Got a few questions about adjusting the TDP in the BIOS, from 6W. I boosted it to 15W this morning and ran the same suite of games. There were some improvements, for example Hades went from 8fps to 12fps. But overall this didn't make any of the unplayable games playable. Like in this video, the bottleneck is the GPU. As far as CPU temperature, over the course of about 30 minutes of testing it went up quite a bit, to about 65C, but nothing alarming. I should have covered it in the video, so I appreciate the feedback!
Overall the price is such a turn off with a device that performs so poorly. You could get yourself a raspberry pi for cheaper. You can run retro pi(amazing community support) and you can setup a fully working Ubuntu experience. This thing seems like a total waste of money. A raspberry pi 4 or 3b+ are a way better deal.
It's butter than a banana thats for sure. I just hope we don't see a mixture of the 2. Thus ini pc is 1 Kerry gold stick plus 2 and 3/5 bananas in size.
After testing other versions of this chuwi pc, i recommend you the previous N4120 version. No fan noises , four cores better plastics and better experience with games. Excelent for office and home usage, web, music, films and productivity. I add an old 2.5" hdd with Batocera and using F7 in Post I can select the boot device. Some people are using it as a cheap server for docker with plex, adding transcoding features, everything with 18w. Due its price, silence, low consumption and reliability is a good hardware for several mini projects. Nice review!
Russ, you might want to see if the TDP of the processor can be changed in the bios. It is limited to 6 watts which don't help. If you could boost it to 15 watts or even 10 watts, you might see an improvement. The cooling solution on the box might be able to handle the boost. The 16 Execution units on the GPU might be this thing's achilles heel though.
My first thought opening this was to compare N4500 to J4125....looks like he Russ arrived at the same conclusion. I just got a Beelink GK Mini for $167 on Ali.
I really would expect this Intel UHD Graphics with 18EU to perform better than this. I suspect that, as another commenter suggested , the firmware is the problem. A great review. I like teardowns. All the best.
I picked up one of these for $160 around Black Friday and returned it within 2 days. The audio was broken out of the box and I couldn't fix it, despite updating all the drivers, then upgrading to Windows 11 and upgrading all the drivers again, and finally updating the bios. Probably a hardware issue. The CPU was also pinned at 100% all the time and the fan was distractingly loud. Just not a good experience at all for me.
Well, good for you with US's free return policy. Where I live, one cannot return a computer once opened the box without visiting a service centre (of course, at one's own expense) and getting a certificate of defect from an engineer.
Before you buy, Try to return it. I bought a chuwi mini computer, it bricked within 4 months of use. Chuwi did not offer any help. Chuwi wrote "Hello, then you can directly see Amazon's customer service to see if it can be replaced, you can also do it without contacting me" Chuwi washed their hands and did not want to be bothered. Know this before you buy....
I actually wouldn't mind a budget Windows gaming handheld. Maybe something like the Larkbox Pro in the shell of a Max 2/RG552? Hopefully the cost could be sub $200(USD)?
Russ, I think I know why the system is underperforming. I think Chuwi went single channel on the memory. That would explain the discrepancy between it and the older system.
Regarding Batocera… Any chance secure boot is enabled? I’m pretty sure secure boot is the reason I can’t boot Batocera (on a USB drive) on my gaming laptop. (Unfortunately, the BIOS won’t allow me to disable secure boot either.) Very interesting showcase of Retrobat. Might have to check that out as a Windows-based alternative. I’ve been dabbling with Launchbox; admittedly, I find the default interface rather underwhelming.
I know that these sorts of mini pcs have their cpu stuff locked down but I was wondering if you would be able to overclock it by increasing the frequency bus speed in the bios or increase the speed of the built in iGPU, with an over clock it might be possible to play some of those low end PC games and perhaps gain some emulation performance.
I'd expect for a larger pc that they'd be able to fit a 2.5inch drive in there. Is it me or does this pc performance WORSE than the older lark box? I bought my mom the GMK Nucbox and it played so many games well! Is this worth it? Seems to be only good for basic computer tasks and arcade gaming, not even for htpc. Seems to me the only benefit to this is the extra ports. Great video once again, seems like the cheaper option is better.
Wait for amd 6000 series cpus with onboard graphics. No performance tests yet, but it looks to be a potential big leap forward for the built in graphics. I might do a mini pc build with one when it comes out
Sure, yeah I think they are going to be a big improvement. I wonder how long it will take for Chinese companies to bring them to market, and what the price will look like.
