There's a heap of the larger form factor ones coming onto the market in Australia now but they're closer to $200AU over here. Absolutely loved Timesplitters 2 on Gamecube, still have the machine and disk laying around in storage.
@@allergictobs9751 I guess it's mostly because of Intel doesn't giving a shit about customers, they just didn't upgraded that much with the years, because they knew that they were the only option, now I can't even stand Intel, my next laptop or/and computer is definitely going to be Ryzen.
I own one of these. You can increase the GPU memory in the bios if that makes a difference. I've managed to run most ps2 games at 95-100% speed, the more heavier ones drop to about 80% but not below that with some speedhacks. Absolutely still playable. 3DS I get about 90-100% speed, gamecube 100%, PSP solid 100%. Overall this computer is a beast, considering it consumes max 65W (but usually uses much less). I'd rather have this in my living room as a go to for emulation rather than a raspberrypi4
got one of these for free. Someone thought it was broken apparently. I was playing Rise of the Tomb Raider on it earlier at about 20fps. We use it for a Win10 media centre.
More fun: they kept the hard drive cables and tray. I cut a SATA power cable, found 5V on the board and wired my own. For most drives it seems 3V & 12V are not required. TBH only +5! Not even ground was required but I wired it up anyway.
I love your RUclips channel so much. Thanks for doing these vids, I used to distribute these Lenovos as "thin clients" for customers to connect to terminal servers with back in the day (not that long ago).
Check first the kind of electronics you want... Then look up in which country it was sold the most... The change your ebay or amazon to that countrys...
It's nice to see a socketed CPU in such as small machine. That i5 is a regular desktop chip. You could upgrade it to a quad core i5 4570 or even a i7 (not all i7s are compatible though). Don't know if the thermals would handle it though. Someone even managed to install a Xeon E3 1275L (4C / 8T 45W TDP) into this thing.
The m93p is really a great value. I am running three of them with 16GB and 256 GB SSDs as a mini virtualization cluster running. Total investment is less than $300.
It's a pretty good PC for ~$100. In my country the best I could find for this price is an old Core 2 Quad with Nvidia GT 210 graphics and 4GB RAM (and that's still a good deal here) :D
True. I bought this exact system in 2015, May. It is STILL working as fast and solid as ever, 6.5 years later. I recently added a new Dell system simply because I wanted to do 3D modeling and needed a discrete GPU. I now have two excellent systems.
I got mine around 4yrs ago for 330€ and I am still using it as my daily driver at home for surfing, office\graphics work and watching movies.... the low power consumption and noise while keeping great performance is impresive.
I threw a 4590 in one of these and with good thermal paste, it worked very well. Would get somewhat loud for a bit, but using it as a remote point for my gaming PC and an emulation was just fine.
I went hardcore with one of my M93p's... Got a 90w power brick, HyperX impact CL9 ram 16GB, 1TB MX500, wifi module with antenna's (the proper ones for this system, not some aftermarket crap), modified the case for better cooling with a 80x80x10.6mm fan plus fan filter, got a 4980HQ coming to replace the 4570T, and I'm going to slap RGB in it once I find the connector for the internal option USB 2.0 port to supply power to the strip. Potential upgrade in the future is getting a 3D printed heatsink made from a heat resistant material that holds down a shim which also has 2 heat pipes attached to it using thermal epoxy, which in theory should out perform the stock heatsink. Only thing I wish I could do but lack the skills is add the missing mSATA connector for a 2nd drive (people have done this successfully).
After watching a previous video of your I went and bought a Lenovo Tiny. This exact one with the i5-4570T w/ 8GB Ram. All I need now is a SSD. It runs some of my favorite Steam games like Ultra Street Fighter IV and Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3 with no issues.
did you have to run them on low settings ? also do you know if zero delay usb encoders are compatible with ultra street fighter IV and marvel vs capcom 3 ?
I'm sure someone else has mentioned it, but just in case..... Don't put the vaccuum anywhere near a PCB. They generate TONS of static electricity, and could very easily kill a motherboard or cpu. Great videos, keep it up!
low-key i am still running a i5-2520M CPU. Thank you for showing me this.... Respect bro- I could sell my current laptop for two of those machines. rip.
A friend of mine left one of his i3 mini-PCs here that otherwise is physically identical to the one in this video. I use it to render 3D fractals at up to 21,600x14,400. It takes some time to do it but no complaints for a free PC :)
You can upgrade to a i5 4460T,i5 4590T or i7 4785t. All are 35w TDP and real quadcore chips. I prefer the 4460t because it is really inexpensive (got mine for 30 Euro). If you want to spend a little more look for the Alienware Alpha R1 box. It has the same size but has also a GTX 860m (GTX 750ti) which is highly overclockable.
I absolutely love your volume of uploads and thanks to you I've learnt so much about so many SBCs that are perfect for emulation. Have you ever tried the Sapphire Edge Mini PCs? They're pretty difficult to come by these days but I use one in my Recalbox console build and it's fantastic!
Sweet! Currently running my x220 out of my van, its good for everything I do. Now that Ive installed solar I’m going to switch to a desktop, and I really need to upgrade to usb 3.0 more than anything else. This will be absolutely perfect!
