What's Installed on My Media Center Mini PC? (Living Room Gaming & Media PC Guide 2023)

always liked having a separate PC in the living room just so I can chill out watch stuff have a TV in there I don't like smart TVs I like having a computer hooked up to my TV that's why I really like something like this geekom that's powered by Asus as you can see it's got an AMD ryzen 9 6900 HX in there now that's a laptop CPU but it's eight cores 16 threads and it can really do a lot plus it's got the Radeon 680m and you know you can get it configured in different ways 32 gigabytes of RAM got a two gen 4x4 m.2 mvme slots and a 2.5 gigabit Nick on the back plus Wi-Fi six so you can do a lot with this machine and any emulation I've thrown at this has been completely Flawless and that's nice because you can even turn on the CRT filters and make it look beautiful on your OLED it supports up to 8K but that also means 4K at high refresh rate and that's what I'm looking for so we're seeing a lot of like small computers coming out with these ryzen parts and their beasts they could be used as desktop Replacements but I love having one of these in my living room so in this video I'm just going to tell you what I have installed on my living room PC and I'm kind of curious to know what you have installed on your media center your living room PC your emulator PC whatever you have that's you know not your primary PC but it's in a different room what do you have installed on yours let me know in the comments and while you're here be sure you click on that Bell because that's the only way that YouTube is going to tell anybody about anything all right we'll get down to that right as soon as we talk about Windows activation thanks to hookies for sponsoring now we've worked with hookies for a long time and there's a reason for that when you go and buy an you know a regular key from Microsoft it's not 22.54 and in fact right now there's a mid-year sale plus we have the 25 off with the coupon code ts25 so you're going to get some money off of this as well when you go and buy Windows 10 Pro or home Windows 10 I believe still activates Windows 11 so that you can get Windows 11 if you want just a key for that got office 2021 2019 and 2016 here way lower prices plus 25 off of that now buy these at Microsoft they are three to five times sometimes ten times the price that you that you just saw there so how do they do it these are OEM keys and that's kind of how I like it because you're getting the same price that all of the system builders get all of the different companies out there who package these serial numbers with laptops and desktops and send them out and you're getting a price that's sort of similar to what you'll be paying in different markets around the world I kind of like it when different markets around the world can pay the same price feels weird to be paying a higher price just because I live in a different market so when you go here you get a key that's like that they're technically gray Market keys but they always have worked for me if you get an OEM key the way it works is you're expected to do your own tech support that's one of the reasons why the price is lower but we all do our own tech support anyway right and then that key is technically locked to your Hardware so having a retail key you're able to move your key around and whatever but you could buy like 10 of these keys for the price of a retail key so I'll just buy another one the next time I move somewhere else because I don't want to have to pay like a ridiculous price for when I can get it for this price that's just the way I am so that's why I use hookies the price the fact that I know that it's actually activating my windows and it's a real key that came from somewhere but it's a real key and it does activate once you're finished all you have to do is click on your user account up here go to your user Center click on my purchase orders and then you'll see everything you've purchased right there just view Keys and codes and you can just copy and paste your key hit start type activate click on activation settings paste it in there click on next and you will be activated for me having a PC in the living room is about two different things media and games I'm not doing my taxes in the living room I'm playing some games and that doesn't just mean old games you're looking at a game from 2023 I've had a ton of fun with this I've been playing it on my computer but then I switched over to the couch just to relax this is planet of Lana and it's kind of in the same family as like another world or out of this world and then in the newer games you have stuff like limbo and inside and this is right along the lines there were some huge twists in this that I did not see coming because I kind of kept myself in the dark when it comes to what happens and I would recommend you do the same thing just play this for the experience chill out on the couch it adds one new element that I want to mention you've got a little critter with you and you can command the Creator to do different things so that'll change the way the different puzzles work and it's kind of fun and it's a beautiful game I cannot recommend it enough it's not as difficult as some of the games out there so if you're looking for something that's really challenging this is not a the game for that but if you want something that you can just like chill out get lost in it's beautiful to look at really interesting cool characters and and just a great world to explore check out planet of Lana you can play it on your Mini PC like I'm doing here and beyond that when you have your friends over you can play the new games that are multiplayer but also all the old emulators you'll be able to load those up play a bunch of your favorite games from the past and just chill out in the living room so that's the main thing I'm doing with this but now let's jump in and see all the different things I have installed alright so let's get logged in I've already installed a few things but we'll pretend I haven't Windows got me it's like hey you haven't turned on this computer for 10 minutes and now we will update it all right so when I first get started I just open up Edge which is not a bad browser it's not Internet Explorer by any means and I like to go straight to nanite now I'm not going to be using Edge in the long term because it's based on chromium and I don't like the direction that chromium is going so I download Firefox Firefox is the only browser that's not based on chromium that's mainstream and then you can download a few other things for utilities I get 7-Zip now zip is and and also seven zipper all that's now bundled in and it's all working with Windows 11 but I still I'm just used to using 7-Zip you can try using Windows 11 without this and just see how it goes if you've never used an eye before you can go through here and just pick all the programs that you want to you know install and it'll download all the programs and give you