly better.  *shrug *  so I am trying to budget for that.   Whatever I get my theory is to get a stable board released in the last quarter.   Stack in at least an i3, at least 8 gig of ram.  About $125 off SSD and a TB drive.   In summary, the theory is to pick current gen architecture and upgrade accordingly as things are discounted.

[whitiex]

I'm gonna go with the i3 3.5gz 1150.  Just gotta pick a mobo and gpu with s-video out

[whitiex]

hows this for a set up?

Intel Core i3-4130
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819116946

GIGABYTE GA-B85M-D3H LGA 1150 Intel B85 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 Micro ATX Intel Motherboard
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128607

VisionTek 900232 Radeon HD 3650 512MB 128-bit GDDR2 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFireX Support Video Card
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814129108

EVGA 100-W1-500-KR 500W ATX12V / EPS12V 80 PLUS Certified Active PFC 3 Year Warranty Power Supply Intel 4th Gen CPU Ready
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817438016

G.SKILL Ares Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory Model F3-1600C9D-8GAB
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231546