Hello, I am looking to do a diy gameboy running an emulator (eg. retroorangepi). However there're many SBCs out there and I'm not very sure where to stuck. Was about to order the Orange Pi Zero H3 when I realize it has major heat issues which would make it unsuitable for such a usage. What SBC should I use that will ideally:

 

1) Be really small

2) Doesn't overheat in a small container

3) Has support for gaming emulation

1 and 2 usually don't work well together.  Get at least board with HDMI output, not exactly the one with lowest memory setup and the one with a proper voltage regulator ... which means look for at least Orange pi PC or PC+.

Perhaps you should also focus on the container itself : if it is perfectly thermaly isulated, whatever board you put inside, its temperaure will increase ... infinitely !

4 hours ago, arox said:

Perhaps you should also focus on the container itself : if it is perfectly thermaly isulated, whatever board you put inside, its temperaure will increase ... infinitely !

Yes, but this project is possible with a Raspberry pi so I'm hoping I can do the same with a China sbc for better performance. Theres also a person who claims to have done this with an orange pi zero though I'm worried after hearing of the heat issues.

 

The latest kernel (4.1x) handles the thermal control better with dynamic voltage scaling. It still gets warm, but not too bad. You can always set the max frequency to something like 480Mhz and disable 2 CPU cores. It would still be faster than an RPI0.