NES - Gaming PC

[-KaM-]

I was considering not making this post, as after a quick search I can see that people have already made posts showing their NES PC's.  But I'm hoping that my NES PC is different enough to warrant a new thread.

 

Just a bit of background first.  I've built many PC's over the years, but never modded anything.  I cant solder or make custom wires or parts, so my challenge is seeing what I can achieve with my limited skill set, and using only manufacturer parts.

 

Prior to the NES build I made a GameCube PC (bought a broken GameCube from ebay).  But this was basically a AMD Gigabyte Gaming Brix stuffed inside a GameCube, though i did get the controller ports working thanks to a 4 port usb to GCN controller adapter.

 

Anyway, I wanted to try something a little more ambitious (for me anyway), specs below:

 

Motherboard: Gigabyte Z97N-Gaming 5

CPU: Intel Core i5 4690K

Memory: 8GB Mystery RAM (just some I had around)

GPU: Gigabyte GTX 1050ti (low profile)

PSU: HDPLEX 250W

SSD: Samsung 120GB

HDD: WD 1TB

 

 

Picture time!

 

 

My original plan for the motherboard was to have it facing down, but when I tested this with the top of the case on the CPU temp just kept going up and up while not under any load.  Saw it go up to around 95oC before I gave up on this idea and had the motherboard facing up.

 

 

Motherboard now facing up and also showing my excellent cable management.  You cant see on this image, but the two hard drives are half under the mobo and half under the PSU, the SATA cables can be seen at the far right of the above image.  I had to use right angle SATA cables for both hard drives.  

 

Aslo you might see a PCIe riser cable to the left of the image.  This is going under the motherboard to the outside of the case:

 

I like to think as this as an add-on port for the NES.

 

 

This is where the 1050ti now lives.

 

 

Just a shot of the back of the NES.  I didnt want to damage or mod the outside of the case, but I had to make an exception for the power connector, where i had to drill two small holes to hold it in place.

 

The USB port on the back is such a tight fit that I've not had to do anything to ensure it stays in place.

 

 

Now I'm hoping this is where my build differs from others.

 

First off the two fans.  These are glued in place, as intake and outtake.  I wasn't expecting this fan setup to work, but somehow it keeps the CPU at arounf 50oC.  It reached 80oC while i was downloading GTA5 via steam while installing other programs and watching stuff on youtube.  But after installation of software finished it quickly went down to around 55-60oC.

 

The board which is glued and taped to the underside of the cartridge slot is an NFC reader.  I want to be able to use this PC like a console, where I insert games and they load.

 

Is this a pointless feature and would it be easier to double click on an exe file to load games?  Sure, but I think this is a much cooler way to load them!

 

 

Let me reassure any retro gamers out there that no NES games were destroyed to make these cartridges.  I bought 10 new NES cartridge cases from a website.  This actually cost me more than it would have done then if I bought 10 poor or damaged NES games from ebay.

 

 

The inside of the cartridges isn't anything spectacular, but here it is, NFC tag and all, in all of its glory.

 

 

Cart inserted into the NES PC.  I don't know why I find this as neat as I do, but the NFC reader app starts up on boot and if I leave the game in when its booting, it then auto loads the game.

 

Also, as this is the only photo of the front I have, the only thing I'm dissapointed with is that I had to remove the original NES ports.  I would have liked to keep them and for them to work over USB, but there just wasnt any space inside the case for me to do this.  So there is a piece of black card covering where the ports used to be.

 

 

Found this NES themed bluetooth speaker and controller which I needed to buy to complete the theme.  The controller is good for retro games, but I have a XB1 bluetooth controller for games like Rocket League and Nier.

 

I'm not quite finished with the build yet.  I need to make myself some NES styled labels for the cartridges and I need to make a bracket or stand for the GPU, as when it gets hot it melts the glue and sort of drops off the side of the case.

 

I'm happy with the build though and am still a bit shocked at how cool the CPU runs as there really isnt a lot of space inside the case especially when you consider that the cartridge slot is about 10mm above the CPU fan.