The ULTIMATE Quarantine Gaming PC

Ryzen Arcade PC!

This is where things get really awesome. Anyone can buy a Raspberry Pi and load up a basic MAME image for old arcade games, but we’re PC gamers in this hold and PC gamers we shall remain! This whole process of parts ariving happened over WEEKS not days, so forgive the somewhat random order. Plus, things were installed and used pretty much as they arrived, so it’s hard to show a real process here. Again, COVID-19 lockdown tripped us up, but also these amazing items that follow kept lighting up our days and weeks, and still do.

The heart of gaming on this system will be the mighty Ryzen 5 3400G, the most powerful iGPU on the market today. The benefit is that it’s plenty powerful for just about any arcade game I can think of, even stuff from the last few years. Plus, it’ll run PC games more than well enough for our 1080p display. I want to thank AMD for being a huge help with this <3

Also in the picture, that’s the box the arcade buttons came in and the screws we’ve used to put the whole thing together.

Plus our friends Corsair really stepped up on this one, and provided the truly fantastic Corsair K83 Wireless keyboard, which features a built-in controller and mouse. That’s going to be such a powerful tool for system management. Plus the fantastic Streamdeck Mini, which you’ve seen I already fitted in the arcade.

Power comes from the Corsair SF450, one of the best SFX PSUs on the market. It comes in higher wattages, but we’re not going to need that much with just the 3400G to power. Plus, at 80% Platinum Efficiency it’s going to be something I don’t mind leaving on 24/7 too. I want this to be a system that’s approachable for a quick game, not a PC that needs booting all the time.

Then we have this lovely Corsair Vengeance LPX memory. More than enough to help us get the best out of the Ryzen 5 3400G.

Then we have this ultra-slick Corsair Force MP510 960GB NVMe drive. While older games may not need this, ripping through modern PC games and larger ISO based ROM sets will benefit greatly.

Then for the display, we went with the AOC E1-Series. Thank you AOC for providing us with this, it’s been a huge help. I want to say that they offered me a lot of monitors to pick from, but the moment lockdown started, their stock dried up. So the effort they took to get this to me is greatly appreciated.

Finally, I’d like to thank my friends at Gigabyte for providing us with a Ryzen motherboard to help us complete the build. A perfect hub for our AMD CPU, Corsair memory and SSD, and to hook up all of our lovely peripherals.

Internal Assembly

Here’s the first look at the interior of the system, there’s a nice sizeable chamber in the bottom, separate from all the monitor stuff, which I kept securely blocked off as it doesn’t really need tinkering with. This meant I could reinforce the display mount with the additional wood you see just at the top of the shot too.

I used my newly acquired hot-glue gun to mount the PCBs for the arcade buttons. I need a lot of real estate for the motherboard, so it helped to get those out of the way.

There’s no ATX or SFX mounts built-into this thing, so I had to improvise. I useds two blocks to hold the PSU down and I’ll use further to make sure it doesn’t slide around.

Trying to pick and orientation for the motherboard. Oh and somehow I can’t find my photo of the Noctua stuff arriving. However, I’d like to thank Jakob for sending out this lovely low-profile and virtually silent cooler for the arcade!

I settled on this orientation. It covers pretty much all the PCIe slots, but I don’t need those. Why not a mini-ITX motherboard? They’re all out of stock! I bought some stand-off PCB mounts too, so the motherboard isn’t just screwed directly to the wood.

A front panel PC switch. I wanted something nicer, but I forgot to order one, whoops.

Finally, I use the back panel to add a door to it. This is simply for PC maintenance. I also fitted a master power switch and port, with a 4-gang plug screwed to the interior of the arcade, as well as two USB ports as a pass-through. All optional stuff, but it makes sense given I want this to be plug and play for the kids.