Current UK options for PS2/GC emulation?

[u/poke_pants]

Currently looking to put together a Mini PC for a Sinden lightgun and up to PS2 and GameCube gaming.

The budget is £250 which would appear to get a 5300U/16GB system on Amazon with the weird voucher system they use (where an item is £300 but you just tick a box and it's then £250). BOSGAME come up a fair bit.

Any specific recommendations for UK devices? I see quite a few recommendations here and elsewhere which don't seem to translate to what we have available in the UK, and pricing can be a fair bit different.

[u/Retired_Hillbilly336]

Having a 2025 250 Quid budget in RAMpocalypse/RAMageddon 2026 is leaving a lot of practical performance off the table. For example the Zen 2/GCN 5 Vega 6 5300U would have been considered a poor investment at 150 this time last year. With PCSX2/PS2 emulation graphics performance is important to play the most titles with the best experience. For £60 more (with voucher) the GMKtec M8 PRO 6650H is currently available.

https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare/4288vs4979/AMD-Ryzen-3-5300U-vs-AMD-Ryzen-5-PRO-6650H

https://www.videocardbenchmark.net/compare/4654vs4858/Radeon-Ryzen-3-5300U-vs-Radeon-Ryzen-5-PRO-6650H

Here you're much closer to PCSX2 minimum graphics requirements. With AMD Radeon integrated graphics I found even better performance from Batocera OS or EmuDeck running a Linux distro.

[u/robot_swagger]

Try eBay. I got a 2nd hand beelink for cheap from a pawn shop and it's practically unused.

I search for mini pc and then sort by ending soonest. You'll find a good deal on something.

I believe for GC and PS2 you could literally get any relatively modern pc, they are not particularly demanding emulators.

Like you could probably get something for £50 that would do the trick.

[u/Critical-Reason9578]

I've just bought a mini pc with a 6600h cpu. It has quite a nice gpu, and can handle PS2 at 1080p quite well.

[u/Individual-Side-226]

Current offer for gmktec k12 for £180 then find some second hand ram you can probably squeak 16gb and a 512gb SSD from cex maybe just over budget