Got one off eBay for $37.00. No RAM, No CPU, No Power Adapter, no Wifi Card, No HDD Caddy. I then purchased a adapter $6.59, (8 Gigs of RAM I had laying around - No Cost), HDD Caddy with secondary antenna ($16.99), WiFi Card ($14.00), Extra rear Antenna $5.85, 240 Gig Adata SSD $28, i5 4570T $45.00..so I spent over $150 on this setup (I used the Windows 7 CD key to install Windows, then I upgraded it to Windows 10 Pro for FREE). I have seen one comparably priced at $175 on eBay. I have been playing some of my older PC games (from Steam), and they look ok. Batman Arkham Asylum (which I STILL haven't finished in 10 years ), looks good, and smooth frame rates. Borderlands 2, plays fine, but you need to turn the settings. I want to upgrade to the i7-4765T when I find one, no more than $80 or so. I will also up the RAM to 16 gigs (I have that in one of my defunct Laptops). I might get another SSD, and try making this an Hackintosh...someday. Oh, I use my Xbox One Bluetooth Controller with this...and it works flawlessly.
Hi, try copper paste as a thermal paste. It's much cheaper than the expensive branded pastes, works wonderfully and doesn't dry out. I've been using it on my computers for over two years and have never had a problem with it. 50 grams costs between 3.98 and 4.99 euros
It still buggs me that they called quad cores I7s and dual cores I5s. It's just marketing bs like amds PR rating. If you don't do a bunch digging you get ripped off. Another great video as always.
@Ian Healy yes but with hyper threading. Straight quads were called I5. Dual cores with and without the hyper threading were I3. Calling a quad w/o hyper threading an I7 is just wrong.
Awesome video as always, ETA. FYI, If you live near a public university, check their surplus store. You can get PC's like this one at a good price. They usually do not come with hard drives but sometimes they have RAM.
When you factor in the price of a Raspberry Pi + SD + PSU, these little pcs blow them out of the water in price to performance. Now I know you cant compare too heavily because of the form factor, but who really needs a pi to be so small anyhow?
It's plenty small. They had a few of these at my old job hooked up to monitors for news briefings and PowerPoint presentations. Takes up very little space. I want one to use as a media center in our living room
I have 2 of these and they are great emulator setups. My systems also have Bluetooth so makes it easy to connect controllers and keyboards when in a cabinet
I am pretty surprised that I never saw you try to run f zero gx on any test. It's a great game and one of the hardest one to emulate so it would be pretty interesting to see in my opinion.
WTF I just bought this a week ago. I spray painted mine white semi gloss (except for the button), slapped an SSD in, upgraded the wifi card, added some new thermal paste, and installed BigBox. I also modified the registry to run BigBox as the new Windows shell.
@@Megabobster 1. Open the start menu. 2. Type "regedit" (without the " ) and hit enter (UAC might come up). 3. Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE → Software → Microsoft → 4. Windows NT → CurrentVersion → Winlogon. 5. Change the value of "Shell" to the .exe you want to use
@@jacksonshoemaker2013 Exit BigBox and open task manager (CTRL+ALT+DEL) then run new task: regedit.. Regedit should still be in the same area that you modified previously. Change the shell back to "explorer.exe" (dont add the ") and apply then reboot.
Sir, Thank you so much for this video!! I was doing research to build a mini/micro ATX computer for emulation, but this is much easier and cheaper. Thanks again!
Great video!😍 I love small PC machines that I use for multimedia and I have a question therefore: is this computer able to play a 4k video file by Kodi?🤔
I have the m73 tiny that looks like this. I soldered on the extra mini pcie slot and the other few missing components. I've been using a mini pcie to pcie 16x adapter and been using a rx 6400 with it. yeah it's not peak performance but definitely better than igfx.
Only downside is it doesn't seem you can fit a gpu in there. I got a dell optiplex 3040 for $40 and crammed a sff gpu in it and the thing is surprisingly very capable of handling emulation for everything up to wii.
@@NexusFantismo I ended up using a GT1030. Thus far it has been able to handle most of what I throw at it. Some wii games- like super mario galaxy and brawl- worked great, even at 2.5x resolution. PS2 was a bit of a letdown, though. I can run a lot of the games, but the high intensity ones, like MGS2 and 3, or Ratchet and Clank, still seem a bit beyond my reach. If you're ok with the occasional hiccup and aren't gunning for PS2 emulation, go for the 1030 on a sale (I got it for 60). Otherwise, you might be better off getting a sff 1050ti if you've got the cash. The small form factor and teeny PSU of the PC limits your options some and you'll probably have to pay a little for the luxury. I am running ubuntu linux, too, so you might have better luck for PS2 emulation because you have Direct X- I have to stick to OpenGL. Given that the whole project cost me about $100 and I now have a dedicated stepmania and emulation box that kicks the shit out of my retropie, I am very happy with my current setup but might one day slap in a 1050ti just to give it some more range.
I picked up the Lenovo M700 tiny for +/- $170 but it's 6th gen i5 and 8gig ram on one stick! Very awesome machine indeed but it only has DisplayPort, no vga or hdmi and mine didn't come with built-in wifi but I used a wifi card out of a laptop (took the antennas out of the laptop screen) and fashioned internal wifi.
Those slowdowns for the ps2 are pretty accurate as the real system was pretty bad for that issue. FYI I owned a ps2 from new and never had any other system, it's just we tend to remember it being better than it actually was.
