That... is... sweet!

I've been wanting to do something like this for a while, myself.  I'd love to build a kind of all-in-one system that could play all the classic games regardless of platform.  Though, admittedly, it's not really my area.  I can build a PC well enough but I've never attempted anything like a specialized console.

Oh God!

*drools*

That is seriously cool!  One console to rule them all!  Talk about a retro-junkie's wet dream!  I'm almost salivating here!

I'm not familiar with that one so I had to look it up.  I must say, the i5 4250U seems like an expensive choice for the task.  I don't know how recent these prices are but multiple sources list it at over $300.  I realize it has the on-board graphics - which is nice to have included, don't get me wrong - but you're only running games up to the PS2, Gamecube, etc.  You could probably get a ten-year-old GPU for $30 that would handle anything the 6th gen could throw at it.

And now that I think about it, integrated or not, does the GPU even matter when it comes to emulation?  My understanding was that emulation is pretty much 100% CPU dependent.  I'm not really familiar with how SoCs work, but as far as raw processing power goes, the benchmarks I looked at show the 4250U to be comparatively weak when compared to most straight-up (and cheaper) CPUs.

To be clear, this isn't meant as a criticism.  It would just be a shame if you paid a lot for an SoC with HD5000 Graphics and then didn't get any actual benefit from it.  Mind you, that's assuming you bought it for this purpose in the first place.  It's possible that you only used this hardware because you happened to have the NUC.

And then, of course, there is the matter of fitting everything inside the case.  It's true that most PC form factors are probably more than you could squeeze into a Dreamcast, but I wonder... hmm.  How about an original Xbox case?  I'm sure you could pack some sweet hardware into that.  You could call it the EmulatorBox!

It could have a picture of Arnie on it with the phrase, "You have been Emulated!"

...

Ok, maybe not.

Objective successful!

But now, having accomplished that, do we get a demo?  You can't just leave us hanging with some pictures; we need to see it in action!  Any chance of a video?  I'd really be interested to see both how it runs the games and how it navigates the emulators.

Squeeeeee!!!

That's pretty cool.

First of all, thanks for the accolades... :) I'll try to answer some questions and points you made in the post above.

Regarding the emulator front end:

PC is using Windows 8 but a Maximus Arcade front end with a custom skin. Instead of booting to explorer.exe which is the normal Windows shell, I am booting straight in to maximus arcade. Windows 8 supports multiple accounts hence I can still use it with a different user account, but for this, you click on Dreamcast account, and you're in the emulator frontend within 30 seconds.

The hardest part for this process was setting up all of the emulators. I set up around 15-20 or so emulators with my fave games which took like a month (controllers setup, visual filter setup, bios...). MAME was a bitch lol. 

Regarding the PC I chose:

You're right that emulation is dependant on CPU for the most part but there are a few emulators that need a GPU as well on 1080p settings (Dolphin and PCX2 to be exact). There isn't a lot of documentation on this but on most forums people state the Intel HD 4000 is not good enough to do Wii/Gamecube at 1080p smoothly. Hence I really wanted the HD5000 GPU. The Iris Pro gpu found in the high end NUC's would have been amazing if the damn thing wasn't overheating and throttling all the time. :)

Regarding the form factor:

Believe it or not, I initially wanted to do this with a Genesis and a desktop thin ITX board/i3 4150. I have a Sega Genesis model 2 all cut up and the CPU+board at home. Let's just say that it wasn't meant to be. I needed a taller system and after the Genesis, Dreamcast was my favorite so it made sense to use that. Then I decided to just go with a NUC and made life much simpler for me. :)

If one wanted to build a serious gaming rig out of a classic console, they could use a Snes or NES, XBOX 1, Genesis + Sega CD or even a Sega Saturn. Those were large enough to house a decent CPU + a small dedicated GPU (ie GTX 760 mini). 

Regarding the video:

Sounds good. :) I will make one in a week or two and post it here... :)

Which emulator front end do you use? What emulators does it support?

Macimus Arcade - http://www.maximus-arcade.com/

Supports everything PS2 and below officially and Wii, Gamecube and PC games unofficially. 

You're welcome.  After reading your explanation I'm even more impressed.  I didn't realize how much work would be involved in actually setting up the emulators.

Well, that answers a long-standing question of mine.  I've often wondered if any emulators are able to take advantage of actual hardware like a GPU.  My understanding is that the reason performance can lag in emulation, even on hardware much more powerful than the original console, is because emulators can't really use the available hardware the way a game does.

That's kind of the point of emulators.  When a game is ported to a system, it's programmed to use the relevant hardware.  But an emulator is a self-contained software package that performs the functions of the relevant hardware, and it's run primarily by the CPU.

Which has led me to wonder if an emulator could be made which, rather than directly emulating hardware via software, could make the game think that the system it's running on is the relevant hardware.  If there were a way to actually redirect the game's workload to the appropriate components then emulating pretty much any system would be easy (power-wise).

The greatest console ever made!  You should have gone with that!

Hmm... as I type this... combined with a cheap drive and 4GB of RAM, that comes to $301...

http://au.pcpartpicker.com/p/HptzhM

Which... I don't know.  Is it just me or does that still seem like overkill for such old systems?  Perhaps I'm underestimating how much it takes but when you consider the hardware these games were running on, I can't help but feel that you could get a perfectly capable CPU for under $100.  Still, you sound like you have a better idea about this than I do; I'm just going on intuition here.

760 mini?  Huh!  That's a new one on me.  Is it comparable in performance to the standard GTX 760?  Because if it is then I definitely have to call overkill on this one.  I recall reading somewhere that the GPU in the PS3 was about the equivalent of a Geforce 7800.  And that's an old graphics card.  A good card in its day (I had one), but waaaay out of date now.  I can't imagine needing anything like a GTX 760 to play games even older than that.

Though, if it's a mini version, it probably does take a hit in terms of power.  Honestly, I've never really taken much notice of these smaller form factors before.  Perhaps I should familiarize myself with them.

For real?  Awesome!  Thank you!  I look forward to it!

Question: Was the Dreamcast still working before you disassembled it? Because if so, you should think about giving away/selling the disc drive since those got high failure rates (that is if you don't need it anymore).

Also, since this is just emulation, Windows CE powered Dreamcast games don't work, right?

This is pretty impressive!

Dude, no way. This is too good. O_O I applaud you.

Lol. Those were the days. Feisty Sega and their shoot from the hip, a always trying to be the hip company. They did EVERYTHING to make Nintendon't! Fond memories!