Dead computer on my CAB... time for an upgrade

[brained]

Hello Guys!

I know this topic has been debated a couple of times, but I didn't find a clear answer searching the forums. My current cab has a Pentium 4 (LGA775) CPU with 4gb of RAM. It's been working for a couple of years now, but now the board just died. I'm in the dilema of planing what to buy in order to repair my cab. I currently use MAME on my arcade I my romset is 0.79 I recall. My main concerns are budget constraints, I don't want to spend a ton of money, but I'm looking for the best bang for the buck in my arcade. So here are my questions.

First Option:
1. AMD Ryzen 3 PC with 4gb of ram (around 130 ish dollars)
2. ASRock J4105-ITX Combo Board with Integrated CPU around (100 bucks) with ram
3. Raspberry PI 4 (4gb) (around 80 bucks) for all the stuff I need add

The benefit of Using a computer is that is just swap the mobo on my arcade and I do minor adjustments.
I don't know the current emulation state of affairs on the RPI, so I don't know which will serve at least a most recent version of mame that is not 0.79.

I'm really confused here, what's the best bang for the buck route.

[meyer980]

Hi brained,
The best "bang for your buck" really depends on what you want to do. Are you looking for the most accurate emulation? Or want to be able to play the most recently dumped games, from the late 2000's? Then you'll need a decent PC with modern specs. I would say even the first AMD machine you listed would be sluggish.

Or are you looking to play the 80's and 90's classics, and are okay if there are slight problem with the emulation? If so, a RPi running the older romset could be fine.

My personal preference has always been 80s and early 90s stuff - so a couple builds I've used have been based on moderate Windows 7 machines with Intel graphics, running Mame 0.198. Runs fine.

[keilmillerjr]

I vote option 1. Ability to use a video card means options, either analog video for crt’s or newer steam type games. RPI emulation is cheap, but it killed me trying to make it a good choice. Ultimately, my arcade machine was one button and playing, same button off. Gaming consoles the same way. Both have perfect video. RPI - not yet.

[brained]

Yeah, I'd rather spend a few bucks more and have more possibilities and ease of configuration.

Thanks a lot!