Yeah, even the 2300u with vega 6 graphics in my cheap HP laptop is laughing at this thing, and it's already a few years old, better still I have Garuda Linux installed on it so it's heaps faster than it was with Windows, and yeah, sure it was 400~ ish bucks back when I got it but it comes with a 17 inch screen, keyboard, a decent sized touchpad, a few hours of battery life, and a disk drive (which I might swap for more SSD storage). Still looking forward to stuff the the Steamdeck though, for roughly the same cost it's going to be way more powerful and portable. Still interesting to see how various bits of common cheap hardware put up with being used as affordable gaming systems though, it's judt clear this one isn't quite up to the task in some ways
HP elite desk G2 mini is the best for about 120 on eBay add a wifi card and more storage it can play what this to Hing wouldn't play but great review Russ 👍
14:02 That's not correct: the celeron n4500 (dual-core) and celeron n5105 (quad-core) play 4k perfectly well, the problem of frame-drops is caused by Windows 10 + Firefox + TH-cam using lots of resources. I run Lubuntu 22.04 on my older Beelink mini PC with a dual-core celeron n3350 sporting an igp which is only half as fast as the igp in the n4500 and is still very capable when it comes to handling 4k content: when playing a 4k file directly from an external HDD I do not notice any frame-drops at all ❤
You know what would be a form factor for these miniPCs I would like to see the OEMs try. Is they could make one laid out like a power strip or USB hub. They could have a long row of I/O flat on the top, and you could conveniently place it just in front of your monitor
Thanks for the review! Before you Buy. Try to return the product. Yea, fake a return/repare. just to see what they will do. Know before you buy. It's your money.....
Any mini pc with the N5105 is a much better deal: 2 extra cores and 8 extra CUs for the igp ;-) Also: Windows 10/11 requires a lot of resources to run 😲 /edit: not all of these mini pcs use the dual-channel capability of the processor: some come with 2x 4GB in dual-channel, others with 8GB in single channel: cutting the performance of the igp in half.
So I picked this mini PC up about 2 years ago, and I have been very impressed so far. It even got the windows 11 upgrade, free. But, since I've noticed it runs very well, and on right settings I can even game majority of my sorta games my son and I enjoy. I just don't have the money to buy a 1000$ gaming PC,if that even would be enough idk...I've sort of done research on this idea I'm having but not talked or messaged anyone who's done anything with this chuwi PC...but do you think I could add an external graphics card on this, to play some higher end games? Or even just get it to run smoother on the games I already play on it but are just laggy. I know I could just get a Xbox one or a while different PC that's a bit better for under 400$, but,I just would hate to not use the chuwi PC cus it's actually a very good little PC, thought about selling it to someone who's not wanting to game. Anyways, could I do the external graphics card with right adapters, power, and would it be worth what ever it'd cost? Do you know or what do you think about doing something like this to this PC?
I brought the Chuwi HeroBox with Celeron J4125 quad core for 80$, factory sealed. I was surprised when I opened it that the aluminum radiator is different, as in not a flat slab, but still big spead over the board but at the same being tall with deep grooves to drive the heat towards the left and right sides of the unit. At ambient room temperature of 27° Celsius, the CPU showed a temperature of around 35° (on TH-cam) without an active cooling solution.
I just bought one of these on the assumption performance would be the same as the larkbox given it has the same chip just with more ram and storage. How is performance worse than the larkbox? Am I really going to struggle to emulate Saturn and n64 on this?
Mine is J4125 and with drivers updated it runs extremelly well 4k videos and also the intel driver gives the chance of 12bit color... no HDR but better colors than standar 8bit
@@JR-mr1tw I have the LarkBox and the HeroBox and both with J4125, i found the HeroBox faster because the SSD so suppose your emulation could be beeter in the HeroBox version....
@@israelramirez1617 unfortunately my seller misadvertised and I got the n4100 CPU - it does seem to be a bit trash but going to try and see if I get further with batocera.
@@JR-mr1tw sad to know that... seems the 10w TDP and improved speed helps J4125 to do a bit better job but N4100 is 4C4T cpu so would be interesting to know about your batocera experience... cheers!
