The Everything Console Mk2 - DIY Retro Emulation Game Console

what's up everybody so a few months ago i built this what i like to call the everything console it's capable of emulating everything from the original atari straight through to the sega dreamcast but that's about where it tops out and if i'm being completely honest with you sometimes it struggles with certain n64 and dreamcast titles so me being the enthusiast that i am i wanted more so i went back to the drawing board and i came up with this the everything console mark ii this one has way more computational horsepower and is able to emulate even modern day video game consoles like the gamecube wii playstation 2 and maybe even a bit more than that basically if you have any childhood memories at all that are associated with video games this thing right here will let you relive them but i think we're getting a bit ahead of ourselves here so let's rewind the clock and i will show you exactly how i made this thing oh boy i might just be the luckiest sob in town so the other day i got a message from my friend and he said hey zach there's a pile of laptops sitting in the corner of my office and i think my work is just gonna throw them away do you want one and of course i said yes so he came over the other day and he gave me this which is an asus strix gl753 ve this might just be the perfect starting off point for the everything console v2 but uh it's looking a little big right now this is a 17-inch laptop so let's open this guy up and see if we can maybe trim some fat on this and get it down to a little bit more of a reasonable size at this point i should probably mention that a large part of the reason that this laptop was free was because there were quite a few things wrong with it the wi-fi barely worked battery was on its last legs and the thermals were pretty crap once i had the case cracked open i started removing all the components that i wasn't going to need anymore the battery was already on its way out the door so that had to go hard disk gone blu-ray player gone finally i was left with just the motherboard which had the cpu a core i7 7700 hq a geforce 1050 ti 16 gigabytes of single channel ram and a teeny tiny nvme drive hopefully with some tweaks we can squeeze enough performance out of it to get the job done okay now this is a much more reasonable size for an everything console and there's one other little thing i wanna see if i can extract from this chassis um i didn't see that one coming so here's the problem the power switch is integrated into the keyboard of the laptop it's right here but this keyboard is bonded to the chassis so i think i'm going to destroy it if i tried to remove it the real question right now is whether or not we can get this computer to boot outside of its case i think i might have found a workaround on the internet apparently if i bridge pins one and two on the old keyboard connector i should be able to make the machine boots oh did i get it lights are coming on oh oh was that oh that doesn't look good what's going on here is it the cable oh there we go well we got a little bit of repair to do we have some upgrading to do but we are functional i think we better continue the rest of this video over in the shop all right so obviously we still have some stuff left to figure out with the actual computer part of the console however i'm in a mood to build something so we're going to get started on the case for the everything console v2 and in order to do that we're going to use a new toy that i just got let me show you guys this is the x-carve pro and if you watched the last video where i made the first everything console i did that on the regular x-carve this one is bigger badder and better in pretty much every way and i'm really gonna need some of that added horsepower in order to carve some of these big chunks of wood one of the biggest reasons that i wanted to upgrade to the x-carve pro is because it's so much faster than the regular x-carve milling big blocks of wood like this is surprisingly time-consuming and when you're in a production setting that really matters the less time i spend carving the faster i can create my projects and videos which at the end of the day is what makes me money so i am very excited about this upgrade and all the efficiency that it's going to bring to my shop well the cnc is busy over there doing that we are going to get started on upgrading this computer with some more performance parts and also upgrading the cooling a little bit so we can squeeze every last little bit of performance out of this thing that we can obviously the first thing that had to go was the old wifi car this new one supports wi-fi 6e which should be faster have lower latency and you know actually work then i replaced the old single channel ram kit with a new dual channel kit theoretically this should double our memory bandwidth which should really help with performance and emulation next i swapped the old 128 gigabyte nvme drive for a much larger one terabyte model look at all this floor space so with the aerobics in here so many activities and then just for fun i threw on this big copper heatsink which i don't really think it needs but come on it looks pretty sweet finally it was time to do something about that poor cooling performance so i popped off the heatsink used some rubbing alcohol to remove the old dried out thermal paste and then laid down some fresh high performance stuff i also replaced all the thermal pads with this thermal putty that should perform a lot better all of these little tweaks should help us to ring every last little bit of performance that we can out of this machine which we're gonna need when it comes to some of the more advanced emulation once all that stuff was done i went over to check on the cnc's progress okay we're getting real close to being done this might be the last pass right now let's see oh that's it we're done so let's take a look at this that took a little while to do i think it was carving for about an hour and a half which seems like a long time but this is a really time intensive carve to do i actually timed it out on my old x-carve and it would have taken eight hours to do that so definitely a big step up in the speed category sorry i'm i'm yelling because i have these headphones on so those first two pieces that we cut are going to be the top and the bottom of our case and this piece right here is eventually going to be the midsection it's not nearly as thick so it won't take nearly as long to cut which is good because i would like to get this thing assembled pretty soon well i know i'm not really utilizing it here another reason that i wanted to upgrade to the x-carve pro is its bigger work area i now have a four foot by four foot bed to play with so keep your eyes peeled for some larger carves in the future there we go we got our mid section here now i want to actually modify one of those pieces that we cut a few minutes ago at the end of the day the everything console