The most powerful Nintendo 64 PC yet

[Looperted]

What's up guys, I finally finished my Nintendo 64 HTPC.  I planned on doing a complete buildlog/guide, but sadly I forgot to export my photos when I RMA'd my Xperia Z3. I built this primarily for emulators, plays Wii games on Dolphin @1080p60.  Also tried out BF4 on it, at 720p Medium settings it got an average of 54fps, so not too far off from a Xbox one.

 

It took hours of dremeling and sanding, and in case anyone was wondering I used satin krylon Fusion for the finish.

 

Specs:

CPU: A10-7850k @3.8 GHz cooled by a Zalman CNPS2x

GPU: iGPU OC'd to 920Mhz

RAM: 8GB Crucial Ballistix VLP 1600Mhz OC'd to 1866

MoBo: Gigabyte GA-F2A88XN-WiFi

SSD: My Digital SSD BP4E 128GB mSata w/SATA Adapter

PSU: PicoPSU 160-XT with 160W Power brick

 

(Also, sadly lost the power button yesterday, a new one is in the mail)

I'm also quite proud of how ghetto a few of my solutions were.

 

Edit: In case anyone is wondering about temps/noise levels, I'd say they're pretty damn good.

(going by the sound meter app on my phone) 3 feet from my PC while web browsing it's at 36db, with the PC off it's 33-34.

Also, during light usage the system temp stays around 49c, with the CPU hovering around 38c.  (this is in a ~73f room)

Haven't tested the noise levels during gaming, but the highest I've seen temps get was around 61c.

[toggleguy]

Awsome build man! Also, welcome to the forum!

[zonahbear]

This is... beautiful

[Looperted]

Awsome build man! Also, welcome to the forum!

Thanks man, I've been watching Linus' videos for a while now, and decided to finally join the community.

[Rodneyg87]

Looks awesome just better hope no youngins come to your house thinking its an actual N64 and start trying to stuff a game cartridge into it.

[Looperted]

Looks awesome just better hope no youngins come to your house thinking its an actual N64 and start trying to stuff a game cartridge into it.

Sadly I think we're getting to a point where the young kids aren't even going to know what a N64 is.

[Rodneyg87]

Sadly I think we're getting to a point where the young kids aren't even going to know what a N64 is.

I know what you mean a friend of mine came over with his kids the other day to chill for a while and I have a bunch of vintage gaming consoles in my living room that I play pretty often and his boys looked at me and asked what the hell all those things were. I have a pretty good variety of classic machines 

Coleco vision

Atari 2600

Nintendo

Super Nintendo

Sega Genesis with Sega cd attachment

PS1

PS2

N64

[IMPERIUS]

I know what you mean a friend of mine came over with his kids the other day to chill for a while and I have a bunch of vintage gaming consoles in my living room that I play pretty often and his boys looked at me and asked what the hell all those things were. I have a pretty good variety of classic machines 

Coleco vision

Atari 2600

Nintendo

Super Nintendo

Sega Genesis with Sega cd attachment

PS1

PS2

N64

Buy another ps1/2 (2 is probablly cheaper) and do a build in it

[Rodneyg87]

Buy another ps1/2 (2 is probablly cheaper) and do a build in it

Maybe in the future some time but i've been wanting to do something different from building a pc in a game console like Looperted did. I want to build a pc in something like a 900D and put 2-3 different gaming consoles into the case with the pc components and water cool everything.

[ungreedy]

I know my kids think my NES pc ( build log in sig ) is just a computer. have no clue that it was a game console.

 

also nice looking build !

 

how are your temps?

 

I had the 7850k before and it games pretty good ,It could run the dolphin emulator decent at 720p.

 

edit- I played with that apu a real lot and you will get more fps in games by OCing the cpu and not the gpu, if your temps will let you

[JAKEBAB]

I really hope that was dead before u decided to gut it otherwise i think i may have died a little inside

 

Other than that it look's awesome, i love when people do stuff like this.

[Looperted]

I know my kids think my NES pc ( build log in sig ) is just a computer. have no clue that it was a game console.

 

also nice looking build !

 

how are your temps?

 

I had the 7850k before and it games pretty good ,It could run the dolphin emulator decent at 720p.

Just edited it with the temps and noise below the picture, and with high speed dual channel ram I'm able to play SSBB at 1080p with FXAA, at a constant 60FPS.

[Looperted]

I really hope that was dead before u decided to gut it otherwise i think i may have died a little inside

 

Other than that it look's awesome, i love when people do stuff like this.

It's all good, I bought a dead one off ebay for $15.

I could never bring myself to killing a N64.

[Looperted]

This is so sexy. I wanna do something like this lol

I wouldnt recommend using a N64, its way to small.  If you want to do something like this id go for a NES.

[dezrow]

Seriously need to collect all of the console conversion projects into a thread haha. 

[Norman_the_Owl]

I love these things. Strongly considering one for when i go to college

[MODZERO]

Very cool! Want it!

 

J.

[Gullerback]

Thats fantastic.  I honestly expected the controller ports to be converted into a USB hub or something tho =(

[Looperted]

Thats fantastic.  I honestly expected the controller ports to be converted into a USB hub or something tho =(

I had originally planned on doing that, but the problem there was a USB female receptor was much larger than what would have looked nice on the front; didn't use any N64 controller adapters either as I don't own any N64 controllers, and If i did I wouldn't use them anyways because a PS4 controller would do things much better.

[Looperted]

I love these things. Strongly considering one for when i go to college

I do projects like these solely for fun and for the experience, and maybe you are too.

 

In all honesty though I'm probably going to sell it in the next couple months because I just don't have any real use for it at all.

[Norman_the_Owl]

I do projects like these solely for fun and for the experience, and maybe you are too.

 

In all honesty though I'm probably going to sell it in the next couple months because I just don't have any real use for it at all.

Yea it doesn't seem super practical right now, but in a few years (skylake woo) it might be more plausible.

[Looperted]

There's a NES build log going on right now actually.

 

When you get the N64, did you basically take out all of the components inside of it? So in essence, it became an empty case?

Oh man couldn't be farther from simply doing that.

The N64 is made of a VERY hard plastic, and once I opened it up the interior is dozens of cross-supports, standoffs and ventilation crap.  

I had to remove and flatten every single damn piece, breaking countless cutting discs on my dremel.

https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Repairing+Nintendo+64+Bottom+Cover/1611

 

I couldn't find a picture of the top casing, which was about 10x worse with little bits of crap sticking off every which way. 

[Looperted]

How long did that all take? I'm contemplating doing one of these projects myself, but idk if it's worth the trouble.

In short?  Too long.  In reality though, it took hours upon hours.  The plastic it is made of made it goddamn near impossible to dremel, ended up breaking a lot of cutting discs, lacerating my hand when a disk broke, and burning myself multiple times from molten plastic getting flung all over the place.

 

Although.....I am planning to sell it soon if you don't want to do any work yourself. 

(I know though anyone here that wanted one would make one)

[Blackie Sheen]

Wow I am pretty impressed. Compared to some other builds with pc's inside of a console case, yours look really clean and does not look too ghetto

[Looperted]

Wow I am pretty impressed. Compared to some other builds wiht pc's inside of a console case your look really clean and does not lok too ghetto

Well thanks, I was aiming for it to look halfway decent.  I'm probably gonna sell the motherboard/ram/cpu and make a new one touching up bits of it and making look nicer overall, especially on the inside; that is once AMD has APU's that support DDR4, as that will bring insane graphics performance increases.