Beelink SER5 5800H: An Affordable Emulation Powerhouse?

[@jaycee6438]

Thank you for this video. I have been looking to buy this particular mini pc, and this video gave me all footage and input to help me make a decision.

[@thegamelounge659]

Great, glad you enjoyed the video! That’s the whole reason I make them.

[@jayman2631]

Brilliant review, good coverage on each emulators. Just got another subscriber 😊

[@thegamelounge659]

Thanks so much for taking the time to comment. Glad you enjoyed the video!

[@Castallan]

I’ve been looking for something like this, thanks for the recommendation

[@thegamelounge659]

No problem 👍

[@mikeclark4480]

Really impressive switch emulation

[@thegamelounge659]

Yeah, I was shocked to be honest!

[@Xanthro2]

Thank you very much. I was thinking about something like this to replace my failing desktop and wanted to know as much about it as I could. The performance aspects you displayed helped me alot :D

[@thegamelounge659]

Thanks for the comment, glad the video could help.

[@TheFrenchy82]

wow wow ... What an interesting video ! Thanks for your hard work ! I never knew that those "mini PC" can emulate so well, "old" video games!! Impressive !!

[@thegamelounge659]

Thanks so much for your comment. Yea I just wanted to share my experience. I know there are plenty of £700/£800 mini PC’s that do the job but some of these smaller cheaper APU’s are really great now.

[@TheFrenchy82]

@@thegamelounge659 I have Zero experience with mini PC. One of my friend (who is the owner of mini PC ) told that , regarding the drivers, you are linked to your mini PC ' builder and If this company doesn't do any updates , you are screwed.... is it true ? Do you need, for example with Beelink , to wait a long time in order to get "fresh" drivers or can you install drivers from AMD directly ? I'm a little bit afraid to buy any mini PC for this point ....

[@thegamelounge659]

Zero problems with that here, I have updated the AMD drivers a lot and the updates are direct from AMD for the graphics. I think that would apply with Bios/firmware updates though. So worth doing a bit of research if you are thinking of buying one. (Watch a few YT videos for example) 😃

[@mileslambeau]

Decision made. Thanks for putting the effort into making this.

[@thegamelounge659]

Thanks for the comment! Great to hear

[@tonyrosario1940]

Great video! Love the emulation setup reviews! 🍻🤘🏼🔥

[@thegamelounge659]

Thanks Tony, yes I got this device last year and wasn’t sure if people would be interested in opinions on it but people seem to like it 😀

[@HeavyInstinct]

This is definitely the sweet spot when it comes to price to performance for emulation. Easy to recommend to anyone on a budget. I ended up going with the SER6 Max which I was able to get for just over $400 with 16 GB of RAM. If you look at the reviews from people like retro gaming guy you can see it does offer significantly better performance for PS3 emulation. However it does come at a price and I definitely wouldn't recommend paying much more than what I did. Either way these mini PCs and emulation are a match made in heaven IMO. Thanks for the great review. I always appreciate reviews that spotlight emulation performance. I used to love ETA Prime's videos in part for this reason. But sadly he doesn't seem to care much about emulation anymore.

[@thegamelounge659]

Now that you say that I used to watch ETA Prime videos all the time but watch them less and less nowadays. I hadn’t really thought about it. But his videos have always been great and if he has moved on then I hope he is making videos he enjoys. Thanks for the comment. Yes PS3 is a little hit and Miss. I was expecting nothing though so for the performance I got I was pleased. I agree with you that spending insane money on an emulation machine is not the best idea.

[@michaeldonaghy4703]

Bought the ser5 because of this review, awesome bit of kit

[@thegamelounge659]

Thanks! Glad you like it.

[@johnmiceter]

Hi there, I'm sure you already know this, but there is a PSP version of Outrun and you can up the resolution really high to make it look so good and run perfect too. I currently own a Nvidia shield tv for emulators and I can only tun up to Dreamcast perfect and thats why I'm looking into a mini pc now so I can play maybe up to ps3 games.

[@thegamelounge659]

Yes Outrun on the PSP is an incredible port. Amazing almost 20 years ago you could take this game in on the go

[@johnmiceter]

@@thegamelounge659 hi, do you think this mini pc is worth it and could run up to ps3 games with most games and also Switch?