Thats because it cost so much to ship to the 3rd world countries . Maybe quit acknowledging "royalty" and you can graduate to a 1st world country . Simple
With Raspberry Pis in short supply, these machines are sometimes cheaper and more powerful. I bought a couple and even gifted them to family. Love these tiny machines.
Running Linux would pump out some extra performance. It would be cool to see a comparison on the exact same hardware if you have a spare SSD it would make for a great video.
Hey there, I love watching your videos, very informative. I do have a question about the M93p. If you're only using this for say emulation, why wouldn't you just run/boot up batocera instead? Would there be any reason not to do this with this machine? Just curious.
Have one with E3-1275l v3 (fast cpu with abysmal graphics) and another with i5-4590t (ok cpu with decent graphics). The former runs Manjaro, and the latter runs Windows. Very handy for daily stuff and generating junk traffic for my home virtualization lab.
got a few of these.. and they are awesome.. also look for the M73/M83.. pretty much the same.. can put all the same things inside.. (universal) also make sure as he states.. get the i5 version.. it has the intel HD4600 graphics.. the i3 has the HD4400 graphics.. though there are a few newer i3's that have HD4600 graphics that may be inside the Lenovo's.. these little (tiny) PC's are solid and run quiet and us little power.. they also have Lenovo monitors that were made for these to plug into the back.. making it an all in one! pretty cool!
Are you sure? The i7 has an additional two cores for a total of 8 logical cores, compared to 2/4 on the i5 version. I'd argue that more than makes up for 600mhz lower boost? :)
@@amshermansen A lot of emulators don't benefit from extra cores. As far as I understand the M93P comes with the i7-4765T or i5-4570T. The i5 turbo isn't only a little higher, but the base clock as well. There might be other variations around, but it's just something to keep in mind.
@@amshermansen it actually does. If you're using MAME, it was updated to utilize up to 4 cores. So those extra two will enable some of that performance to be offloaded instead of just bogging down 2 cores.
@@robertvanghle8987 Correct, although I think MAME is one of the exceptions. For things like Dolphin etc you're still better off with more CPU speed. For any older emulators it doesn't really make a difference, since the i5 is fast enough anyway.
Hey, I got the M92p for $85.00 on Ebay a couple of weeks ago. It didn't come with a power adapter which I purchase its got the i5 3470T CPU @ 290MHz 2 Core 4 Logical Proccessors 4GB of RAM which I will upgrade to 8 because I'm running Windows 10 now. When I got it the SSD had been wiped nothing on it. I had downloaded Windows 10 and had it on a DVD and used a external DVD drive to install it. Wireless mouse and Keyboard. WiFi Dongle don't have the antenna for the internal WiFi. Got Trophy Hunter II I'm going to try out and Impossible Golf and a Casino Mega Collection for casino games. Later, just got it up and running works good so far. I need to get into it and clean it as you did reseat the CPU upgrade that memory.
I have one of these and its still pretty powerful consideration to its size and age. Even plays games like assassins creed black flag on medium specs at a solid 30-40 frames per second
The CPU is socketed, so does that mean it is possible to replace the CPU, disregarding thermal specifications, or does the BIOS whitelist CPUs to only work with certain SKUs?
It's strong enough for pcsx2, but gotta use native resolution. (edit: not all games will run, Gran Turismo 4, God of war, Shadow of the colossus won't run nicely) Still a damn bargain for 60 bucks
I just got an M82, its got the i5 and 4 gb ram, I've got a bag full of DDR3 from a leftover build, it didn't have a HDD but I've got a couple extras floating around.. got it for $15, so I don't mind that it's a 3rd gen i5 3470. I mean, come on...$15!! And it is super clean, almost like it never even was used, not a spec of dust, though I'm still going to clean it up. I've got a pi4, and a couple of original Xbox systems, but I'm kind of excited about this!
@@livatos1280 I work for a e-waste company. we get PC's for free and then I resell them. so my cost on these are much lower then other people would pay
Darn it, I wish I had watched this video yesterday. I just picked up an M92P Mini (3rd gen intel) for $100. It's in great shape, not a scratch on it. Included 4GB RAM, the wifi card and power brick. I didn't really think about the integrated graphics being worse than the 4th gen stuff.
Quick update- If anyone has an M92P and needs a cheap upgrade, I installed an i5 3475S without any cooling or power issues. It's a real 4 core and upgrades the iGPU from the HD2500 to HD4000. It's a massive improvement and the chip is $10 on eBay.
the mini PCI-E connector is compatible with external GPUs docks. You won't get 100% performance out of any GPU, but it will run games. I only recommend it if you have a spare GPU around.
From what I remember, using a vacuum cleaner on "blow" creates static and tosses dust, and that can damage components. But I was told that about 6 years ago, so I have to wonder if shielding on components has come that far? But then that'd only apply to modern components, so...
I want to set up a mini pc for emulation, what is the best setting you recommend no matter what the value? I would like to call the TV. Thank you very much in advance!!!
That is a good deal. I'm basically interested in nes to n64, and dream cast and ps1, neo geo. Ps2 is still a bit of a challenge. I have a epic gaming rig (32gb ram, 2080ti, intel 9900 etc) but I don't want to use it for emulation, I want to have it in my entertainment center for the big screen. This sounds like it would fit the bill for a cheap price (prob 200 after ssd and ram I'm sure).