@@israelramirez1617 I can't even access the advanced settings in the bios to increase the power to the CPU! No one on Google seems to have an easy solution either
I got myself a cheap £260 refurbished laptop off Ebay towards the end of last year as I was going to be spending a few weeks away at Christmas and it would be a pain taking my desktop PC was a bit of a gamble as auction said I7 16gb ram 1tb hdd but no idea what brand or graphics I would get. So a Lenovo Thinkpad with the stated specs arrived a few days later, runs pretty well but the Integrated intel graphics was a bit of a disappointment. (side note Win 10 reports 14gb ram - but I get the same on my 16gb desktop so maybe that's a windows thing?) Runs some older PC games just fine, retro gaming up to Gamecube works well enough. Did try one Wii U game but that was unplayable. Now Christmas is gone I'm using it for Ableton live lite (which it runs well) and a little PC/retro gaming when I don't want to be sat at my desktop. * would have loved if it could have run Teardown as that's probably my favourite game right now. ** May have to try Retrobat now. *** One other thing, there is a sd card reader slot but so far it seems to be non operational. I can't seem to find what driver it is using or needs any idea?
The LarkBox Pro runs Batocera wonderfully, either from SD card or an external drive. Same with any other J4125 box I've seen tested. I haven't tested it personally on the HeroBox but I am pretty confident it would be fine.
Can you check with cpuz, windows task manager or some other software to confirm of the speed and type of memory? And is it running in single or dual channe
Are you certain the actual hardware matches the specs on paper? because this doesn't make any sense, I have an older Celeron N4000 paired with only 4gb of RAM and I get way better frame rates with games like Dead Cells (feels like close to 60fps).
I was wondering if there was some other devilry at play. I have a laptop with a Celeron N4210 and UHD600 graphics that runs 3D games just fine (Minecraft, etc.) and handles emulation better than this machine. Reading comments, it may be the tdp. My laptop is configured at 15 W on the SoC (IIRC), and it appears the chip in your machine is tamped down to 6 W, which would explain the lackluster GPU perf.
Could you possibly do a game emulation test on the Mini PC Stick Celeron J4125 6GB/128GB. They are (2.0ghz - 2.7ghz) and retail on Amazon about around 210$. But also have 50 dollar off coupons making them 160$.
Hi Russ, Whats an affordable system requirement ideally a compact PC for emulation at 1080p (4k preffered) for Wii U, PS2, (PS3 is bonus) Game cube, xbox 360 and other easy to run emulation systems? I'm in UK so model number may vary. Please advise I'm not very tech savvy. Thank you
TH-cam video playback is usually done in Software since this stupid VP9 is free of licence costs, but not supported by hardware. Most likeley this box will playback 4k BluRays without a problem, since it has hardware support for H264 & H265, though sadly not for the upcoming AV1.
I got a T-Bao Mini Pc with a Ryzen 2500u in 2020 for something like $250 in Ali, it was the bargain of my life, I have overclocked like a m******er the thing, I have the thing with a TDP of 42 with 2 big fans modded in the chassis via USB, it never gives me more than 70° celcius, I ran games like Mafia Definitive edition or Tony Hawks 1+2 at 45-60 fps on low specs settings at 720p, not bad for such a ridiculous small and cheap device. Oh and Cemu its fullspeed at 720° in most games, and even PCSX2 with Vulkan has been incredible lately
there is something wrong with this box. i know the chip is not that good, but the performance we see is way lower than what i expected. maybe the tdp was set too low, or it was thermal throttling (although it seems most of the time it was at 65C), maybe the ram was too slow, or maybe the shared video memory was set too low (sometimes those are set to some ridiculously low number, like 128-256MB which is way too low, even 512MB, which is very often the limit set for the igpus in those boxes, could be low for those games). i don't know. But the N4500 is better than J4125 in the iGPU part as well. it's base cloak is higher - 350MHz compared to the 250MHz of the uhd 600. it has more EU - 16 compared to the 12 in the UHD600....the N4500 should be around 40% better than the J4125 in the iGPU compartment. that said the cpu in J4125 is better. it has more cores, cache and base cloak. so maybe that was the problem. in a way, even though the gpu was the bottleneck, maybe it was the cpu that was making it not perform as good as it can - not able to feed it enough in a way.
Anyone know if or how I can update PPSSPP on retrooZ I'm just out here looking to play all my 2d/3d tactics jrpgs but missing sprites and textures got me in one pickle of a jizam.
