2023 Budget PC for MAME?

[javeryh]

I’m looking to upgrade one (or two) of my cabinets and am wondering what you guys would buy if all you planned on running was MAME with bgfx enabled for CRT/scan lines.

I saw THIS on Amazon and was thinking about buying it.  Will this be good enough?

[TurboC--]

I can't say exactly what PC horsepower would be needed for a given setup. But I know it would greatly depend on the version of MAME and the newness of games you want to emulate.

For reference, I ran my old Pac cab MAME on a P2-era Celeron PC my friend found in the garbage.    (The only thing wrong with the PC was a corrupted windows install.) It ran perfectly for the really old stuff, up until like Galaga 88 or newer where it started to choke. Somehow I just never put a better PC in it. I guess I only cared about the really old games.

Hopefully someone here will have a better data point for you.

[javeryh]

I can't say exactly what PC horsepower would be needed for a given setup. But I know it would greatly depend on the version of MAME and the newness of games you want to emulate.

For reference, I ran my old Pac cab MAME on a P2-era Celeron PC my friend found in the garbage.    (The only thing wrong with the PC was a corrupted windows install.) It ran perfectly for the really old stuff, up until like Galaga 88 or newer where it started to choke. Somehow I just never put a better PC in it. I guess I only cared about the really old games.

Hopefully someone here will have a better data point for you.

Thanks.  I suppose the toughest games I'd look to emulate would be Killer Instinct or Street Fighter III?  I don't ever see it being used for any 3D games.  I mostly play 70s/80s/early 90s games.  I have to replace a PC in one of my existing cabinets which currently houses a potato but I'm also trying to plan for my 2023 cabinet...

[Zebidee]

I'm still running a mame cab with a P4 3.2Ghz machine, but struggles a bit with more modern versions of MAME.

Core2Duo, E7XXX - E8XXX CPU systems, seem to be happier so I'm building some machines based on that. Seems to be quite sufficient for most except more modern and 3D games. Core2Duo uses bit less power too.

PCs with newer tech can use considerably less power to do the same things. So, you may be saving more anyway, in the long run, by using a somewhat newer (but still reasonably priced) rig.

[BlueGhost]

I've been using Ryzen powered mini pc's lately.  The Lenovo ones with a 2400GE Ryzen can be had for around $150 on ebay.

[Zebidee]

I setup an arcade "MAME" cab for a mate around 17 years ago, using a Lenovo P4/WinXP + ArcadeVGA ex-desktop based system. After said mate hadn't used cab for a few years, he tried to start it and found that the CMOS battery had failed. This somehow reverted the BIOS into security mode (there are special security chips built onto the Lenovo boards), for which there seems to be no known solutions. If IBM/Lenovo could help, they wouldn't, either because the computer is so old and their corporate memory doesn't go back that far, or because it is a security matter (so they wouldn't tell me anyway).

So, I am in the process of updating with a Core2Duo E8600 Win7 + AMD HD6450 system, built onto an generic-but-tough Asrock mainboard, no security shenanigans there. Part of the challenge is that I used no normal PC case for the build - instead the PC is built directly into a rolling drawer (you slide the drawer out to access the PC components). Another part of the challenge is working out what the hell I did 17 years ago.

[leapinlew]

For my needs, I mostly use systems that are a bit older. This kind of crap: https://www.dellrefurbished.com/item/dell-optiplex-7050-mff-000163/dell-optiplex-7050-mff/1.html

However, since Mame can do more modern versions of Golden Tee now, and Sinden lightguns getting so good, it makes me wonder what other newer emulated games are worth looking into. I bought a lower end i5 to try and emulate Megatouch games, but it just wasn't enough horsepower.

[bollwerk]

99% of what matters is single threaded CPU performance. When searching for a cheap PC to use, find the specific CPU on this list, or compare it to other CPUs, to get an idea.

https://www.cpubenchmark.net/singleThread.html

[TurboC--]

I agree with that, with a caveat. While I do believe multi-threaded performance can be largely ignored for MAME, it should be noted that passmark has been found to be in collusion with Intel, adjusting their "benchmarks" so that Intel is favored in the results. So while I do still think Intel would probably be best in most cases for single-thread, I absolutely do not believe that the passmark numbers are 100% legitimate.

