Will This Run Console Emulators?

[Gronnie]

Selling my old HTPC to a friend. He wants to be able to play console emulators, which I know nothing about.

i3 2125

CoolerMaster GeminII M4 CPU Cooler
Gigabyte GA-Z68A-D3H-B3 Rev 1.0
2x4 GB Corsair XMS3 1333 MHz CL9 (overclock easily to 1600MHz 9-9-9-24)
XFX 6670 1GB DDR5 (I have another identical card I can put in if needed, and I am pretty sure they do X-Fire, although would like to avoid it, I am giving this to a friend at a discount and I don't think he can afford any more than we already agreed on)
Crucial M4 64GB
WD Green 2TB
Silverstone Strider Plus 500W
Silverstone LC13-BE HTPC Case

 

Will this system work for what he wants to do? Looking mostly to emulate the classics: NES, SNES, N64, Sega, PS1, PS2. If it will do any more modern systems I am sure he would love that as well.

 

Also, any recommendations on emulators to use or links to guides to set this all up?

[Jogostar]

yup, should work great.

[Shd0w2]

It looks like it can do everything it needs, and I think it can run the xb360 stuff pretty well.

[Jogostar]

It looks like it can do everything it needs, and I think it can run the xb360 stuff pretty well.

no emu for that.

[helping]

It should be able to run everything, maybe PS2 at modest settings, since some of the supersampling and higher res renderings that you can force in PSX are quite taxing. 

 

There are no modern console emulators. Maybe Wii if you consider that 'modern' 

[Importedham]

That would smash any console emulator except next gen obviously 

[brownninja97]

ps2 emulator but i expect that you could multiply the res by 3x, maybe 4x depending on the game, gba,nds, ps1 etc will be fine.

 

You are not overclocking so there is no need for the z68, i think H67 is the correct chipset for you or get a cheap h61 and get a 7750 as a better gpu.

[Gronnie]

ps2 emulator but i expect that you could multiply the res by 3x, maybe 4x depending on the game, gba,nds, ps1 etc will be fine.

 

You are not overclocking so there is no need for the z68, i think H67 is the correct chipset for you or get a cheap h61 and get a 7750 as a better gpu.

I already have all these parts from old builds.

[TheSLSAMG]

It should be able to run everything, maybe PS2 at modest settings, since some of the supersampling and higher res renderings that you can force in PSX are quite taxing. 

 

There are no modern console emulators. Maybe Wii if you consider that 'modern' 

Agreed. I would say it can't do PS2. My Mac Mini cannot, it's an i5 Sandy Bridge (dual core) model and there is a constant lag.

 

It looks like it can do everything it needs, and I think it can run the xb360 stuff pretty well.

There are no Xbox 360 emulators.

[Gronnie]

With me putting everything together and installing all the software (including the emulators, MediaBrowser, etc) do ya'll think $500 is too much, not enough, or just right for this system?

[TheSLSAMG]

With me putting everything together and installing all the software (including the emulators, MediaBrowser, etc) do ya'll think $500 is too much, not enough, or just right for this system?

Remove the SSD and upgrade to an i5 2400. Then it will be perfectly fine. A dual core will not do PS2.

[Nit3Rid3R]

You'll be good for running emulations. 

 

PCSX2 is a pretty widely used emulator for PS2 games. 

[Hobox]

It can probably do easy PS2 games like FFX. That's still just a probably, it's tough to say with these low end CPU's.

Same for GC/Wii games.

 

However, running the majority of them while looking decent? No. It can handle everything from N64 downwards though (Though so could my old Dell with a Pentium 4) There was an enormous step between those console generations.

 

There is also a lot of debate as to whether multi-threaded dual-core CPU's help or hurt the emulation. Sometimes it depends on the specific game. There are certain settings you can choose that utilize certain features, one of them being to utilize excess cores/virtual cores. Again though, it may not help. That i3 has HT support so the option is there.

[Gronnie]

Got it all setup and it runs everything up to N64 beautifully. Still working on mapping the controller buttons in PS1, but looks like that works too. Not gonna bother with PS2.

[MasterJV]

Got it all setup and it runs everything up to N64 beautifully. Still working on mapping the controller buttons in PS1, but looks like that works too. Not gonna bother with PS2.

It might work, but you will have to play at 480p, maybe 720p. Don't try Dolphin, same story.