I’ve recently started to get into playing more games on my laptop. Currently the laptop I use is limited in terms of specs and really only designed to do basic tasks on, but light gaming is still pretty good. I’m able to play Fallout New Vegas and a few other small games work well too. Lately though I have been getting into emulation and playing old games from my youth. Quite a few games work fine, but when I try to play something more demanding like COD then I find my PC really struggles. I am loving emulation and feel like getting more into PC gaming as a whole.
I have done some research and found some mini PC’s people online have used for emulation that work well like the Beelink SER5 Mini PC on Amazon. What I am wondering though is if it will be more worthwhile to spend a bit more and build a similar PC with the same specs that I can upgrade later. I popped into PC picker and put together a build that I believe replicates the specs of the mini PC, but I wanted to get some feedback on if this build would be good for emulation of PS2 and PS3 at 1080p as well as average Steam gaming. I am trying to keep my budget under $600, so the absence of a graphics card is intentional. I am hoping that I can get away without one now and invest in one in the near future.
You can build a perfectly fine gaming PC with a decent GPU for $600, that will blow any mini PC out of the water. If performance is more important to you than a small form factor, that is the way to go.