Love you channel, it's a real treasure trove. Regarding i5 4570T processor, it should have a turbo clock of 3.6GHz but on your screen it says it's running at only 3.3GHz. Where those 300MHz gone?
lol when I saw that update for launchbox, Out of habit from working on my arcade machine, I tried to click on it, which paused the video, got confused why it wasn't working, then realised what I was doing :D
Bought two of these things truly sweet machines, with an SSD hard drive both of mine are ready to boot, login and fly into tasks with no lag in literally 10 seconds from plugging it in to doing stuff full speed, I never knew SSD's could make that much difference for 40 bux shipped.
Good morning ETA, I've watched your videos for the last 6 months and now I'm ready to build my own machine. I've looked at the m900 tiny which has a i5 6500t. I'm fine putting up to $300. My setup needs something usff.
The emulation scene os fascinating. For each 10 hours we out into setup and library management, we do 10 minutes of gaming
It's more fun to setup tbh
lol, spot on.. WORK>reward
True
*Gets 50+ games
*Plays 2 of them
@@dathotbox My GF yells at me all the time "why do you keep getting games if you never play them" lol
not just for emulation, this PC would be good enough to run what 90% of people use on a day to day basis lol.
Whats so funny tho.
@@prithvigill3827 He is laughing at your socks, because they are silly, silly socks.
@@samkilgore7227 I dont wear socks
Don't yell at me
Very nice for office work.
There's a heap of the larger form factor ones coming onto the market in Australia now but they're closer to $200AU over here. Absolutely loved Timesplitters 2 on Gamecube, still have the machine and disk laying around in storage.
Old PC: *Exists*
ETA Prime: It's free real estate
For real though
dead meme but good joke
Literally every low end gamer :(
@@allergictobs9751 I'll rather have no PC at this point 😂
@@allergictobs9751 I guess it's mostly because of Intel doesn't giving a shit about customers, they just didn't upgraded that much with the years, because they knew that they were the only option, now I can't even stand Intel, my next laptop or/and computer is definitely going to be Ryzen.
I have one of these, great little box. Exactly the same size as Mac mini and easily upgradable.
I just remembered I had an very old mac mini in a box doing nothing, maybe I should set it up, retroarch mac I'm coming :D
Jimmy Z For sure, old Mac mini is upgradable too if you look up tutorials to add more ram and ssd. Nice little box.
@@Angultra Actually I upgraded it to max RAM and SSD BEFORE putting it in a box...
I own one of these. You can increase the GPU memory in the bios if that makes a difference. I've managed to run most ps2 games at 95-100% speed, the more heavier ones drop to about 80% but not below that with some speedhacks. Absolutely still playable. 3DS I get about 90-100% speed, gamecube 100%, PSP solid 100%. Overall this computer is a beast, considering it consumes max 65W (but usually uses much less). I'd rather have this in my living room as a go to for emulation rather than a raspberrypi4
@@3k9k If you are on a budget and you are not fussy, this would run about everything you want up to ps2 and most of 3DS at almost full speed.
Can you play any pc games on here like gta v or xenoverse 2
What are your settings? I just order a mini pc with an i3-6100T, I'm wondering if it might be a little underpowered for PS2.
How much can we increase the memory in the bios?
Please can u tell me if it can run cuphead or modern arcade style games like windjammers2,the new tmnt etc? Thanks
got one of these for free. Someone thought it was broken apparently. I was playing Rise of the Tomb Raider on it earlier at about 20fps. We use it for a Win10 media centre.
More fun: they kept the hard drive cables and tray. I cut a SATA power cable, found 5V on the board and wired my own. For most drives it seems 3V & 12V are not required.
TBH only +5! Not even ground was required but I wired it up anyway.
I love your RUclips channel so much. Thanks for doing these vids, I used to distribute these Lenovos as "thin clients" for customers to connect to terminal servers with back in the day (not that long ago).
Such a satisfying little thing to work on, I'd love a stack of 50.
I have a SFF PC core i5 3470, 12GB ram and a Nvidia GT 520, it runs Citra and PS2 pretty well, even Cemu. I recommend RetroArch for emulation
Found couple for 300$ in my country. People reselling hardware almost as if it's new.
Same with my country. Ridicilous. one was 220$ but its probably gen 3 CPU
Check first the kind of electronics you want...
Then look up in which country it was sold the most...
The change your ebay or amazon to that countrys...
It is 250 in my place with i7 4765T and 12gb of Ram
250ish here
It's nice to see a socketed CPU in such as small machine. That i5 is a regular desktop chip. You could upgrade it to a quad core i5 4570 or even a i7 (not all i7s are compatible though). Don't know if the thermals would handle it though.
Someone even managed to install a Xeon E3 1275L (4C / 8T 45W TDP) into this thing.
I have a xeon in mine, thermals will be fine. The bigger issue is cost with an i7, even an i5 4590 will cost more than you pay for the m93p
Some have also successfully taken 4750HQ's and 4980HQ's and put them in. Better iGPU and probably about the best you'll get in the M93p
I've got the regular size m93p and I love it. I upgraded it with a Nvidia graphics card and I'm able to use UE4 and Blender on it. Great bargain.
The m93p is really a great value. I am running three of them with 16GB and 256 GB SSDs as a mini virtualization cluster running. Total investment is less than $300.
