In short: Black Friday/Cyber Monday — the day(s) in which I’d be purchasing all my PC parts — is fast approaching, and Steam has decided to throw a curveball via their newly unveiled Steam Machine.

Should I hold off from purchasing my PC, running the risk of losing some great deals, in order to wait and see further details on the Steam Machine? Or should I just go with the PC? Holding off on a PC with the Machine could carry me over until the big technical upgrades that’ll be coming in the next couple of years.

My main purpose in purchasing is to emulate games from retro systems at the highest settings reasonable. Could I, for instance, get Sonic Unleashed running @ 4k 60fps (or 1440p 120fps) on a Steam Machine, or would I need a $1,500 PC? What about PS1/SNES/Dreamcast/GCN games? How well suited would the Steam Machine be for playing these games in comparison to a PC?

I'm assuming you mean Sonic Unleashed on PS3...PS3 emulation remains one of the most demanding, but something like 7600X will do the job just fine, even for 4K.

GabeCube's CPU, though it's same Zen4 architecture, is slower and similar to AMD Ryzen 5 7540U, which seems to be more of a 5600X performance. Remember - for emulation, CPU is most important component, GPU is only playing the second fiddle.

This table has nice breakdown on RPCS3 CPU performance:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Rpq_2D4Rf3g6O-x2R1fwTSKWvJH7X63kExsVxHnT2Mc/edit?pli=1&gid=0#gid=0

I’ll look into R5-7600X. Steam Machine is a little under what I’m looking for, it seems. Thank you for the input!

I don't know much about emulation so I can't really help you with that. But looking at what's going on right now, I'd pay close attention to any deals on RAM, storage (SSDs and NVMe drives) and GPUs.

All production of memory is going towards the more profitable server market parts needed to build all those AI facilites that are bein announced, and the effects can already be seen, especially in RAM prices that have almost doubled in the last couple of months.

Build a PC. Don't skimp on the CPU and motherboard.

The Ryzen 9800X3D is probably the best bang for buck at the moment for a good all-round Emulation beast that should last the mile.

Or, because his budget may not allow it right now and he plans to use this PC for years, he could go with the 7600X now and get an... I don't know, 10800X3D with faster clocks, more cores and maybe (hopefully) more cache down the line, when he can afford it.

Hell, there are now rumors that maybe even zen7 will launch on the AM5 platform. If that's the case, it would give him even more time to save money to get an even better CPU! If true, of course.

"My main purpose in purchasing is to emulate games from retro systems at the highest settings reasonable."

You always seem to recommend everyone gets way overkill for what they need. xD.

The vast majority aren't looking to spend almost $500 on just the CPU.

The steam machine should probably be able to handle PS3 emulation just fine,my old Ryzen 3600 could run RPCS3 with only minor issues and the Steam Machine CPU is significantly better.

But for building a pc, for just PS3 and less even a 9600x will do just fine. Maybe stretch to a 9700x to be safe if you're wanting to run games at much higher FPS than they ran on the original PS3.

Emulators are not GPU heavy. The 9060XT 16gb is a great bang for your buck GPU right now but even picking up an old RTX 3060 12gb would more than do the job for 4k PS3 emulation.

Sonic Unleashed has actually been recompiled so you can get a native version of it that will run much better than emulation.

IMHO the main purpose of a gaming PC should be playing PC games, not playing emulated console games.

You actually do not know if its overkill until the person gives you a fuller detail on their budget and how long they expect to use this system for and also for the other thing outside of emulation that it also could be used for. Why skimp if you have the funds to future proof for a much longer time now than getting something that barely does the job only to be disappointed later when something comes out and it runs subpar on your system.  You are either in a budget mindset or you are in a future proof mindset so its best to know all options not just the option that is ok for today.