[@micklepapadakis1757]

​@@johnmiceter mine is 5600h,it can run e few ps3 games ,like dead space ,because you need more than 6 cores.Switch games ,most of them can run smoothly but very heavy and triple a games no.I can run zelda b.o.w. and xenoblade chronicles 3 smoothly.You must have kept yuzu emulator somehow.

[@johnmiceter]

@@micklepapadakis1757 thats awesome man. I'm thinking about buying a minisforum um790, have you heard of this one? But im going to wait until black Friday to see if there is any deals.

[@FeralSparky]

Besides the emulation I have been using these to replace aging intel i3-2100 office computers. Smaller, faster and cheap cheap cheap for their needs.

[@thegamelounge659]

This is a great use case and the reason I have been reluctant to install a dedicated game OS like Batocera, as you lose the windows functionality

[@feahnorl]

Thanks for this video, it made me choose this mini pc for general use and emulation. I have only a couple of questions before buying it if you don’t mind. - Have you tested lowering max tdp on the bios and tinkering with the fan option to reduce noise? - Is it worth it to get the computer with 32 GB of ram so the gpu can use more VRam when gaming? Thanks again for this video, it’s extremely informative.

[@thegamelounge659]

Thanks for the comment, great that people are finding the video useful. Not tried the Max TDP. The fan doesn’t really bother me and only really kicks in when playing 360 and PS3, and maybe some Switch, but certainly not all. 32GB personally I think is a no brainer, gives a little more headroom if you are gaming and the price difference when you are spending this money is minimal.

[@Rosshobson]

I’m looking getting a batocera hard drive to connect to this to play Sega model 2/3 games like the lost world arcade, Star Wars arcade or other arcade games of this time frame. Time Crisis 2 etc. I’ve been told this is a good option.

[@thegamelounge659]

Yes this easily has enough power. I have it running through Windows but Batocera a great option. Which if you install using a HDD let’s you keep windows

[@Rosshobson]

@@thegamelounge659 it should run things like Naomi 1/2 ok? obv Dreamcast etc fine then - as you said.

[@thegamelounge659]

Comfortably, this will run many PS3 and 360 games with zero issues

[@theJACKALstudios]

How does it run games such as Pokemon Violet/Scarlett, Sword/Shield, Arceus, or even Breath of the Wild?

[@thegamelounge659]

So BOTW and Pokemon Arceus both ran really well. A little bit of stutter initially due to shader compilation but then super smooth.

[@NVRLOSTT]

did you do any additional upgrading to the beelink or are these game plays all out the box with the igpu ?

[@thegamelounge659]

So I got the 32gb of ram rather than the 16gb option. I don’t think it will impact the performance a lot I just wanted to be sure there wasn’t a bottleneck. Was about £20 more overall. Aside from that it’s all stock and isn’t overclocked etc. So this performance should be inline with the stock APU.

[@allenantonio4389]

Hey , What's the resolution and FPS your playing ???

[@thegamelounge659]

Typically for GC, PS2 etc. I play at 1080p, I don’t always go that high for systems like Dreamcast and PlayStation, as PS in particular I don’t really like hugely upscale as it shows more imperfections

[@allenantonio4389]

@@thegamelounge659 cool

[@j.alvinbanias4049]

Is it advisable to use thermal pads or paste on the CPU of this Beelink SER5 5800H for improved performance, or is that considered unwise?

[@thegamelounge659]

For me the whole thing turned up pre-built and I haven’t made any changes outside of adding the additional hard drive but if you are experienced with applying thermal paste I would guess it’s always going to be better than how it is done by the manufacturers. Does anyone else have experience with this?

[@malhaar707]

Is that mini PC good enough to play new games e.g. COD, etc

[@thegamelounge659]

So yes, it will play Warzone and all the call of duty games on low Settings. Won’t be the best expierience but it will run

[@nerdloftgaming]

I’m shopping around for a new emulation box and this looks to mark of the checkboxes for me. What ram did you opt for for this setup - 16 or 32gbs? Thanks!