[nitrogen_widget]

I've been using Ryzen powered mini pc's lately.  The Lenovo ones with a 2400GE Ryzen can be had for around $150 on ebay.

Will that play the 3d games though?
Killer instinct 1 & 2 for example?

[pbj]

Stop being cheap.

[javeryh]

Stop being cheap.

Cost isn't that big of an issue for me but I don't want to put something into a dedicated cabinet that is complete overkill.  Seems like I should be able to get something for under $150 but I'm not really sure what to get since there are so many (used) options.

[lilshawn]

I go to the government surplus and pick up retired dell optiplex desktop computers for 30 bucks and toss a new harddrive in them. (for security reasons they shred the drives) the computers are usually pretty good performing. i jam as much ram as i can in them, toss a cheap ssd in and let 'er buck.

of course they are old government computers, so they basically do word docs and spreadsheets or some crap and then get tossed every couple years so they don't have tons of hours on them. even the lcd monitors i buy from there have like 5,000 hours on them... just getting broken in.

[leapinlew]

I go to the government surplus and pick up retired dell optiplex desktop computers for 30 bucks and toss a new harddrive in them. (for security reasons they shred the drives) the computers are usually pretty good performing. i jam as much ram as i can in them, toss a cheap ssd in and let 'er buck.

of course they are old government computers, so they basically do word docs and spreadsheets or some crap and then get tossed every couple years so they don't have tons of hours on them. even the lcd monitors i buy from there have like 5,000 hours on them... just getting broken in.

+1

[javeryh]

I go to the government surplus and pick up retired dell optiplex desktop computers for 30 bucks and toss a new harddrive in them. (for security reasons they shred the drives) the computers are usually pretty good performing. i jam as much ram as i can in them, toss a cheap ssd in and let 'er buck.

of course they are old government computers, so they basically do word docs and spreadsheets or some crap and then get tossed every couple years so they don't have tons of hours on them. even the lcd monitors i buy from there have like 5,000 hours on them... just getting broken in.

Where are these magical government surplus stores you speak of???

[markran]

For emulation, IMHO by the time you've bought everything for a new build, these days you can usually pick up a used corporate PC off Ebay and get more performance per dollar. Remember that single-core performance is what matters with most emulation.

Below is the Ebay search I use to find likely candidates for emu builds. My recent build was an HP ProDesk small form factor PC with an i5-4570, 8mb RAM, 500gb HD and Win10Pro for less than a hundred bucks delivered. These corporate desktop PCs have nice cases designed for IT depts to service easily and are being assembly-line recycled by the thousands as they come off of 5 year amortization. I added a cheap used GPU (>5 yr old) and it runs pretty much everything I throw at it.

https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_oaa=1&_dcat=179&_fsrp=1&rt=nc&RAM%20Size=16%20GB%7C8%20GB%7C4%20GB&Processor=Intel%20Core%20i3%204th%20Gen%2E%7CIntel%20Core%20i3%206th%20Gen%2E%7CIntel%20Core%20i5%204th%20Gen%2E%7CIntel%20Core%20i7%206th%20Gen%2E%7CIntel%20Core%20i7%204th%20Gen%2E&Processor%20Speed=3%2E50%2D3%2E99%20GHz&LH_TitleDesc=0&Operating%20System=Windows%2010%7CWindows%2010%20Home%7CWindows%2010%20Pro&LH_PrefLoc=1&_nkw=pc&_sacat=0&LH_BIN=1&_sop=15

[Zebidee]

I've been using Ryzen powered mini pc's lately.  The Lenovo ones with a 2400GE Ryzen can be had for around $150 on ebay.

Will that play the 3d games though?
Killer instinct 1 & 2 for example?

Ex-corporate desktops are OK and I've happily used plenty of them before. The HP Pro ones, for example, are good. However, they can have their own issues and inflexibilities. This time I wanted to do something different.

Just finished installing, into my mate's cab, that Core2Duo E8600 3.33Ghz RAM 8GB Win7 HD6450 (replacing the old Lenovo desktop P4, 3rd cab from left in sig), runs Killer Instinct fine (also all other games I tested it with). Never got around to testing it with anything more challenging than that though.