It's frustrating - a small PC with this form factor is something I would absolutely love, but it's a shame is so heavily bottlenecked by the GPU. I wonder if there are any good systems like this out there that have Thunderbolt 3.0, that would be a good solution - add an external GPU later to improve performance. Anyone know of any good cheap boxes like this that would support an external GPU later? Regardless, thanks Russ :) Still searching for a good small form factor cheap box I guess, but at least I know to avoid this one now!
So that's what I was thinking too, and I thought it does have a thunderbolt, there is one on the front that looks like a type c, but I'ma total PC novice and really don't know how ide tell the difference unless I tried connecting it, probably around kinda stupid here,lol, but I'm trying to learn.ive got this same chuwi mini PC and love it, but I definitely would be so stoked if I could actually upgrade it to be able to play some higher end games. Is this possible ya think?
For that kidn of money u can just get one of those Lenovo or HP mini office PCs with actual Core i5 processors that will run a good sight better then these celeron chips.
And that's what I almost got instead of this but didn't know then what everything on here is talking about with this chuwi, got it 2years ago and at that time wasn't that much info about it
Yep, that's what I ended up doing acually, have this chuwi PC that is pretty good for what I paid for it, 160, but I did end up wanting to play some games that just weren't running on this chuwi.
For sure, the 4K is one of the best deals for emulation on your TV, especially when it is on sale. This is one of the cheapest PCs you can find, though, which has a different use case. For example, a PC could be used for computer stuff or inside an arcade cabinet. Different categories!
75 percent of your review was just it cant play this good or that, no serious gamer would buy this for even Mario cart, how about real world applications like can it utilize 2 monitors, can it support 4k, can it do full screen TH-cam videos. most people buying these are not at all concerned with games.
Got a few questions about adjusting the TDP in the BIOS, from 6W. I boosted it to 15W this morning and ran the same suite of games. There were some improvements, for example Hades went from 8fps to 12fps. But overall this didn't make any of the unplayable games playable. Like in this video, the bottleneck is the GPU. As far as CPU temperature, over the course of about 30 minutes of testing it went up quite a bit, to about 65C, but nothing alarming. I should have covered it in the video, so I appreciate the feedback!
It's quite odd that this newer chipset is faring worse than the J series CPU wise as that processor has the same 12 execution units on the GPU.
Overall the price is such a turn off with a device that performs so poorly. You could get yourself a raspberry pi for cheaper. You can run retro pi(amazing community support) and you can setup a fully working Ubuntu experience. This thing seems like a total waste of money.
A raspberry pi 4 or 3b+ are a way better deal.
Hp elite desk G2 mini is the best choice add wifi and Xtra storage same price and will run everything this wouldn't great review 👍
How did you get to this option in the bios :( it seems to be locked and I can't find any advice online.
Hi I have this model and I want to upgrade it please help me
Here's hoping more TH-camrs will adopt the standard kerrygold unit of measurement for electronic devices. I mean, it just makes the most sense.
they butter do it
It's butter than a banana thats for sure. I just hope we don't see a mixture of the 2. Thus ini pc is 1 Kerry gold stick plus 2 and 3/5 bananas in size.
After testing other versions of this chuwi pc, i recommend you the previous N4120 version. No fan noises , four cores better plastics and better experience with games.
Excelent for office and home usage, web, music, films and productivity.
I add an old 2.5" hdd with Batocera and using F7 in Post I can select the boot device.
Some people are using it as a cheap server for docker with plex, adding transcoding features, everything with 18w.
Due its price, silence, low consumption and reliability is a good hardware for several mini projects.
Nice review!
Nothing like waking up to a new video! I love the reviews, keep it up!!!
I got a raw deal once and my grandfather said “some lessons are learned through experiences, and some are bought. Both have their value.”
I like that. A wise man.
Aww, yes the good old wise man for sure. Love that saying
Definitely gonna check out RETROBAT. Thanks for sharing, Russ!
You need to get a Butter sponsorship! ;)
Another great review! You're a content machine!
Keep up the great work. 👍👍👍👍
Russ, you might want to see if the TDP of the processor can be changed in the bios. It is limited to 6 watts which don't help. If you could boost it to 15 watts or even 10 watts, you might see an improvement. The cooling solution on the box might be able to handle the boost. The 16 Execution units on the GPU might be this thing's achilles heel though.
Thanks for the feedback, I've added a pinned comment after some testing. As you suspected, the GPU is still the bottleneck :(
My first thought opening this was to compare N4500 to J4125....looks like he Russ arrived at the same conclusion. I just got a Beelink GK Mini for $167 on Ali.