It's a pretty good PC for ~$100. In my country the best I could find for this price is an old Core 2 Quad with Nvidia GT 210 graphics and 4GB RAM (and that's still a good deal here) :D
Same in Syria
I found and bought AMD A10-5800K/8gb RAM/GTX 660/SSD128+HDD500gb for about 50$ in my country
@@knrddjek8504 I bought my GT 1030 OC Edition for $120
This Lenovo from video in my country (Brazil) is about 1700~2000 BRL, which is doubled the price for direct BRL to USD conversion.
Man, ps2 and gamecube? That's the console I want. And the form factor is perfect!
Ps2 emulation was trash. GameCube ran well
Oke, I love this mini form factor PC :D
The military spec testing makes a huge difference in these systems running reliably for pretty much forever
True. I bought this exact system in 2015, May. It is STILL working as fast and solid as ever, 6.5 years later. I recently added a new Dell system simply because I wanted to do 3D modeling and needed a discrete GPU. I now have two excellent systems.
Thanks for the tips! This PC would be great for a living room gaming setup with LaunchBox!
I got mine around 4yrs ago for 330€ and I am still using it as my daily driver at home for surfing, office\graphics work and watching movies.... the low power consumption and noise while keeping great performance is impresive.
I threw a 4590 in one of these and with good thermal paste, it worked very well. Would get somewhat loud for a bit, but using it as a remote point for my gaming PC and an emulation was just fine.
I went hardcore with one of my M93p's...
Got a 90w power brick, HyperX impact CL9 ram 16GB, 1TB MX500, wifi module with antenna's (the proper ones for this system, not some aftermarket crap), modified the case for better cooling with a 80x80x10.6mm fan plus fan filter, got a 4980HQ coming to replace the 4570T, and I'm going to slap RGB in it once I find the connector for the internal option USB 2.0 port to supply power to the strip.
Potential upgrade in the future is getting a 3D printed heatsink made from a heat resistant material that holds down a shim which also has 2 heat pipes attached to it using thermal epoxy, which in theory should out perform the stock heatsink.
Only thing I wish I could do but lack the skills is add the missing mSATA connector for a 2nd drive (people have done this successfully).
sounds cool can u post screenshot for inspiration i wanna try this too
7:02 ROLLIN AROUND AT THE SPEED OF SOUND
After watching a previous video of your I went and bought a Lenovo Tiny. This exact one with the i5-4570T w/ 8GB Ram. All I need now is a SSD.
It runs some of my favorite Steam games like Ultra Street Fighter IV and Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3 with no issues.
did you have to run them on low settings ? also do you know if zero delay usb encoders are compatible with ultra street fighter IV and marvel vs capcom 3 ?
@@stecoleman3356 want to know too.
I'm sure someone else has mentioned it, but just in case.....
Don't put the vaccuum anywhere near a PCB. They generate TONS of static electricity, and could very easily kill a motherboard or cpu. Great videos, keep it up!
this is not true .. i have done this for 40 years and never had a failure because of it ..
@@Brommes do you live in a humid climate?
low-key i am still running a i5-2520M CPU. Thank you for showing me this.... Respect bro- I could sell my current laptop for two of those machines. rip.
Ijust bought the exact same SSD for my old Packard Bell Dot S, that thing is fast and cheap and a real improvement.
Tek Syndicate had a video about thermal paste 7 years ago.
A pea sized amount in the center is just fine.
A friend of mine left one of his i3 mini-PCs here that otherwise is physically identical to the one in this video. I use it to render 3D fractals at up to 21,600x14,400. It takes some time to do it but no complaints for a free PC :)
I wanted one of these bad, but settled on the HP Elite 8300 ultra slim. Not as small, but a great machine
Please, make a video with this machine, dedicated to basic creative work with Photoshop / Gimp, Illustrator / Inskcape, Maya / Blender.
You can upgrade to a i5 4460T,i5 4590T or i7 4785t. All are 35w TDP and real quadcore chips. I prefer the 4460t because it is really inexpensive (got mine for 30 Euro). If you want to spend a little more look for the Alienware Alpha R1 box. It has the same size but has also a GTX 860m (GTX 750ti) which is highly overclockable.
I absolutely love your volume of uploads and thanks to you I've learnt so much about so many SBCs that are perfect for emulation. Have you ever tried the Sapphire Edge Mini PCs? They're pretty difficult to come by these days but I use one in my Recalbox console build and it's fantastic!
Sweet! Currently running my x220 out of my van, its good for everything I do. Now that Ive installed solar I’m going to switch to a desktop, and I really need to upgrade to usb 3.0 more than anything else. This will be absolutely perfect!
I'm using a free HP 8200 Elite USDT w/ 16GB, miniPCIe GPU, and an SSD for a similar purpose. It works well!