Can't tell you how much it all cost exactly, bought the parts pre-COVID, but probably less than $120 for each set. Uses an Asrock over-engineered motherboard (G41C-GS) for simplicity, reliability and stability. They are designed for overclocking, though I don't actually intend to do that. One cool feature of these Asrock boards is that they still support an IDE connection, in addition to 4xSATA, so I can use both modern SSDs as well as the pre-existing IDE DVD drive that is already installed in the cab.

I liked the Asrock motherboards so much I bought 3 of them, and also 3 x identical HD6450 GPUs (now all flashed with ATOM-15, so work with CRT TV from boot) so setting up multiple systems can be done by just cloning the system SSD. Worked immediately using the Loewe CRT TV, connected via VGA-SCART, installed in the cab (though I still re-installed CRT_emudriver again, to tweak/optimise the settings for the Loewe TV).

It is very important that the system would work immediately, as I travelled halfway around the world with just the essentials (motherboard, GPU, RAM, CPU, cooler and an SSD) in my luggage. No case. The system needed to work "right out of the box" as my mate is not a tecchie, didn't even have a VGA monitor at home. Would've been impossible to setup otherwise.

Installation now complete, the system does everything it needs to do, including running Attract Mode effortlessly. My buddy is very happy.

Interestingly, this system is just slightly above minimum spec recommended for MAME:
https://docs.mamedev.org/initialsetup/mameintro.html

[Kayden]

I don't have anything but I'm in the same boat and wanted to say long time no see. 

[javeryh]

Hmmm... so then something like this should be more than enough, right?

Dell Optiplex 5040 SFF
Intel Core i5 6500
8GB RAM
500GB HDD

I could throw in a cheap GPU for shaders and call it a day... any GPU recommendations?  The HD6450 Zeb mentions is like $12 haha.  Will that get me some fake CRT scanlines?

[dmckean]

One advantage to the Ryzen 2400GE mini PCs mentioned at the start of the thread is then a decent GPU built in so that saves some money.

[lilshawn]

I go to the government surplus and pick up retired dell optiplex desktop computers for 30 bucks and toss a new harddrive in them. (for security reasons they shred the drives) the computers are usually pretty good performing. i jam as much ram as i can in them, toss a cheap ssd in and let 'er buck.

of course they are old government computers, so they basically do word docs and spreadsheets or some crap and then get tossed every couple years so they don't have tons of hours on them. even the lcd monitors i buy from there have like 5,000 hours on them... just getting broken in.

Where are these magical government surplus stores you speak of???

mine is right in my city... also in the next biggest city. they collect items from all the surrounding rural area government facilities and get rid of them in the 2 major cities. it's not always computers, alot is furniture and office supplies and stuff like that, medical equipment... so on. a guy can pick up a pallet of underdesk garbage cans and recycle bins for 15 bucks or a box of random desk supplies for 5. it's completely random what you might see. forestry service changes their work uniforms from tan to green? so a half dozen skids of shirts and pants go to surplus for sale... and lots of it is brand new, and heavy weight material that's good for crawling around under your truck.

they used to have a weekly auction and get rid of stuff by the pallet, but found they make more money when people could just come in and buy....whatever... so now that's what they do.

i mean, they still auction off stuff like cars and buildings, atv's trailers boats all kinds of stuff from fish and wildlife. tools and equipment and stuff from technical schools. there was some confiscated airplanes and rolexes that went up about 4 or 5 years back. all kinds of stuff.

google up "government surplus [insert city or state]" or "government auction [insert city or state]" and see what you can dig up. you'll probably find there is a  tiny warehouse place out in the ghetto-est of areas, a signless building where all that stuff is ending up that you can go in and buy stuff.

[Yenome]

If you stick to the all killer no filler list from here. that pc will play it all with shaders no issues. i play them all on an old amd cpu. i use mame .206 simply because it was the version that i edited to remove some pop up messages that i didnt want to see when i loaded a game. course i went in a different direction and no longer need a modded mame version

[Justin]

I just went through this so I do have some good and up to date advice for you.

I sunset my p4 xp build.