I be very happy if you do a standalone video on retrobat, it seen like an interesting concept
I cant tell you enough how much I love the new intro :)
I really would expect this Intel UHD Graphics with 18EU to perform better than this. I suspect that, as another commenter suggested , the firmware is the problem.
A great review. I like teardowns.
All the best.
Too limited by the dual core processor. And as mentions above the TDP may need to be bumped up to get decent performance.
Thanks for the quick teardown! Answered a lot of questions I had.
I picked up one of these for $160 around Black Friday and returned it within 2 days. The audio was broken out of the box and I couldn't fix it, despite updating all the drivers, then upgrading to Windows 11 and upgrading all the drivers again, and finally updating the bios. Probably a hardware issue. The CPU was also pinned at 100% all the time and the fan was distractingly loud. Just not a good experience at all for me.
Well, good for you with US's free return policy. Where I live, one cannot return a computer once opened the box without visiting a service centre (of course, at one's own expense) and getting a certificate of defect from an engineer.
@@typingcat wow, that was rude.
What a cool way to have a base for a home arcade unit.
Whoohoo Retrobat. You finally showcased it.
Hopefully, some mini PCs with the new Celeron G6900 hit the market soon. Performance should be significantly better than previous gen Intel CPUs.
Indeed. Dual core 3.4ghz should be good for emulation
Yes, I'm looking forward to seeing how those perform when they get to the market -- hopefully at a decent price, too!
@@RetroGameCorps should be not too different from the Athlon 3000g, although that one may have better integrated graphics
Thank you for this presentation of Retrobat ;-)
Another great video! But, I feel like it kinda buried the lead. Retrobat looks awesome!
Looks a bit like my old router.
Performance makes me wonder if they borked something in the firmware?
Before you buy, Try to return it. I bought a chuwi mini computer, it bricked within 4 months of use. Chuwi did not offer any help. Chuwi wrote "Hello, then you can directly see Amazon's customer service to see if it can be replaced, you can also do it without contacting me" Chuwi washed their hands and did not want to be bothered. Know this before you buy....
I actually wouldn't mind a budget Windows gaming handheld.
Maybe something like the Larkbox Pro in the shell of a Max 2/RG552?
Hopefully the cost could be sub $200(USD)?
Heck yes, looks like fun, but we're here for the butter comparisons. :-D
Russ, I think I know why the system is underperforming. I think Chuwi went single channel on the memory. That would explain the discrepancy between it and the older system.
Yeah, my Chuwi HeroBox I got with Celeron J4125 also its in single channel memory.
Good thing I didn't get it for gaming.
Regarding Batocera… Any chance secure boot is enabled? I’m pretty sure secure boot is the reason I can’t boot Batocera (on a USB drive) on my gaming laptop. (Unfortunately, the BIOS won’t allow me to disable secure boot either.)
Very interesting showcase of Retrobat. Might have to check that out as a Windows-based alternative. I’ve been dabbling with Launchbox; admittedly, I find the default interface rather underwhelming.
Good videos as always Russ
I know that these sorts of mini pcs have their cpu stuff locked down but I was wondering if you would be able to overclock it by increasing the frequency bus speed in the bios or increase the speed of the built in iGPU, with an over clock it might be possible to play some of those low end PC games and perhaps gain some emulation performance.
I’m glad to see Road Rash in your video.
Do a video for Retrobat, I have the Original GPD WIN and it seems perfect for it
I'd expect for a larger pc that they'd be able to fit a 2.5inch drive in there. Is it me or does this pc performance WORSE than the older lark box? I bought my mom the GMK Nucbox and it played so many games well!
Is this worth it? Seems to be only good for basic computer tasks and arcade gaming, not even for htpc. Seems to me the only benefit to this is the extra ports.
Great video once again, seems like the cheaper option is better.
Wait for amd 6000 series cpus with onboard graphics. No performance tests yet, but it looks to be a potential big leap forward for the built in graphics. I might do a mini pc build with one when it comes out
Sure, yeah I think they are going to be a big improvement. I wonder how long it will take for Chinese companies to bring them to market, and what the price will look like.
Yeah, even the 2300u with vega 6 graphics in my cheap HP laptop is laughing at this thing, and it's already a few years old, better still I have Garuda Linux installed on it so it's heaps faster than it was with Windows, and yeah, sure it was 400~ ish bucks back when I got it but it comes with a 17 inch screen, keyboard, a decent sized touchpad, a few hours of battery life, and a disk drive (which I might swap for more SSD storage).
