I finally set up Batocera on my GMKtec - wow - what an seamless process! I’ve dealt with RetroPie for years and there was always a level of tinkering and tweaking that seemed never-ending. Batocera is so easy to use, and you can put together a beautiful build in no time at all! Kudos to the developers of Batocera, seriously, there’s a lot of little quality of life improvements here over RetroPie that I’ll wholeheartedly recommend an inexpensive mini PC and Batocera! Thanks again for the video 😎
It really is just so, so easy. In a way I think Batocera's relatively locked down configuration is a strength. It is quite literally the definition of plug and play. Have fun with your Mini PC!
This is such a cool device. I love how much emulation has grown over the years and it's really making me excited for the near future when small PCs just like this will be able to play even more games but honestly this video makes me really want to get a NucBox for myself even if it can't play every game I want just yet, someday 360, someday
Sounds like the kind of thing I'd be after. Considering that's about the end limit for all my favorite games that sadly are not playable on other systems lol. I'll have to check into more mini PCs for sure
Incredible performance in such a tiny form factor. This will the perfect emulation box for the living room! So tiny, can easily be tucked away. Thanks for sharing this, I’m definitely considering getting this. Subbed for more content 😎
Thank you very much! It really is the perfect Mini PC. It works so well as a tuck-away gaming system. You could even just install Batocera to the internal drive as well!
@@RetroBreezeYT definitely going to be my weekend project - it’s been sitting unboxed for a couple of days. Will be nice to have a emulation box setup for of living room so everyone can access it. My daily retro station has been my Raspberry Pi 4 running RGB-Pi OS on my 27” Trinitron.
Oh for sure! The opening of Westopolis where there's all the smoke and explosions is really taxing so its a good early-game test. Also it's unironically one of my favourite games!
Ha! I was looking back at the PC I bought my mom, your review came up! I chose well! I did try some emulation on it and it did work very well. I would have put Linux on it but my mom doesn't like change lol, I installed Pop!_OS on a real old laptop I gave her and she didn't like it lol. Zorin looks pretty sweet! Might just give this a try. ^_^ Kinda curious, how did it do with Wii and/or Wii-U? Great review, Shem! Good blast from the past.
This is very interesting to me, for gaming emulation, of course. But more, so I'm curious about pinball emulation like visual pinball/future pinball. I don't know if you have an interest in this yourself, but it would be an amazing topic of review for a future video if the results were positive !. As I'm looking for something to run pinball on, a projector that can sit small and quiet for sure
@@RetroBreezeYT Im not able to run the pinball emulators visual or furture pinball as I'm running a Mojave osx on upgraded mac pro 5.1 and there windows /Linux only. so I need something in general honestly nvm projector!
While this is pretty neat, I'd personally get a low end laptop instead. I can get a 11th or 12th i3 with similar specs for about $200. In fact, I recently passed up a 11th gen i5 laptop for $270. No need for wires everywhere and similar performance.
@@earthcoolsoncemore you can’t setup a laptop in the living the same way you can with this. A small Bluetooth keyboard and controller, and you’re set. A laptop has its uses, but it’s not really “entertainment center” friendly.
This gonna be my toolkit pc. wonder if you can power it up by a battery bank? Thats interesting it can boot from sd card as well. Wonder if Raspberry pi os will work with it? Gonna try next few weeks when i get one. thank you.
You can power it up from a power bank indeed! In the footage with the monitor and gamepad, it's running off a Baseus 65W power bank. Anything that supplies 18W minimum should work. Raspberry Pi OS works perfectly also.
How is this Celeron machine not getting screen tearing on PS2 Black? I've seen demo's of Batocera running on a i5-6th gen mini getting screen tearing on PS2 games.....
Good vid. Just picked one of these up from amazon.. Not new to mini pc's got a few of them. But when trying to install linux mint on it to get rid of the awful windows 11 bloat ware I came across a problem.. It won't let me do it.. Tried turning off secure boot in the bios - you can't..... Even Botocera won't play with it,any ideas would be gratefully received.
@@RetroBreezeYT Hi ya,. sorted it.. patience is a virtue as they say.. Much better now windows bloat is gone, less ram and drive used.. Turns out it was solely to do with the bios settings.. Going to buy a couple more now.
Zorin is much more beginner friendly and suited for casual use. It stays out of your way mostly. Pop OS is much more productivity focused (especially for coding) and takes a little more getting used to. If you want a casual PC for beginners, Zorin is a good choice. If you want a really solid productivity machine, Pop is great!