is basically just a pc so i wanted to take a little bit of inspiration from the pc world and add a window so what i'm going to do is flip this over put it back in the cnc and then we are going to cut an opening here but the tricky part is i'm going to have to place it really precisely in order that i don't screw this whole thing up but uh that's for the fun right okay i think that's good wish me luck everybody [Applause] [Music] well that actually went pretty well unfortunately that was not my first attempt i actually started cutting this piece here and realized that this is actually the bottom piece and i don't need a window in the bottom i'm going to keep this as a little reminder to myself to always double check that you're carving the right piece all right let's talk about this plexiglas acrylic sheet that we're going to put in here's the plan we have this opening here now and in it we are going to insert a piece of clear acrylic but i've never cut acrylic before and i'm sure there's going to be some learning curves this stuff is notoriously temperamental so i went ahead and just got two sheets of it because i'm kind of planning to screw up at least one of them i'm going to swap from this big giant quarter inch bit that i've been using to cut all the walnut to this much smaller teeny tiny 1 16 bit should generate a lot less heat and be better for precision cutting i've also taken the liberty of adding a bunch of double-sided tape to the back of the acrylic not only am i going to be cutting out the general shape but there's also some cutouts in the interior of the piece i don't want those to go flying once they're free which is a genuine concern even with this double-sided tape so we'll see how that goes wish me luck [Music] it's really annoying the fit is so small and the dust shield is so close i can't actually see whether or not the carve was going well a few minutes later though i could see the first signs of my pattern starting to peek out and it looked like it was going pretty well that smaller bit allowed me to carve these precise little hexagons that we'll talk more about in a second but before we do that one important thing that i forgot to mention earlier is that i was using cast acrylic sheets which are supposed to carve a lot better than the cheaper extruded acrylic sheets that you get at most big box stores moment of truth let's see can we get this thing out of here yeah okay good little peel action no residue on the bed perfect look at that i feel like this is gonna be pretty far up the list of satisfying peels oh yeah [Music] look at that that is so cool i love how this turned out there's a couple little things we have left to do with this piece and putting it all together but before we do that we still have to cut the front grip you know in my head i was kind of thinking of this piece as the front air intake but in point of fact it doesn't really function that way this grill will be more like those decorative vents that you see on car hood mostly just there to look cool and at best it'll provide a little bit of passive coolant okay let's see how that one i think i might have made my lines a little too dainty and some of them might have broken well i don't know let's see you know what it's pretty delicate but i think if i paint it and i'm very careful with it this will work just fine just can't drop it easier said than done one of the interesting things about mdf is that it actually gets a lot stronger once you paint it all the small gaps in its pores surface get filled in by the paint and what you end up with is a much denser material so i was pretty liberal with the paint and applied a lot of coats all right while we wait for the paint to dry outside we are going to continue by drilling some holes in our acrylic this cutout here isn't just for fun this is actually the functional air and tape that's right my plan here was to mount a fan just under the cutout and have it blast cool air directly onto the cpu and gpu this should give us some additional thermal headroom that will allow us to overclock the gpu but only the gpu because unfortunately the cpu being a mobile part is locked from the factory also shadow to noctua the company that makes this fan for including these flexible rubber mounts that are perfectly color matched to my case that was really nice of them on there like so and uh there you go we have the fan mounted to the top of the case the plexi is in the top of the case i think we're ready to move on to the bottom half of the chassis here's the deal over here we have to find a way to mount this motherboard to the bottom of the case so what i'm going to do is take some of these little brass standoffs here and mount them to the bottom of the case wherever there was a mounting point in the original laptop's hardware should be pretty easy as per usual i use the motherboard itself as a template to mark out all these holes this method always drives the comments section crazy so i was sure to use my wobbliest drill bit just to make it extra cringe for you guys at home once all the holes were drilled i was ready to move on so i think the next thing we should do is start assembling our case before we do that we're going to do a little bit of finishing in all the hard to reach areas i think that this is good advice for any project you're building in multiple pieces finish all the hard-to-reach places while you still have good access to them and then you can worry about doing a final finish later to tie everything together just make sure that you don't seal any of the surfaces you intend to glue together because that's the next step on this build first i glued the mid section to the bottom then i applied some glue into my channel and carefully seated the front grille into that and finally i glued the top piece in place i clamped it all together and i let it sit for about an hour once i was confident that the glue was dry it was time to stylize my fake front intake a little bit i set up a chamfer bit on my router and carved away at the inside edge of the intake again not really functional but i do think it looks pretty sweet now that is starting to look a little bit more like a case so i think we're just going to move right on to finishing this thing since i had already done all the hard bits earlier this step was really quick i just rolled on a couple of quick coats and then touched up the front grill area look at that that looks like a nicely finished case i've been trying to put this off for as long as possible but i think now we have to do the step of this project that i have been dreading the most remember earlier when i got the computer to turn on by jumping to the pins on the motherboard well that's not gonna work once this thing is in the case i can't just be poking a screwdriver in there so we're gonna have to wire up some sort of power switch but um take a look at just how small these connectors are i have to solder wire to this pin here and the one next to it without them bridging or