Still looking forward to stuff the the Steamdeck though, for roughly the same cost it's going to be way more powerful and portable.
Still interesting to see how various bits of common cheap hardware put up with being used as affordable gaming systems though, it's judt clear this one isn't quite up to the task in some ways
HP elite desk G2 mini is the best for about 120 on eBay add a wifi card and more storage it can play what this to Hing wouldn't play but great review Russ 👍
14:02 That's not correct: the celeron n4500 (dual-core) and celeron n5105 (quad-core) play 4k perfectly well, the problem of frame-drops is caused by Windows 10 + Firefox + TH-cam using lots of resources. I run Lubuntu 22.04 on my older Beelink mini PC with a dual-core celeron n3350 sporting an igp which is only half as fast as the igp in the n4500 and is still very capable when it comes to handling 4k content: when playing a 4k file directly from an external HDD I do not notice any frame-drops at all ❤
You know what would be a form factor for these miniPCs I would like to see the OEMs try. Is they could make one laid out like a power strip or USB hub. They could have a long row of I/O flat on the top, and you could conveniently place it just in front of your monitor
9:21 "Yea man, I wanna do it" xD
It's not a gaming pc but if you want a basic system with a lot of good features this is the one for you.
Thanks for the review! Before you Buy. Try to return the product. Yea, fake a return/repare. just to see what they will do. Know before you buy. It's your money.....
Curious about video and photo editing on this thing
I miss the previous music
Not very 4K, is it? :)
I would say this also has something to do with that 1.1 ghz clock speed which is terribly low for 2022.
please make video about Wii U as a retro gaming handheld
Whats better, a mini PC with a J4125 or an NVIDIA Shield TV Pro?
Thank u very much 4 the infor big fan keep it up please
Can you please do a dedicated retro bat video?
Any mini pc with the N5105 is a much better deal: 2 extra cores and 8 extra CUs for the igp ;-)
Also: Windows 10/11 requires a lot of resources to run 😲
/edit: not all of these mini pcs use the dual-channel capability of the processor: some come with 2x 4GB in dual-channel, others with 8GB in single channel: cutting the performance of the igp in half.
So I picked this mini PC up about 2 years ago, and I have been very impressed so far. It even got the windows 11 upgrade, free. But, since I've noticed it runs very well, and on right settings I can even game majority of my sorta games my son and I enjoy. I just don't have the money to buy a 1000$ gaming PC,if that even would be enough idk...I've sort of done research on this idea I'm having but not talked or messaged anyone who's done anything with this chuwi PC...but do you think I could add an external graphics card on this, to play some higher end games? Or even just get it to run smoother on the games I already play on it but are just laggy. I know I could just get a Xbox one or a while different PC that's a bit better for under 400$, but,I just would hate to not use the chuwi PC cus it's actually a very good little PC, thought about selling it to someone who's not wanting to game. Anyways, could I do the external graphics card with right adapters, power, and would it be worth what ever it'd cost? Do you know or what do you think about doing something like this to this PC?
Many mini PCs… take your like, Russ.
I brought the Chuwi HeroBox with Celeron J4125 quad core for 80$, factory sealed.
I was surprised when I opened it that the aluminum radiator is different, as in not a flat slab, but still big spead over the board but at the same being tall with deep grooves to drive the heat towards the left and right sides of the unit.
At ambient room temperature of 27° Celsius, the CPU showed a temperature of around 35° (on TH-cam) without an active cooling solution.
I just bought one of these on the assumption performance would be the same as the larkbox given it has the same chip just with more ram and storage. How is performance worse than the larkbox? Am I really going to struggle to emulate Saturn and n64 on this?
whats it going to take to just bring something out that benchmarks well with gamecube for under 200. it cant be that hard.
Mine is J4125 and with drivers updated it runs extremelly well 4k videos and also the intel driver gives the chance of 12bit color... no HDR but better colors than standar 8bit
I just bought j1425 as well, does that mean emulation should perform as well as the larkbox?
@@JR-mr1tw I have the LarkBox and the HeroBox and both with J4125, i found the HeroBox faster because the SSD so suppose your emulation could be beeter in the HeroBox version....
@@israelramirez1617 unfortunately my seller misadvertised and I got the n4100 CPU - it does seem to be a bit trash but going to try and see if I get further with batocera.