Ok I'm in a World of hurt over this NucBox G5 thing! I upgraded to a 1Tb SSD, easy peasy, but the device refuses to boot into a Macrium Reflect (bootable) backup, or even a Win 11 install, both on USB (tried 3 USB drives). I set this BIOS to boot from the USN key, but it now appears from my research that it must be in "Secure Mode Boot" mode. When I attempt to set "Secure Boot" mode I get a message saying "Repeat operation after enrolling Platform Key (PK). I have watched this video that appears to provide a solution: ua-cam.com/video/03Zjo-RyYbI/v-deo.html However as I am not a computer expert I want to confirm that the "Custom" alteration is OK and won't stuff up my brand new device?? I never thought it would be this complicated to just upgrade the SSD!
Hi there, thanks for your comment. No need to worry- you can customise and reset your secure boot keys with no problem. Your computer will always have the original (factory) keys in memory to restore from, so you can't really mess anything up by tinkering with them too much.
I finally set up Batocera on my GMKtec - wow - what an seamless process! I’ve dealt with RetroPie for years and there was always a level of tinkering and tweaking that seemed never-ending.
Batocera is so easy to use, and you can put together a beautiful build in no time at all! Kudos to the developers of Batocera, seriously, there’s a lot of little quality of life improvements here over RetroPie that I’ll wholeheartedly recommend an inexpensive mini PC and Batocera!
Thanks again for the video 😎
It really is just so, so easy. In a way I think Batocera's relatively locked down configuration is a strength. It is quite literally the definition of plug and play. Have fun with your Mini PC!
This is such a cool device. I love how much emulation has grown over the years and it's really making me excited for the near future when small PCs just like this will be able to play even more games but honestly this video makes me really want to get a NucBox for myself even if it can't play every game I want just yet, someday 360, someday
The cool part is you can go about twice the size and play AAA PC games and emulate up to PS3, and its still tiny!
Sounds like the kind of thing I'd be after. Considering that's about the end limit for all my favorite games that sadly are not playable on other systems lol. I'll have to check into more mini PCs for sure
Awesome review/guide and the fact is no bigger than a Miyoo Mini is insane!
Thank you!
Really liked how clean you got your Bacotera ui. Can you share details of the settings you chose?
Incredible performance in such a tiny form factor. This will the perfect emulation box for the living room! So tiny, can easily be tucked away.
Thanks for sharing this, I’m definitely considering getting this. Subbed for more content 😎
Thank you very much! It really is the perfect Mini PC. It works so well as a tuck-away gaming system. You could even just install Batocera to the internal drive as well!
@@RetroBreezeYT definitely going to be my weekend project - it’s been sitting unboxed for a couple of days. Will be nice to have a emulation box setup for of living room so everyone can access it. My daily retro station has been my Raspberry Pi 4 running RGB-Pi OS on my 27” Trinitron.
You just got a sub for testing Shadow in the GC section, more people should test with it
Oh for sure! The opening of Westopolis where there's all the smoke and explosions is really taxing so its a good early-game test. Also it's unironically one of my favourite games!
Amazing my friend👍
Thank you!
zorin and emulation stuff is quite interesting, thanks for sharing.
Cheers for watching, Tobias!
Great video. I'm very tempted.
Thanks! It's definitely a great little system.
Nice review!
Ohh, that arch reference at 4:49 ❤️😅
It's true, I really do!
"I use arch btw" 🙄
I recommended looking into Tiny11. It's a Win11 build that is very light but still capable of gaming.
Whenever I need to use Windows I go for Windows XLite or Revision. Tiny11 is a good option too though!
Both Zorin and Manjaro are great first time use Linux OS's.😊
Yep, I would always suggest Manjaro for anybody wanting to get into Linux, but Zorin is great for this particular purpose.
Manjaro? that gotta be a joke right
What controller you recommend ? I am looking for one that supports multiplayer thanks for the video
Ha! I was looking back at the PC I bought my mom, your review came up!
I chose well! I did try some emulation on it and it did work very well. I would have put Linux on it but my mom doesn't like change lol, I installed Pop!_OS on a real old laptop I gave her and she didn't like it lol.
Zorin looks pretty sweet! Might just give this a try. ^_^
Kinda curious, how did it do with Wii and/or Wii-U?
Great review, Shem! Good blast from the past.
This is very interesting to me, for gaming emulation, of course. But more, so I'm curious about pinball emulation like visual pinball/future pinball. I don't know if you have an interest in this yourself, but it would be an amazing topic of review for a future video if the results were positive !. As I'm looking for something to run pinball on, a projector that can sit small and quiet for sure
Thanks for the great content also!