Upgraded to a $200 used Dell Optiplex 9020 i7 gen 4 which has an onboard Radeon AMD 4600HD gpu.   I have 16gb tan and an ssd.   All for $200.  I wanted windows 7 for its lightweight characteristics but that proved a NIGHTMARE to
Fully upgrade drivers. Forget it.  Just go win 10 even though it's bloated - is my advice. I upgraded last week.

So it runs mame 0.251 quite fast without any shader effects.  I play everything pre 1995 basically and everything has power to spare. Unthrottled at 250-1000% depending on the game.

So let's talk shaders...
I can enable BGFX or HLSL and they both run above 100% speed with all pre 1995 games I've tested.   This is at 1920x1600 resolution.

I was planning on buying a dedicated card but was pleasantly surprised that the iGPU handled it.

HOWEVER there is an issue I'm having:
-BGFX has the best effects to my eyes, but it does show dancing black artifacts and I think this may be the iGPU driver.  Not good. This is with d3d backend.
-BGFX with OPENGL backend engine shows no artifacts but it is not fast enough on horizontal games for whatever reason (half speed!)

Pure HLSL runs perfectly fine thought and I have settled with that with a custom shader setting that I tweaked and looks almost like BGFX crt-geom-deluxe (my target).

If I really want BGFX I will upgrade to a Nvidia 1080 or maybe 1050 and I'm positive that will solve all issues.

Hope this helps.

[Roland_001]

Stop being cheap.

I second this.  I've build many PC's before, but am new to MAME, so I did my research, and came across lots of posts recommending a repurposed HP or Dell PC - sounded like a good idea at the time.

So I bought an HP Optiplex 5050 MT (Mid-Tower) off of E-bay, ~ $200.  i7 6700, 16G RAM, 1TB SATA, Windows 10 OS.  Sounded great on paper!

Then I realized ... I want to run a CRT, which requires a certain series of graphics cards to output 15Hz.  No problem, purchased .... except the power supply is too weak to support it.  And it uses a proprietary power supply, with no upgrade path.  And the case won't accept standard ATX motherboards, and has weird welded/bolted internal architecture, making a simple replacement of pretty much anything a real chore.

So after spending time researching this, and buying an external power supply + adapter to fit into the proprietary mother board slot...it works ok  Except, it also has a proprietary  power on/off switch with a unique MB header that nobody has the full schematics for apparently.  As I wanted to run an external power button to the PC (so I don't have to open up the cabinet each time), I had to spend a good Saturday afternoon of Youtubing and lots of trial and error, to finally Jerry-Rig a weird combination of spliced wires to get it to do what I wanted.  By this point, the whole contraption was ungainly, and the various connects were loose, easy to pull out accidentally, and likely ended up costing me more in time and effort than if I had just gotten a modern PC.

I ended up ditching the whole thing, bought new parts for ~ $400 total, but this new rig does everything I need easily, smoothly, with plenty of room for expansion in the future as MAME continues to evolve.  The only regret I have is trying to go cheap, which ended up costing me more in time and effort than it was remotely worth.

[game_nerd]

soo I 'm just gonna piggyback on this thread so I don't have to make a new one, but what are the options for wanting to play newer than 1995 games?
how high does mame even go? as far as say 2010 era games?

[Fursphere]

As a reference point, one of my cabinets uses an Intel i5 2500k and a GTX 660 Ti video card (leftover parts from upgrading other stuff).  It plays eveything in MAME I've tried, Model2, Model3 (SuperModel), all the Tekknoparrot stuff I've tried, and even Wii, WiiU, GameCube and PS2 games.   

It chokes on PS3 games. The i5 2500k was originally released in 2011.  Its ancient by today's standards.   

Previously this same cabinet used a Core2Duo E8400, and I remember having problems in MAME with things like Gauntlet Legends and the 'newer' 3D stuff.  But for the old Arcade Classics and like NES through N64 eras, it was fine.  The emulators themselves have evolved too though, so I'm not sure if they're requiring more horsepower to do things better than they used too. 

[haynor666]

I still have G3258 in my PC for MAME. It's very cheap here in Poland but overclocked to 4,0 GHZ it' more than enough for MAME, at least for me.