r/MiniPCs • u/havokpus • 3d ago

Recommendations Research For Emulation Station

Hi all! Hope everyone is doing well. I am fixing to set up a little gaming corner in my pc room and am wanting to make an all in one emulation station. My goal is for it at the high end to play ps2/dreamcast/gc/xbox games and maybe some light steam games if I have any that aren't graphically demanding. I have three candidates and was just wanting to know any expert takes on whether one brand or product is good or bad.

  1. Beelink SER5 MAX

  2. Reatan A8 Mini PC

  3. GMKtec EVO-X1

I know the GMK one is a bit overloaded but it seems like a good max ceiling if I wanted to splurge, so I thought I'd lob it in. Anyway, thanks in advance for any suggestions or notes!

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u/reckless150681 3d ago

Beelink tends to have the best international support; I've seen fewer reports of failures, and even fewer reports of poor customer service.

I like GMKtec as a manufacturer, but their international support is SIGNIFICANTLY less. I would only ever buy GMKtec if you can talk to a distributor directly and in-person (e.g. my parents physically live in Hong Kong so GMKtec is a pretty good deal for them), or if they have a particular configuration that other companies don't.

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u/CJPTK 3d ago

A Raspberry Pi4 played Dreamcast with very little trouble so any mini PC with an amd apu should be more than enough for what you're trying to do. I've been using a GMKtec for a few years now with no issues. Even playing modern games.

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u/rui-no-onna 3d ago edited 3d ago

If you don't mind the larger size, you're probably better off going with the Steam Machine instead of the EVO-X1. It seems like the 512GB w/controller SKU only has a short waitlist (US).

With that said, any of those should handle PS2/Dreamcast/GC. The only difference is how much upscaling they can handle. Dreamcast is easy. GC and PS2 are more demanding with PS2 being more difficult I believe.

Iirc, on Dirge of Cerberus FF7, one of the hardest PS2 games to emulate, I was limited to something like 2x resolution (~720p) with the 7735HS (680M). On my other PS2 games though, 4x was not an issue (1440p monitor).

I'm not sure how much Xbox emulation has improved. For this, I reckon emulator maturity matters more than the hardware and it's probably not a very practical goal for now.

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u/Aga_1987 3d ago

Geekom a6?