After you create a flashy Raspberry Pi-powered retro gaming console, you might think that you have a little more power and can play some games that you can remember, such as Xbox, Wii or PS3. Perhaps in the future, the next modification of an RPi might handle this, but for now, to mimic the 6th / 7th generation consoles, you need a bit of a buffer. Fortunately, [Zac] He got his hands on an old gaming laptop and turned it into his own game console.
The first step was to disassemble the laptop and discard the necessary parts. [Zac] Batteries, Blu-ray drives and spinning hard disks have been confiscated. This left him with a much smaller PCB that could fit in a smaller case. The power button was integrated into the keyboard but the flat cable came to the motherboard via the keyboard connection. So with a few pin bridges, he can power the laptop. Then, he upgraded the RAM, wifi card, an NVMe drive, and recreated all the thermal paste and putty to try to keep things cool while overclocking the GPU.
The case for the machine used its CNC heavily because it was walnut with a mid-section of plywood. Upstairs there is a gorgeous cast acrylic window for viewing inside. Part [Zac] There was dreading with fine pitch soldering. In the end he got both wires connected well and connected with no bridging. Because it has a PC at its heart, almost every game is on the table. Emulation, some more medium PC games, streaming from his office PC and cloud gaming services allow him to access most of the games he has created. We love ideas and concepts.
We love the aesthetics of the build, but if you like to keep your consoles more reliable, why not keep your Mini PCT inside the original N64 case? Video after the break.