Got one off eBay for $37.00. No RAM, No CPU, No Power Adapter, no Wifi Card, No HDD Caddy. I then purchased a adapter $6.59, (8 Gigs of RAM I had laying around - No Cost), HDD Caddy with secondary antenna ($16.99), WiFi Card ($14.00), Extra rear Antenna $5.85, 240 Gig Adata SSD $28, i5 4570T $45.00..so I spent over $150 on this setup (I used the Windows 7 CD key to install Windows, then I upgraded it to Windows 10 Pro for FREE). I have seen one comparably priced at $175 on eBay. I have been playing some of my older PC games (from Steam), and they look ok. Batman Arkham Asylum (which I STILL haven't finished in 10 years ), looks good, and smooth frame rates. Borderlands 2, plays fine, but you need to turn the settings. I want to upgrade to the i7-4765T when I find one, no more than $80 or so. I will also up the RAM to 16 gigs (I have that in one of my defunct Laptops). I might get another SSD, and try making this an Hackintosh...someday. Oh, I use my Xbox One Bluetooth Controller with this...and it works flawlessly.
PLEASE try upgrading the CPU in another vid :D
I read about this and wanna buy this same machine with a CPU upgrade later on...
Hi, try copper paste as a thermal paste. It's much cheaper than the expensive branded pastes, works wonderfully and doesn't dry out. I've been using it on my computers for over two years and have never had a problem with it. 50 grams costs between 3.98 and 4.99 euros
It still buggs me that they called quad cores I7s and dual cores I5s. It's just marketing bs like amds PR rating. If you don't do a bunch digging you get ripped off. Another great video as always.
@Ian Healy yes but with hyper threading. Straight quads were called I5. Dual cores with and without the hyper threading were I3. Calling a quad w/o hyper threading an I7 is just wrong.
Awesome video as always, ETA. FYI, If you live near a public university, check their surplus store. You can get PC's like this one at a good price. They usually do not come with hard drives but sometimes they have RAM.
When you factor in the price of a Raspberry Pi + SD + PSU, these little pcs blow them out of the water in price to performance.
Now I know you cant compare too heavily because of the form factor, but who really needs a pi to be so small anyhow?
It's plenty small. They had a few of these at my old job hooked up to monitors for news briefings and PowerPoint presentations. Takes up very little space. I want one to use as a media center in our living room
I have 2 of these and they are great emulator setups. My systems also have Bluetooth so makes it easy to connect controllers and keyboards when in a cabinet
I have one of these too, great little machines, very quiet even at load! :)
I noticed the lack of a Kodi icon on the desktop. These make great livingroom PCs.
I am pretty surprised that I never saw you try to run f zero gx on any test. It's a great game and one of the hardest one to emulate so it would be pretty interesting to see in my opinion.
Dilemma_Nay the desert level is especially hard to emulate. I thought it was running fine, until I played that level.
Same here. The first 2 levels ran at 60fps and then the desert level dropped to 40.
I wish you would put the total build cost in the show more. Your videos are awesome! Thank you!
WTF I just bought this a week ago. I spray painted mine white semi gloss (except for the button), slapped an SSD in, upgraded the wifi card, added some new thermal paste, and installed BigBox. I also modified the registry to run BigBox as the new Windows shell.
I didn't know you could do that with Windows. Could you link a guide?
Yes, please add a guide or place of reference on how to do what you said you did. Would love to try it out:)
@@Megabobster
1. Open the start menu.
2. Type "regedit" (without the " ) and hit enter (UAC might come up).
3. Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE → Software → Microsoft → 4. Windows NT → CurrentVersion → Winlogon.
5. Change the value of "Shell" to the .exe you want to use
one question... How do you undo that? can you still access regedit easily? ok 2 questions lol
@@jacksonshoemaker2013 Exit BigBox and open task manager (CTRL+ALT+DEL) then run new task: regedit.. Regedit should still be in the same area that you modified previously. Change the shell back to "explorer.exe" (dont add the ") and apply then reboot.
Sir, Thank you so much for this video!! I was doing research to build a mini/micro ATX computer for emulation, but this is much easier and cheaper. Thanks again!
Good luck Jose
Great video!😍 I love small PC machines that I use for multimedia and I have a question therefore: is this computer able to play a 4k video file by Kodi?🤔
As long as it can support a 4k monitor it should
I have the m73 tiny that looks like this. I soldered on the extra mini pcie slot and the other few missing components. I've been using a mini pcie to pcie 16x adapter and been using a rx 6400 with it. yeah it's not peak performance but definitely better than igfx.
Only downside is it doesn't seem you can fit a gpu in there. I got a dell optiplex 3040 for $40 and crammed a sff gpu in it and the thing is surprisingly very capable of handling emulation for everything up to wii.
Which GPU did you use?
@@NexusFantismo I ended up using a GT1030. Thus far it has been able to handle most of what I throw at it. Some wii games- like super mario galaxy and brawl- worked great, even at 2.5x resolution. PS2 was a bit of a letdown, though. I can run a lot of the games, but the high intensity ones, like MGS2 and 3, or Ratchet and Clank, still seem a bit beyond my reach. If you're ok with the occasional hiccup and aren't gunning for PS2 emulation, go for the 1030 on a sale (I got it for 60). Otherwise, you might be better off getting a sff 1050ti if you've got the cash. The small form factor and teeny PSU of the PC limits your options some and you'll probably have to pay a little for the luxury. I am running ubuntu linux, too, so you might have better luck for PS2 emulation because you have Direct X- I have to stick to OpenGL.
Given that the whole project cost me about $100 and I now have a dedicated stepmania and emulation box that kicks the shit out of my retropie, I am very happy with my current setup but might one day slap in a 1050ti just to give it some more range.
I picked one of these up for 4 with windows 10. I installed android on it and love it for a streaming device and emualtion
4 what? Dollars?