one nice package the downside of installing it this way is everything goes into its default directory and that's good for certain things but I like to put Steam and a few other things into my games directory so if you're okay with it going into your default program files directory grab it here I grab VLC the k-like code packs give me all the Codex so I can play all the video files I grab notepad plus plus that's just for me for utilities and stuff I usually just use Firefox these days to look at PDF Security Essentials already comes with this Microsoft account if you're going to be using this for a lot of web browsing I would recommend grabbing Malwarebytes that's the one that I pay for myself and then that's it for now you can tailor this to your own needs just click on get your ninite once that's finished I'm not going to need Edge anymore all right all these ads wonderful click on this and you can turn off the sponsored shortcuts just by clicking on the little Cog there and the sponsored stories we don't need any of those [Music] for any documents but if you're going to be using this as like one of your main PCS LibreOffice is a great free alternative to something like Microsoft Office if you need office for any certain things you can use the coupon code that we had earlier to get the actual copy of office but for most people this is going to be fine next up I use something called power toys the power toys is a program developed by Microsoft that adds all kinds of neat little features and functions to Windows so on this page it takes you over to GitHub you need to scroll down and the one you want to get is just power toys setup x64. it can be a little confusing because there's so many of them all right go ahead and install powertoys has a lot of features but there's only a couple that I use but you can take a look at all the other features and maybe there'll be something there that you're like hey I really want to use this all right so I'm not going to go through all of this stuff but you can click around and just see what's going on with the different Explorer add-ons which are really handy the thing that I love the most is fancy zones and it allows us to create our own snapping zones so that you know when we're snapping Windows back and forth we can have custom zones it's all set up one real quick just by clicking on the layout editor here and then it'll say okay you want three columns what do you want I want a custom one create a new layout down here on the bottom create new layout and we have Grid or canvas canvas allows you to have overlapping zones so I like to do Canvas or just do wide how about that because I have a few 16 by 10 monitors maybe I'll use it with those I don't know now we've got our zones here it starts off by giving us one so I'll just do one like halfway or actually let's try to just have a little fun here to give you an idea of what we can do one two thirds add another one there we go now we can have like the main document in the middle small thing on the side and then let's have a third option that's just going to be the whole page save and apply now we can try out those three different zones there's one oh we have to turn off the other zones first fancy zones we have to tell it to override the windows zones overwide Windows snap there we go all right we had to toggle fancy zones on and off because it was being weird now you can see we got the full Zone The Ride Zone and the left Zone you can configure this any way you like and this is super handy if you have an ultra wide monitor or if you're using multiple monitors that's all we're going to cover here I might do another video covering all the power toys but we'll just cover that for now next up I like to upgrade my installer I use the geek uninstaller it really helps to remove a lot of the remnants and the thing I like about this is it just runs from a folder so you don't have to do any fancy installation there it is just geek.exe I'll just throw it on the desktop but normally I would make a folder somewhere on my hard drive I'll just throw it on the desktop now so you can see how it works double click it it says hey can we can we do stuff there's all the stuff on the computer like let's say I want to uninstall speci I could just double click that it'll uninstall and once it's finished it'll scan for leftover files and folders nothing found and this is a super simple program and I find that it does a better job than the one that's built in uninstall the modern apps the easy way to do that in my opinion is to hit start find the modern app you want to get rid of right click and get rid of it just like this but I usually like to do this after all the updates I've applied I used to run a script that got rid of everything manually but that's a bit Overkill alright next I like my classic context menu when I right click on stuff I don't like this context menu it doesn't have everything I want here I have to come down and click on show more options to get the one that I wanted in the first place so for any power user who is really missing that extra context menu or the original context menu there's a couple ways to do it so I'm linking you this this is probably the wrong way to do it that's why I'm linking this to you to tell you not to do it this way because if you go online a lot of people are going to say just edit your registry but anytime you edit your registry future updates of Windows could revert that or break things it's another little program here that they've linked to you can use that if you like however there's something on GitHub called Explorer Patcher you know use at your own risk because it does change a lot of things but I always use this and I'll show you what it does right now it changes a lot of how Windows 11 looks and feels I'm going to grab the latest version here on GitHub as patches are exploring so you'll see on the bottom here Windows Explorer and the taskbar just disappeared do not panic just wait okay the start menu has appeared it's not finished yet just wait I want to minimize this we're just going to wait and wait and wait some more once all the icons show back up then we'll be good to go all right hey there they are all right now that our icons are back now we can mess with stuff right click and now you'll see properties click on properties I recommend that you go through these settings and pick the ones you like the best the things that I care about the most if you click on file explorer I like to disable a lot of the modern stuff disable the modern search bar and I like to disable the windows 11 context menu now when we right click I have to restart file explorer there we go wait just a second now when we right click it's going to give us the old school right click context menu making windows 11 functional you can disable the rounded Corners like I've done here and a number of other things if you have a computer that you already have a bunch of stuff installed on be sure to create a restore point