Kitz Forum

Computers & Hardware => Other Technologies & Hardware => Topic started by: Chrysalis on July 07, 2017, 09:45:51 AM

Title: retropie
Post by: Chrysalis on July 07, 2017, 09:45:51 AM
Got my first raspberry pi, a pi 3 with gaming bundle, so came with couple controllers, hdmi cables, case, psu, blank sdcard, usb sdcard reader, all in including dpd delivery I think was about £70.

gotta say its not a bad deal.

Have copied loads of nes, snes, master system, genesis, arcade, atari 2600 and atari 7800 roms to it, all just work and at good performance.

Even tho my desktop pc is a quad core haswell, it struggles to emulate snes games now, used to be fine on windows 7, but windows 8 struggles, I think all the software devs now focus on android, linux etc. so not surprised it works better on the pi.
Title: Re: retropie
Post by: Chrysalis on July 11, 2017, 09:02:13 PM
Having now used it for a few days I have more feedback.

The good is that I think retropie itself is awesome software.

The bad is I think the pi3 been considered by the manufacturers as not in need of cooling is a bit optimistic, using the official case, I first noticed slowdown in super mario rpg, and a flashing red flask symbol started becoming solid, I read some documentation, did some diagnosis and the conclusion is the pi3 unit is throttling because its overheating and seems a fairly common problem.

If I take the lid of the case, it takes longer to throttle and wont so much but still throttles, I have to have a fan blowing over it to keep it from throttling.

Having looked at the various cooling options I have decided on the flirc case which will hopefully arrive tomorrow, this case has a built in heatsink and the entire case itself is the heatsink all molded into one, this case is even sold on the official site but is simply marked as a fancy nice looking case rather than its primary purpose of cooling, but the community rates this case highly so hopefully it will do the job for me.

The only other real issue I have is that its too light, I plug some cables into it such as hdmi, headphones and controller, and the thing is dragged by the weight of the cables as it has no weight to it.

If anyone else gets one of these for retropie, I suggest not getting the bundle but instead.

pi3 board
one game controller (or none if have existing xbox1 controller to use)
flirc case
16gig sdcard
pi official psu (2.5amps needed, my samsung charger made the lightning symbol appear for under voltage)
hdmi cable

that lot should cost less than the gaming bundle.
Title: Re: retropie
Post by: Chrysalis on July 12, 2017, 02:33:54 PM
case is assembled, copy and paste below what I posted elsewhere.  In short it is very effective.  However I dont know yet what the final resting point will be for the temps, I am going to leave super mario RPG running whilst I am out and see if it avoids throttling.

"The stock case at stock clocks was throttling when I ran retropie, so I brought this flirc case, which sadly was designed for the pi2, there is no pi3 version but it still works.  I placed the thermal pad on the APU and then proceeded to put it together, I put 2 of the screws in the base first so ready to line up with the lid, I observed the heatsink on the lid seems not fully lined up with the APU, looked like about half make contact, I suppose as its designed for the pi2.  Sealed the unit, plugged tt in, and have left a demanding snes game running.

So super mario rpg in the toad town, would throttle within 5 mins on the official pi case when closed.  It would throttle down to about 900mhz.  The official case with the lid off it would last about 7-8 mins then throttle and go down to about 1.05ghz.  I had to blow a fan on it before installing the flirc case.

Now this flirc cse, which seemed a bit messy how it all fits has been running superio rpg for 10 mins, its still at full clocks and temps are at 57.5C which seems a miracle given how I dont think the heatsink is lined up for the pi3, but bare in mind the temps have not settled down they are on a upward projectile still.  But 57C is still 23C of 80C which is the throttle point.

Also looking at the sdcard I dont think its that bad, harder to pull out than the normal case but is definitely a gap above and below it to grip it.

Om an update, before finishing this post another 2 mins past

cpu seems steady at 57C but gpu temp rising very slowly currently at 58.5C. So yes this case seems brilliant at thermal management even with only half contact on the APU."
Title: Re: retropie
Post by: BigJ on July 12, 2017, 08:09:48 PM
Ah interesting idea. I've been thinking of replacing my pi2, acting as a media player, with something beefier. ODroid C2 probably and wondering what to do with the pi2 afterwards. I think you've answered the question :)