@@totophi 4 arrow head pennies.
What! For 100$?
This is a nice Mini PC. I buy now
I picked up the Lenovo M700 tiny for +/- $170 but it's 6th gen i5 and 8gig ram on one stick! Very awesome machine indeed but it only has DisplayPort, no vga or hdmi and mine didn't come with built-in wifi but I used a wifi card out of a laptop (took the antennas out of the laptop screen) and fashioned internal wifi.
Those slowdowns for the ps2 are pretty accurate as the real system was pretty bad for that issue.
FYI I owned a ps2 from new and never had any other system, it's just we tend to remember it being better than it actually was.
You're full of shit. I grew up on ps2 and still play it. Emulators are far from perfect, dumbass.
50$ is a steal! Love these little PC
PCs.
Holy cow Batman, the prices in the UK for this machine are crazy high. Great video though.
Thats because it cost so much to ship to the 3rd world countries . Maybe quit acknowledging "royalty" and you can graduate to a 1st world country . Simple
@@TheChrimboEffect Are you drunk or brain dead, there's much more Poverty in the US than the UK 🤦
@@toastyjacks One state is bigger the the country so your point ?
£149 with 8gb ram and 500gb I don't think it's that dear the specs are better than my laptop
With Raspberry Pis in short supply, these machines are sometimes cheaper and more powerful. I bought a couple and even gifted them to family. Love these tiny machines.
Running Linux would pump out some extra performance. It would be cool to see a comparison on the exact same hardware if you have a spare SSD it would make for a great video.
Tommy Dust Just a newbie to Linux here..why is that? You saying Linux runs every more smoothly than Windows?
I use its little brother, the m72 as a dedicated Amiga emulator with 8gb in it and it performs admirably with Ubuntu / fs-uae
Hey there, I love watching your videos, very informative. I do have a question about the M93p. If you're only using this for say emulation, why wouldn't you just run/boot up batocera instead? Would there be any reason not to do this with this machine? Just curious.
As always efficient Demo !! this lenovo Rocks. Thanks for the informations.
Keep getting the ETA Prime tax on these old machines 😂
they go up like crazy as soon as he makes a video
Yeah, the prices are bad.
Have one with E3-1275l v3 (fast cpu with abysmal graphics) and another with i5-4590t (ok cpu with decent graphics). The former runs Manjaro, and the latter runs Windows. Very handy for daily stuff and generating junk traffic for my home virtualization lab.
So after all specialised EMU platforms
an old pc beats them all
1st class video to watch thank you take care kind regards from me kenneth
i need a friend like you that I can just call up
Right here. I work for pizza.
Thx ETA, jus got one and gonna pop it this inside an arcade bartop I'm building... should be awesome
Great, the price on these is going to skyrocket on eBay now haha
got a few of these.. and they are awesome.. also look for the M73/M83.. pretty much the same.. can put all the same things inside.. (universal) also make sure as he states.. get the i5 version.. it has the intel HD4600 graphics.. the i3 has the HD4400 graphics.. though there are a few newer i3's that have HD4600 graphics that may be inside the Lenovo's.. these little (tiny) PC's are solid and run quiet and us little power.. they also have Lenovo monitors that were made for these to plug into the back.. making it an all in one! pretty cool!
Make sure to pick up the i5 version and not the i7 version.
The i5 clocks higher and is therefor more useful for emulation.
Are you sure? The i7 has an additional two cores for a total of 8 logical cores, compared to 2/4 on the i5 version. I'd argue that more than makes up for 600mhz lower boost? :)
@@amshermansen A lot of emulators don't benefit from extra cores. As far as I understand the M93P comes with the i7-4765T or i5-4570T. The i5 turbo isn't only a little higher, but the base clock as well.
There might be other variations around, but it's just something to keep in mind.
No kidding? I thought emulation was one of the few places where more threads helped a ton.
TIL
@@amshermansen it actually does. If you're using MAME, it was updated to utilize up to 4 cores. So those extra two will enable some of that performance to be offloaded instead of just bogging down 2 cores.
@@robertvanghle8987 Correct, although I think MAME is one of the exceptions. For things like Dolphin etc you're still better off with more CPU speed. For any older emulators it doesn't really make a difference, since the i5 is fast enough anyway.
Hey, I got the M92p for $85.00 on Ebay a couple of weeks ago. It didn't come with a power adapter which I purchase its got the i5 3470T CPU @ 290MHz 2 Core 4 Logical Proccessors 4GB of RAM which I will upgrade to 8 because I'm running Windows 10 now. When I got it the SSD had been wiped nothing on it. I had downloaded Windows 10 and had it on a DVD and used a external DVD drive to install it. Wireless mouse and Keyboard. WiFi Dongle don't have the antenna for the internal WiFi. Got Trophy Hunter II I'm going to try out and Impossible Golf and a Casino Mega Collection for casino games. Later, just got it up and running works good so far. I need to get into it and clean it as you did reseat the CPU upgrade that memory.
Thanks now the price will jump to $250-300 on eBay.
Jason Griffith Voice sonic again
I have one of these and its still pretty powerful consideration to its size and age. Even plays games like assassins creed black flag on medium specs at a solid 30-40 frames per second
The CPU is socketed, so does that mean it is possible to replace the CPU, disregarding thermal specifications, or does the BIOS whitelist CPUs to only work with certain SKUs?