messing up in any way so here's the plan as i see it i have my two wires which i've pre-tinned with a little bit of solder that means that i've melted some solder into the threads of this braided steel i've got my soldering iron as hot as it will possibly go so what i'm gonna do is just touch the wire to the contact and then hope that i can very quickly just tack weld it in position not really a lot of room for error on this one so still pretty nervous and as you can see my hands are not exactly very steady right now let's see should i just go for one [Music] oh it was on for a second okay one's on there okay they're both on there okay i don't want to celebrate just yet because who knows if that actually even worked yet so let's plug our power in and we're going to do a test run it works check this out so obviously i'm not going to win any awards for best soldering job of the year but this is what it looks like and it works so you know what i'll take it as a last little step here i installed some heat shrink tubing on both of the wires to keep them from shorting out against each other oh man what a relief to have that done okay so now we have to very carefully take this and mount it inside the chassis with the new standoffs and uh after that we can take this thing home and see what games it'll run i mean that's the biggest question on this entire project it's going to be kind of interesting to see where this actually kind of stops being able to perform but i'm getting a bit ahead of myself let's get this thing mounted inside the chassis in order to improve the wi-fi and bluetooth perception i ordered a couple of replacement laptop antennas and then ca glued them discreetly inside the case then it was time to install all of the standoffs and actually mount the motherboard [Music] [Applause] [Music] i installed two extra long standoffs so that i could mount this usb daughter board above everything else this gave me two internal usb headers that i could use for accessories one will power the main case fan but the second one will still be open if i decide i want to add some lighting or another fan or something like that later on finally once everything was buttoned up i prepared to take the everything console on its very first test it's all assembled this is legitimately my first time attempting to power it up it works oh what a relief let's take this thing home and see what it's all about now see how much horsepower this baby has all right it is a few days later i spent some time getting all the software set up and integrating the console into my home theater setup here and you know what i think i even exceeded my own expectations on this build let me show you what i'm talking about obviously everything from atari straight through to nintendo 64 and dreamcast run flawlessly but that was pretty much a given from the start of this video everything gets upscaled to beautiful 4k you have multiplayer support rumble functionality it's pretty much the ultimate retro gaming experience but what about some of those more modern day consoles well i'm glad you asked because both playstation 1 and playstation 2 run flawlessly ditto for the original xbox wii games also run great too although you do run into the occasional issue here like this where you need uh the motion controllers in order to make the games work although if you look online there's usually some sort of work around for those and now for the surprises both the playstation 3 and the xbox 360 run surprisingly well i mean it's not perfect mind you but it's pretty good it's definitely playable you get a couple stutters here and there but uh these games didn't run perfectly on the original consoles anyways so i would say that's a pass and maybe the biggest surprise of all was that i got the wii u to work pretty much perfectly simpler games like mario run at a locked 60 fps but more complex games like breath of wild do bog down a little bit into the you know lower 30s mid-20s stuff like that but again still very playable for these types of games and of course because this thing is just a pc at the end of the day it'll also run every pc game i mean sure it's not going to run the latest aaa games at full 4k resolution or will it well here's the fun thing streaming technology has really evolved over the last couple of years so if i find myself in a situation where i want to play the latest and greatest games out in the living room well then i can just render them here on my much more powerful office pc and then stream them out there to the everything console i mean yeah sure there's probably going to be a little bit of added latency during the whole round trip but keep in mind i installed the latest wi-fi 6e hardware in that thing and i could run a wired connection if i wanted to so we're probably talking about latency measured in the single digits of milliseconds here barely even perceptible and again because this thing is a pc at the end of the day i can also use it like a home theater pc for transcoding movies and tv shows oh i should also mention that i upgraded to the pro version of the 8bitdo controllers that i used in the last one oh and one other thing like all of the latest generation consoles you can run everything console vertically or horizontally pretty neat right so if you've got an old broken down laptop that you're not using anymore or you just want to buy a cheap one on craigslist i think this is a great little project and i'm sure i'm going to have a ton of fun using this thing which reminds me i should invite some of my buddies over for a little mario kart tournament and on that note i think we are done here so thank you so much for watching big thank you to all my patreon supporters i will put links to all the products i use down in the video description and you guys know me i always appreciate a like comment and subscription all right i think that's it for me and i will see you guys in the next video peace oh and by the way i just got this new tv that is way too big for my old media center so be on the lookout for the ultimate media center build in the near future and you know what just for fun if you have any ideas that you would like to see in your own ultimate media center let me know down in the comments and who knows maybe i'll incorporate some of those into that build alright see you guys [Music] so [Music] [Applause] [Music] you

Channel: Zac Builds

Views: 854,028

Keywords: broken laptop, build, building, builds, cheap emulation pc, cnc, custom pc, custom pc case, diy, diy projects to sell and make money, diyproject, emulation console, emulation console 2022, eta prime, how to, mini pc, retro console, retro console 2022, retro console emulator, retro console setup, retro gaming, retro gaming console, retro gaming setup, super console x pc, video game lover, video games, woodcraft, woodworking, woodworking projects, woodworkingproject, xcarve

Id: cYrbpdru800

Length: 21min 32sec (1292 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 18 2022