first so that's it I'm mostly using this for media so let's talk about the security and then we'll get to the fun stuff next [Music] I've really relaxed a little bit when it comes to this stuff I used to block all of the JavaScript entirely and that got way too annoying because every website breaks like so I stopped using the JavaScript blockers and now I just use ghostery I use this if I'm getting serious if I'm using my Weber lot I use Malwarebytes I use ad guard for my ad blocking add it to Firefox Chrome whatever you're using and then I use private internet access as our VPN and I've got a pretty good deal for everybody in the in the comments I've used this VPN every single day for years and years now it has never had a leak that's the main reason I keep using it is number one never had a leak number two it's extremely fast number three I can say certain programs go through the VPN and other programs do not go through the VPN so if you want to let steam or something just use the regular internet without the VPN it can selectively allow you to choose which program to use the VPN so I love all that plus the price so when you click on this the price is well that's a pretty good deal so yeah just go ahead and check out our our Link in the description to get these good deals next up for security you can turn on device encryption turn on bidlocker I'll show you how to do that so just click on your file explorer here and then you can right click and then just click on turn on BitLocker and go through that I'm actually going to be formatting this and using it for something else so I'll do that after but turn this on and it'll encrypt your drive that way if someone were to take your computer they wouldn't be able to get access to anything even if they took the drive out they wouldn't be able to get access to anything on the hard drive just don't lose your encryption keys I believe that we should all be playing video games in our living room in our bedroom on the roof in the back of a car on a train wherever and to that end I've installed retroarc or retroarch however you like to say it this allows us to play all the old consoles and some of the new ones as well you play pretty much everything with this all the old retro games including dos so hook this up get it going I made a separate video two or three separate videos on on this so you can watch those if you're going to be using your living room computer as an emulation station then I like to install Steam and God Galaxy I installed them separately instead of in the beginning because I like to install them into a games folder so I just go to my hard drive to create a games folder and then install these now if I was gonna if I was gonna be installing a bunch of games on this I would install another m.2 you know these most of these devices will allow us to install another one and then for watching movies I use jelly fin not blacks and I've made many videos on jellyfin so if you are curious please check those out I'll link them in the description so it is Envy but it's the open source version and I think it does more than MB at this point so there's no reason in my opinion to use Envy some people like the interface but it's very similar and I like this one better than Plex as well and for me it works a little better Plex seems to be a little busy for my taste and for listening to music I still use Fubar and stream everything from my own Nas Fubar version 2 is out but unfortunately facets is Half Baked so I still use the 32-bit version of this so I can run facets the new facets is no good it just doesn't have album art give this album art if you have no idea what I'm talking about that's fine you can use Spotify or whatever you like but I like keeping all my own music on my own device and then lastly if you want some visualizations well Winamp is still around and it still whips llama's asses but Winamp Community update project that's what you want not the new win if you don't want that you want the Winamp Community update project it whips every llama's ass and it whips alpaca asses too this is nonsense so get this now the main reason I have this is I like to have some visualizations remember milk drop I just get that going in my living room and then have fun [Music] foreign that's what I install on my windows living room PC don't have a Linux living room PC for a couple of different reasons but that's not for this video if you want a super video just talking about things to install on a living room PC that's based on Linux let me know and if I have time maybe I'll do it no guarantees because a lot of the links crowded y'all are hard to please because you already know everything and you have very strong opinions it's okay but sometimes I feel like what's the point because everyone already knows you're all smart okay you win you're smart and whenever I get like a new living room PC I go through the same process and in the future if I forget anything I'll look back at this video of myself to make sure that I'm installing everything that I need there are a couple other things I do like I usually turn on my Windows desktop sharing so that I can log on from my other PCS and if it's a powerful enough machine like the geekom I have here or even this little secret machine that I'll be taking a look at in a couple of days it's got a ryzen inside I like to install handbrake as well and that way I can log in from my other machine and the nice thing about these small you know small form factor PCS they may take a little bit longer to render you can just let them run because they don't pull that much power so you'll end up with a slightly slightly lower power bill by letting those run for a little bit longer even though they're pulling more power they're pulling such a small load that it's not that big of a deal also we have a pretty good sale going on right now in Epic pants and there's only a few of these left the Senpai this is what I use for a lot of my emulation whenever I'm doing you know HDMI stuff and not like CRT because the CPU and the GPU in this are more powerful than a Raspberry Pi 4 and they work great with badocera which is by far my favorite OS it's based on retroarch it's my favorite Os or the small portable gaming devices so there's only like three or four of these left and they'll probably be gone after this video so grab them before you can and then if you click up here on the top you'll have sale and you'll see a few of our shirts that are on sale right now it says that it's expensive 21.99 added to cart and then check out your cart you go look at it in your cart you'll notice that it's five dollars and fifty cents so grab those up while you can and we'll see you in the comments

Channel: Tek Syndicate

Views: 68,527

Keywords: Tek Syndicate, hardware, technology, science, games, gaming, culture, tech, computers, retro, geekom, mini pc, planet of lana

Id: cOsXh0pooHE

Length: 18min 37sec (1117 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 16 2023