[@thegamelounge659]

I went for the 32GB. I don’t think it makes a huge difference to be honest but wasn’t a huge amount more cost wise.

[@zettgecko3887]

Nice vid! Good work 👍How is the expirience with emulating xbox and xbox360 with batocera? Not sure if you test and tell it in the video😶 Keep going. Would be nice to get more videos like this. Don´t feels like a commercial 😂

[@thegamelounge659]

Thanks, appreciate the comment. I have tested Batocera but not the 360. The OG Xbox works really well though as it’s Linux. The biggest limitation of 360 emulation is the emulator itself. I am sure this hardware will be enough as the emu improves. Would love to make a lot more hardware videos going forward.

[@zettgecko3887]

@@thegamelounge659 thanks for answer. This was the point of my question. When it's strong enough for 360 emulation, there'll be a comfortable way for play the games. Maybe in a few month, this machine will take place in my gamingroom.

[@LuizRGF]

Are you running it on batocera or over Windows?

[@thegamelounge659]

Windows

[@magnacarta9364]

Did you have to pay any tax?

[@thegamelounge659]

Depends on the country you are in. I did, though many people tell me they didn’t. I’m not an expert by any means on taxation.

[@NicolasAlaniz-v4h]

So is everything already installed for you like you can play any game are younhave to do it your self

[@thegamelounge659]

Nothing is installed, it is essentially a mini PC with windows. So the setup is totally up to ypu

[@bradyf8351]

Also I want to run Linux not windows but I want to keep that licensed copy. Can I do that some how. If so what would I have to google to look it up. I’m bad with tec still new

[@faithfe1290]

I played in retrobat , emulations switch, ps3, wii, wiiu …but recently the emulators stopped, open and close , I don’t know why… the same ssd in my notebook works , but in this minipc stoped working … Can you help me ?

[@vicplaza6485]

Where i can find these nice collections of games

[@dannypeters8126]

Search on Google.

[@Coffeishellagudfam]

Could I emulate breath of the wild on cemu with 60 fps on this ? I have one but I can’t get it to work

[@bradyf8351]

What’s the red tab for

[@thegamelounge659]

When you open it up it’s just a grip to lift everything up.

[@bradyf8351]

@@thegamelounge659 thanks for replying to my question :)

[@rebekahm2468]

I sell my steam deck and decided to save up to get this mini pc instead.

[@thegamelounge659]

Amazing, you will love it!

[@chankenneth866]

How is xenia performance??

[@thegamelounge659]

Pretty good, if Xenia supports it then it will run on here. There is Sonic Unleashed footage in this video

[@betobecerra]

What about ps3? Does it run smootly on that pc?

[@thegamelounge659]

Some games will work. You can see in the video Ratchet & Clank is very playable. However don’t expect to play Uncharted 2 or MGS4 on this

[@peach4hubby69]

Thanks for the review and mentioning the fps drop on PS2. I want to run everything with no problem PS2/GameCube/Wii U and under at 1080p 60fps.

[@thegamelounge659]

Yeah, you are 95% there with this, but there are going to be certain PS2 games that will give you issues

[@VikasSharma-kw7yp]

Do you this can handle crt royale shaders with snes and megadrive emulators

[@thegamelounge659]

Yes with ease. In fact all the footage in this video was captured using this: Why You Should Install Retroarch Twice!!! CRT vs. Smooth Filtering kzbin.info/www/bejne/hqnUdI15oq-jfdU

[@dannypeters8126]

I am looking to buy a pc for a gaming emulation system i want one that plays XBOX360,PS2, PS3, SWITCH and more,can you also plug a kinhank or Krissmod tb into a pc also and any suggestions from anyone would be helpful thanks.

[@supersaw1087]

I am 13 and planning to get this for playing games like CSGO Fortnite and Minecraft would you say this is a good idea, btw I don’t care about graphics I will turn them down immediately

[@thegamelounge659]

Yes this is perfect for these games

[@supersaw1087]

@@thegamelounge659 thank you👍

[@maddie690ify]

Yuzu is dead

[@thegamelounge659]

RIP

[@akiyz_xd1751]

Meow

[@thegamelounge659]

I can never work out if this is a good thing or a bad thing? 👍🏻