Recommended SD card size for LOTS of games?
-
Hello! I am planning on building a cocktail table to play a lot of games on. Like 50 to 100 games, including MAME arcade games. I am planning on a 32GB card, but will that be enough?
Thanks, -saddlepiggy
-
@saddlepiggy unless you plan on lots of disc based games (segacd, playstation, dreamcast, Daphne), 32 should be enough for you.
-
can the pi run those games? If it can I want to do it.
-
@saddlepiggy sega cd is perfect, PlayStation plays very well with a few bugs here and there. Dreamcast is okish. Depends on the game, but nothing is 100%
-
@saddlepiggy said in Recommended SD card size for LOTS of games?:
can the pi run those games? If it can I want to do it.
with a pi3 or higher, you can run many games on those systems, but you will need more space for more disc images. I have 64MB and I have all the roms and cd images I want, including arcade, nes, snes, n64, psx, psp, sega32x/cd, dreamcast and atari2600.
You can also store roms and resources on an external USB stick, with the pi3b+ you can even boot off of a usb stick with no need for a sdcard.
-
@gomisensei awesome thank you! I will keep the USB stick in mind when I build!
-
I use a 64 gig card, but thats cause I really enjoy seeing video previews for all of the roms on my card. If you want video previews, go bigger!
-
I have about 40 PSX games on a 32GB SD Card, it is completely full.
PSX games size are between 200 and 700 MB per discs, some games have mutiple discs.
-
@hurricanefan do the previews work if the games are on a flash drive?
-
@saddlepiggy I'd assume they should work as long as your gamelist.xml file references them in the right place. It wouldn't be any different from say a box art image.
-
@hurricanefan awesome thank you!
-
From experience, if you plan on having almost all of the pre- psx/dreamcast consoles and the respective games you'll be at or over 32gb. Adding several PlayStation games, especially multi disk games you'll be reaching 64gb super fast What I found though is to be more selective. I'm not going to play every game out there so you can easily cut out 2/3 of the games if not even more. My Pi Cart only has the popular games and games I've recently found to be fun. It makes it a lot better experience because you don't have to sift through countless games you've never played or heard of or will never want to play.
-
Problem is with an SD card is they have a limited life, if you continually write to them they will die a lot quicker, hi scores, metadata, etc, etc
Not sure where your from but you can pick up an external 250GB USB powered hard drive for about £25 or less and run all your games off that. Much faster loading and a lot less stress on the SD card plus takes up hardly any room. especially if your going to build a cocktail cabinet. The PI3 will easily power this, IF you use a GOOD quality power supply. Most of the ones that claim to achieve this are designed to charge up phones but can't manage continuous high quality stable supplies (which the PI3 needs, apparently the 3B+ is even fussier)
The official PI power supplies are guaranteed to provide what the PI3 needs. Cost more initially but will work straight away with no power drops. If you overclock the PI3 (which it can handle quite easily) then you will need a GOOD power supply
Make sure it IS a 2.5" USB powered drive. They are tiny and fit in your hand. No external power supply needed. I use a 1TB one as I had a spare and its easily big enough for every system RetroPie can run plus a lot more space than I need. This includes ALL disk games and ROMs
I built something very similar to this, using a PI3, but then decided I wanted pinball as well that the PI just won't do so used the PI3 as a KODI/RetroPi set-up for the TV and converted the cabinet for PC use and HyperSpin, which does have pinball support and systems the PI just hasn't got the power for
http://www.instructables.com/id/2-Player-Bartop-Arcade-Machine-Powered-by-Pi/
-
steptoes spot on about his power supply recommendation. i ordered some off brand power supply, and still occasionally get low voltage warnings even though the things underclocked.
-
I use a 2 TB USB drive. It runs right off the PI without any power issues. Entire PSX library is around 800gb. Why stop at 64? 😁
Contributions to the project are always appreciated, so if you would like to support us with a donation you can do so here.
Hosting provided by Mythic-Beasts. See the Hosting Information page for more information.