Very New Pi 3 User - Before I start Questions

Avikus

Good day everyone,

I just got my starter Kit, Pi 3 - 32 gig, in the mail and I'm about to sit down and install Retropie on it. But before I go on, I have a few questions.

Heat sink. The kit came with two (super small and small) to put onto the chips, if my machine will only be used as a Retro gaming machine, does it need it (highest platform I'm gonna play is N64)?
it came with a USB full of Pi 3 stuff... do I have to keep that? Or I can format and put the Retropie image only on it? With roms of course. I have plenty of space but I want to boot it and have it run Retropie right away...
speaking of which, how would I make it that Retropie runs on it right away as soon as the power is on?

Thanks and I try searching the forum for these answers and came across too many different topics.

A

chubsta

1 - can't do any harm so stick them on.
2. no, just format the card and install the retro pie image from here.
3. when you start the pi up retro pie will run if it is the only thing on the card, so if you just format and install retro pie you should be good to go.

Avikus

@chubsta Amazing, thank you!

caver01

@Avikus Be mindful of the adhesive/tape used to affix the heat sinks. You can search the forum for long discussions on the topic, as a lot of different people have reported different results.

Worst case: The adhesive is an improper double-sided tape that actually insulates instead of conducts heat from the chip to the sink. This is a bad situation, as the sink is not helping and the chip could get even hotter faster.

Average case: The adhesive is a purpose-made heat conductor designed for chips and sinks. It will transfer the heat well.

Best case (and fallback if you run into problems): Remove the adhesive/tape that came with the kit and get some honest to goodness thermal adhesive or heat sink compound (i.e. arctic silver, etc.) and with everything nice and clean, follow instructions and apply it.

I can tell you from my own experience that my Pi3 was easily hitting thermal limits and slowing down the emulator (could demonstrate easily with arcade games). This was extremely annoying. I added a small heat sink to the CPU using thermal compound and I have NEVER seen an overheat indicator nor performance throttling since.

rbaker

@Avikus Just follow this: https://retropie.org.uk/docs/First-Installation/

Avikus

@caver01 3M black glue is what I can see on the heat sinks at the moment. Has a texture of ... pure oil :P

caver01

@Avikus Well, you can probably lookup that product to find out if it is a true thermal conductor. It might be OK. Thermal adhesive is like toothpaste or thick grease.

Avikus

@rbaker Yup been reading on it, couldn't find any mention of formated memory stick.

Avikus

@caver01 That looks like it ... the Canakit website doesn't specify. I'll send them an email.

caver01

@Avikus Canakit is a very popular kit. Seems to me they would get a lot of backlash if their adhesive causes more harm than good. You could simply try it. If the Pi overheats, it throttles performance and displays an indicator box on-screen. If that is happening, you could try a different product. The sink itself is probably fine. Bigger is always better, but mine is fairly small/short and works great (I cut it from an old Pentium sink).

Avikus

So, I noticed that the ROM I found online are all Zip file for the majority. on the wiki it says "Accepted File Extensions: .zip (...)" for SNES. Does that mean I don't have to unzip every, single, game?

Avikus

Answered my own question, sorry.

Is it normal that I feel like the input controller/game has some lag? or am I just used to today's standards in game and it was always like that in the past? Feel like the timing is off ...

edmaul69

@Avikus one thing to try is to put your tv in game mode. Dont use cheap usb extension cables or too long of cables. There are probably some stuff you can do on the pi but i dont know what they are. Plus we need more details of what emulators and games you have lag on.