@@JR-mr1tw sad to know that... seems the 10w TDP and improved speed helps J4125 to do a bit better job but N4100 is 4C4T cpu so would be interesting to know about your batocera experience... cheers!
@@israelramirez1617 I can't even access the advanced settings in the bios to increase the power to the CPU! No one on Google seems to have an easy solution either
Out of nowhere: let's compare it to Kerrygold Butter - wait what?! 😂 I USE THAT BUTTER! (runs to the fridge to get real world comparison of PC)
It's the best butter at Costco
How's Doom on it?
@@fryke Smooth as butter?
@@edtuckerartist It'd be awesome for RGC to carve a Doom title screen onto a Kerrygold butter. :)
I got myself a cheap £260 refurbished laptop off Ebay towards the end of last year as I was going to be spending a few weeks away at Christmas and it would be a pain taking my desktop PC was a bit of a gamble as auction said I7 16gb ram 1tb hdd but no idea what brand or graphics I would get.
So a Lenovo Thinkpad with the stated specs arrived a few days later, runs pretty well but the Integrated intel graphics was a bit of a disappointment. (side note Win 10 reports 14gb ram - but I get the same on my 16gb desktop so maybe that's a windows thing?)
Runs some older PC games just fine, retro gaming up to Gamecube works well enough. Did try one Wii U game but that was unplayable.
Now Christmas is gone I'm using it for Ableton live lite (which it runs well) and a little PC/retro gaming when I don't want to be sat at my desktop.
* would have loved if it could have run Teardown as that's probably my favourite game right now.
** May have to try Retrobat now.
*** One other thing, there is a sd card reader slot but so far it seems to be non operational.
I can't seem to find what driver it is using or needs any idea?
Do you believe the J4125 version would have the same bios issues to boot batocera? If not, that’s a pretty sweet little box!
The LarkBox Pro runs Batocera wonderfully, either from SD card or an external drive. Same with any other J4125 box I've seen tested. I haven't tested it personally on the HeroBox but I am pretty confident it would be fine.
@@RetroGameCorps As always, thank you, sir!
Are you going to take a look at the MiSTer FPGA ecosystem at some point?
Can you check with cpuz, windows task manager or some other software to confirm of the speed and type of memory? And is it running in single or dual channe
Are you certain the actual hardware matches the specs on paper? because this doesn't make any sense, I have an older Celeron N4000 paired with only 4gb of RAM and I get way better frame rates with games like Dead Cells (feels like close to 60fps).
I was wondering if there was some other devilry at play. I have a laptop with a Celeron N4210 and UHD600 graphics that runs 3D games just fine (Minecraft, etc.) and handles emulation better than this machine.
Reading comments, it may be the tdp. My laptop is configured at 15 W on the SoC (IIRC), and it appears the chip in your machine is tamped down to 6 W, which would explain the lackluster GPU perf.
But the bios is locked and I can't find a way to increase tdp!
Could you possibly do a game emulation test on the Mini PC Stick Celeron J4125 6GB/128GB. They are (2.0ghz - 2.7ghz) and retail on Amazon about around 210$. But also have 50 dollar off coupons making them 160$.
Hi Russ,
Whats an affordable system requirement ideally a compact PC for emulation at 1080p (4k preffered) for Wii U, PS2, (PS3 is bonus) Game cube, xbox 360 and other easy to run emulation systems? I'm in UK so model number may vary. Please advise I'm not very tech savvy. Thank you
TH-cam video playback is usually done in Software since this stupid VP9 is free of licence costs, but not supported by hardware. Most likeley this box will playback 4k BluRays without a problem, since it has hardware support for H264 & H265, though sadly not for the upcoming AV1.
Yeah, TH-cam by default now uses VP9 or WebM video codecs. It might be worth giving H264ify extension and trying again on that.
Good video Russ
I got a T-Bao Mini Pc with a Ryzen 2500u in 2020 for something like $250 in Ali, it was the bargain of my life, I have overclocked like a m******er the thing, I have the thing with a TDP of 42 with 2 big fans modded in the chassis via USB, it never gives me more than 70° celcius, I ran games like Mafia Definitive edition or Tony Hawks 1+2 at 45-60 fps on low specs settings at 720p, not bad for such a ridiculous small and cheap device. Oh and Cemu its fullspeed at 720° in most games, and even PCSX2 with Vulkan has been incredible lately
That sounds like a fun setup, what a great price!