Oh cool, I love unique use-cases like this. Are you running a specific pinball game/collection?
@@RetroBreezeYT Im not able to run the pinball emulators visual or furture pinball as I'm running a Mojave osx on upgraded mac pro 5.1 and there windows /Linux only. so I need something in general honestly nvm projector!
I don’t think this little system will be optimal for VPX. It can barely do 30fps for something like Pinball FX3.
This video makes me want to try Emulation on my Win600.
Do it and report back 😀
While this is pretty neat, I'd personally get a low end laptop instead. I can get a 11th or 12th i3 with similar specs for about $200. In fact, I recently passed up a 11th gen i5 laptop for $270. No need for wires everywhere and similar performance.
Definitely a great point, but is it the size of a small orange?! I think not!
Won't you need a monitor and a keyboard which will take up the same amount of space anyway? 🤔
@@earthcoolsoncemore you can’t setup a laptop in the living the same way you can with this. A small Bluetooth keyboard and controller, and you’re set. A laptop has its uses, but it’s not really “entertainment center” friendly.
This gonna be my toolkit pc. wonder if you can power it up by a battery bank? Thats interesting it can boot from sd card as well. Wonder if Raspberry pi os will work with it? Gonna try next few weeks when i get one. thank you.
You can power it up from a power bank indeed! In the footage with the monitor and gamepad, it's running off a Baseus 65W power bank. Anything that supplies 18W minimum should work. Raspberry Pi OS works perfectly also.
If I didn't have 3 different computers plus ARM SBC's I'd buy this. Probably?
You know you gotta get as many small form factor PCs as possible. Everybody knows that!
cant wait for a intel n100 on this same form factor....
Same!
Intel really bottlenecked that APU with only single channel memory, it makes no sense, same with N300 and N305
Hi. As the ram is soldered is it dual channel? Is critical for gaming 😊 thxs!!
It is dual-channel indeed!
It's a Celeron and can take PSP's GoW as a man???
Un-friggin-believable!!!
Yep! I was extremely impressed by the performance, especially at 1080p
How is this Celeron machine not getting screen tearing on PS2 Black? I've seen demo's of Batocera running on a i5-6th gen mini getting screen tearing on PS2 games.....
Please tell me the ratchet and clank series works on ps2 😊
Good vid. Just picked one of these up from amazon.. Not new to mini pc's got a few of them. But when trying to install linux mint on it to get rid of the awful windows 11 bloat ware I came across a problem.. It won't let me do it.. Tried turning off secure boot in the bios - you can't..... Even Botocera won't play with it,any ideas would be gratefully received.
What exactly is happening? Are you able to boot from your USB/SD card?
@@RetroBreezeYT Hi ya,. sorted it.. patience is a virtue as they say.. Much better now windows bloat is gone, less ram and drive used.. Turns out it was solely to do with the bios settings.. Going to buy a couple more now.
How is Zorin compared to something like PopOS?
Zorin is much more beginner friendly and suited for casual use. It stays out of your way mostly. Pop OS is much more productivity focused (especially for coding) and takes a little more getting used to. If you want a casual PC for beginners, Zorin is a good choice. If you want a really solid productivity machine, Pop is great!
Dota 2 lo corre ?
WOW 🤯
Hello there~
how to play together on a mini pc?
You mean multiplayer? Connect multiple controllers, use LAN, internet, etc.
Im using this pc to make a steam deck rn lol
Ok I'm in a World of hurt over this NucBox G5 thing! I upgraded to a 1Tb SSD, easy peasy, but the device refuses to boot into a Macrium Reflect (bootable) backup, or even a Win 11 install, both on USB (tried 3 USB drives). I set this BIOS to boot from the USN key, but it now appears from my research that it must be in "Secure Mode Boot" mode.
When I attempt to set "Secure Boot" mode I get a message saying "Repeat operation after enrolling Platform Key (PK).
I have watched this video that appears to provide a solution: ua-cam.com/video/03Zjo-RyYbI/v-deo.html
However as I am not a computer expert I want to confirm that the "Custom" alteration is OK and won't stuff up my brand new device??
I never thought it would be this complicated to just upgrade the SSD!
Hi there, thanks for your comment. No need to worry- you can customise and reset your secure boot keys with no problem. Your computer will always have the original (factory) keys in memory to restore from, so you can't really mess anything up by tinkering with them too much.
💌💌💌💌💌 please do add time stamps.
Done!