Try an i9!! ;) hehe
Mine is xeon swapped. I use it as a mini server
Not all LGA1150s will boot V3 xeons. The "K" processors don't work in this specific model.
It's November 2022 now. In my country this mini pc still sold unreasonably high. $50 only gets you the barebone version.
It's strong enough for pcsx2, but gotta use native resolution.
(edit: not all games will run, Gran Turismo 4, God of war, Shadow of the colossus won't run nicely)
Still a damn bargain for 60 bucks
He was using native resolution on Ratchet, no?
Not quite. Some games such as Gran Turismo 4 don't run too well on this machine with PCSX2 and Native. I have tried.
@@DaveDoc1984 grand Turismo 4, God of war, shadow of the Collosus won't run on this kind of machine. Those are very heavy
I don’t think dual cores can run pcsx2 at constant 60 FPS. The sff version he mentioned is a quad core; that should run it.
Simpsons hit and run runs like a dog even in aggressive and native resolution.
I just got an M82, its got the i5 and 4 gb ram, I've got a bag full of DDR3 from a leftover build, it didn't have a HDD but I've got a couple extras floating around.. got it for $15, so I don't mind that it's a 3rd gen i5 3470. I mean, come on...$15!! And it is super clean, almost like it never even was used, not a spec of dust, though I'm still going to clean it up. I've got a pi4, and a couple of original Xbox systems, but I'm kind of excited about this!
One of my favorite pC's I get them for around $75 CDN or $50 USD
Mike this has hdmi
@@livatos1280 I work for a e-waste company. we get PC's for free and then I resell them. so my cost on these are much lower then other people would pay
Darn it, I wish I had watched this video yesterday. I just picked up an M92P Mini (3rd gen intel) for $100. It's in great shape, not a scratch on it. Included 4GB RAM, the wifi card and power brick. I didn't really think about the integrated graphics being worse than the 4th gen stuff.
Quick update- If anyone has an M92P and needs a cheap upgrade, I installed an i5 3475S without any cooling or power issues. It's a real 4 core and upgrades the iGPU from the HD2500 to HD4000. It's a massive improvement and the chip is $10 on eBay.
damn. Really want something for PS1 and PS2
Looked in OPL? I have 75+ PS2 isos on HDDs running off real hardware. Can use GSM to output in 720p or 1080i. They're glorious.
My dad might like one of these for a media center.
still faster than my laptop
the mini PCI-E connector is compatible with external GPUs docks. You won't get 100% performance out of any GPU, but it will run games. I only recommend it if you have a spare GPU around.
wish there was a version of this with a ryzen apu
Wow, that's quite amazing that the GPU in this thing is strong enough to run both Dolphin and PCSX2 at all, much less at full speed!
How do you keep windows 10 running so smooth and problem free?
You should forget about windows and try Ubuntu or Mint sometime. Step out of your windows comfort zone😜
This model has been my media PC for about 3 years now and is as great as ever. Really nice choice sir
How about something that can emulate playstation 2 well!!!!!!! ?
Cool machine. ETA Prime is a margarine in my country.
Hi could you do a tutorial on how to set up the look and feel of the launch box emulator or redirect me to a video that shows it, thanks.
Did you find one?
@@luar215 the machine? Yes, got myself several and sold them apart for one. The video??? No not yet
From what I remember, using a vacuum cleaner on "blow" creates static and tosses dust, and that can damage components. But I was told that about 6 years ago, so I have to wonder if shielding on components has come that far? But then that'd only apply to modern components, so...
I want to set up a mini pc for emulation, what is the best setting you recommend no matter what the value? I would like to call the TV. Thank you very much in advance!!!
That is a good deal. I'm basically interested in nes to n64, and dream cast and ps1, neo geo. Ps2 is still a bit of a challenge. I have a epic gaming rig (32gb ram, 2080ti, intel 9900 etc) but I don't want to use it for emulation, I want to have it in my entertainment center for the big screen. This sounds like it would fit the bill for a cheap price (prob 200 after ssd and ram I'm sure).
Can I upgrade with a GPU? This pc have a pci-e mini (for wifi card) so, its possible no?
Its not possible to put in a GPU
Love you channel, it's a real treasure trove. Regarding i5 4570T processor, it should have a turbo clock of 3.6GHz but on your screen it says it's running at only 3.3GHz. Where those 300MHz gone?
lol when I saw that update for launchbox, Out of habit from working on my arcade machine, I tried to click on it, which paused the video, got confused why it wasn't working, then realised what I was doing :D
Bought two of these things truly sweet machines, with an SSD hard drive both of mine are ready to boot, login and fly into tasks with no lag in literally 10 seconds from plugging it in to doing stuff full speed, I never knew SSD's could make that much difference for 40 bux shipped.
Here in Mexico I can't find this :(
Great videos like always!
en ebay papa no batalles
Buscatelas por eBay mijo que puej
Busca computadoras Optiplex de Dell, hay variedad en mercado libre, son más comunes que las lenovo.
Busca la Dell Optiplex 9020M es el equivalente de la lenovo.
Good morning ETA,
I've watched your videos for the last 6 months and now I'm ready to build my own machine. I've looked at the m900 tiny which has a i5 6500t. I'm fine putting up to $300. My setup needs something usff.