@@RetroGameCorps yeah, it was a lot cheaper back then and also I used coupons but I cant find similar builds for less than $400, its ridiculous.
I got a challenge for you to do before 2022 is over
Can you fit a raspberry pi zero 2 into the powkiddy v90 and have it be fully functional?
I miss the old intro music
there is something wrong with this box. i know the chip is not that good, but the performance we see is way lower than what i expected. maybe the tdp was set too low, or it was thermal throttling (although it seems most of the time it was at 65C), maybe the ram was too slow, or maybe the shared video memory was set too low (sometimes those are set to some ridiculously low number, like 128-256MB which is way too low, even 512MB, which is very often the limit set for the igpus in those boxes, could be low for those games). i don't know.
But the N4500 is better than J4125 in the iGPU part as well. it's base cloak is higher - 350MHz compared to the 250MHz of the uhd 600. it has more EU - 16 compared to the 12 in the UHD600....the N4500 should be around 40% better than the J4125 in the iGPU compartment.
that said the cpu in J4125 is better. it has more cores, cache and base cloak. so maybe that was the problem.
in a way, even though the gpu was the bottleneck, maybe it was the cpu that was making it not perform as good as it can - not able to feed it enough in a way.
So hi i have this model and i want to upgrade it please tell me how
is the usb c also video out?
Did you say DIY mini laptop?
Ew nvm. No you did not.
Anyone know if or how I can update PPSSPP on retrooZ I'm just out here looking to play all my 2d/3d tactics jrpgs but missing sprites and textures got me in one pickle of a jizam.
It's frustrating - a small PC with this form factor is something I would absolutely love, but it's a shame is so heavily bottlenecked by the GPU.
I wonder if there are any good systems like this out there that have Thunderbolt 3.0, that would be a good solution - add an external GPU later to improve performance. Anyone know of any good cheap boxes like this that would support an external GPU later?
Regardless, thanks Russ :) Still searching for a good small form factor cheap box I guess, but at least I know to avoid this one now!
So that's what I was thinking too, and I thought it does have a thunderbolt, there is one on the front that looks like a type c, but I'ma total PC novice and really don't know how ide tell the difference unless I tried connecting it, probably around kinda stupid here,lol, but I'm trying to learn.ive got this same chuwi mini PC and love it, but I definitely would be so stoked if I could actually upgrade it to be able to play some higher end games. Is this possible ya think?
Constructive Feedback: I prefer the old intro music.
Anyhow, good video.
would it run melee....? O_O
For that kidn of money u can just get one of those Lenovo or HP mini office PCs with actual Core i5 processors that will run a good sight better then these celeron chips.
And that's what I almost got instead of this but didn't know then what everything on here is talking about with this chuwi, got it 2years ago and at that time wasn't that much info about it
Still is a pretty good mini PC though I don't entirely regret buying it. Plays Minecraft just fine.
Standard sticker sir
So you might as well use a Smart phone that will run way better, could be windows thats a issue
I'd rather get a Series S.
Yep, that's what I ended up doing acually, have this chuwi PC that is pretty good for what I paid for it, 160, but I did end up wanting to play some games that just weren't running on this chuwi.
If you can find it, an Nvidia shield will do what you want much better, for roughly the same price.
For sure, I have an NVIDIA Shield video, check it out!
can it run fortnite at least 30 fps
if that thing under 110 $ or 120 i consider it
Eh this is like a retroid pocket 2 without the portablitiy...
Would make a good paper weight.
I thought fire 4k is the cheapest
For sure, the 4K is one of the best deals for emulation on your TV, especially when it is on sale. This is one of the cheapest PCs you can find, though, which has a different use case. For example, a PC could be used for computer stuff or inside an arcade cabinet. Different categories!
👍🏾
Lost me at Celeron
75 percent of your review was just it cant play this good or that, no serious gamer would buy this for even Mario cart, how about real world applications like can it utilize 2 monitors, can it support 4k, can it do full screen TH-cam videos. most people buying these are not at all concerned with games.
6:15
People from the US will use anything but the metric system lmao
Winbloat
Don't buy it, save your money and buy something better.
Lol. Review way too long once you saw performance and crap.
Hey I thought I did a good job keeping it under 20 minutes! :)
you should realy stick to non-pc devices... or learn more about it before posting vids.
So it's a sh1t pc got it.....
I gotta be honest, I really hate your new intro.
Amazon link: www.amazon.com/dp/B082VZP76P?ref=myi_title_dp