The Mrs is happy I won’t be spending so long in the garage now. It’s ended up being bigger than I thought and is a huge eyesore, but it works fine.

My kids are playing a lot of video games these days. They play a few indie games and Nintendo Switch games. I wanted to give them their own device, but wanted to stay on a low budget in this PC hardware pricing environment. So I thought I would make a poor man’s Steam machine/Gabe cube. I took inspiration from this YouTube video about making a broken laptop into a media PC. So I bought a broken laptop (smashed screen and dented case). Got it pretty cheap in an eBay auction (HP ENVY 17-da0503sa - Intel Core Ultra 5 125H - 16GB DDR5 RAM). Took the working parts out and made a case for it.

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I wanted to increase the TDP to its full potential and add a cooling mod to make it silent. Unfortunately the machine wouldn’t start properly without the original fan attached and the TDP was hardware locked. Noisy fan curves were also hardware locked. In any case, I got Bazzite on it and it seems to run their indie PC games and Switch emulated games at 60 FPS fine. Half pleased and half disappointed, but using it for now. Might upgrade in the future and make this a server PC instead, but it is working for its intended purpose for now. I need to push some metal mesh across the front to finish up. I’ve been a PC gamer for a long time and I’m enjoying doing some couch gaming with split screen Mario Kart 8.

  • Yankee_Self_Loader@lemmy.world
    11·
    4 天前

    Dude nice! As the dad of a 4 month old this is the kind of stuff I’m looking forward to. Not only as a project for me but also to try to teach some computer skills to the little one because I’m not going to be in my 80s and having her come to me needing her stuff fixed.

    What is your controller solution? I can see kiddos getting frustrated at the controller not having buttons that are represented on the screen

    • cRazi_manOP
      5·
      4 天前

      Thanks man.

      Kids seem to end up being interested in doing what they see…and they see me playing a lot of video games and working at the computer 😆

      They’re using an 8bitDo Bluetooth controller. They were a bit confused for a while with Nintendo’s reversed buttons, but they figured it out pretty quickly themselves.

      Depends on the child as well. My older one is autistic and an extremely fast learner. He’s interested in things and his approach is “get lost, I’ll figure this out myself”. He had finished the hardest levels of Super Hexagon when he was 4 (now 8) and he has no trouble with this stuff. Younger one needs more hand holding, but he gets the hang of things when explained a couple of times.

    • cRazi_manOP
      3·
      4 天前

      Thanks. There are plenty of my projects around the house. Maybe I’ll post them sometime.

    • tooks@lemmy.worldEnglish
      3·
      3 天前

      Could plasti-dip the case also. But like you suggested, a can of Rustoleum and be done with it. Or just have the kids sticker bomb it.

      • cRazi_manOP
        2·
        2 天前

        Kids sticker bombing sounds like a great idea. Might do that.