MiSTer FPGA Forum

Hi guys, I'm new to the FPGA and Mister scene and I just have a few questions about my options.

I intend to order the regular pro model prebuilt from ultimatemister here are some questions I have about it:

1. Should I order a large size sd card or just get a smaller one and use an external drive once it comes in? What's better for load times?

2. How loud does the default fan get? 20 dollars to upgrade to the Noctua seems like a lot.

3. If I want to use my console on a PVM or CRT down the line will these prebuilt cause any issues? They seem to be digital with HDMI only, will converting the hdmi to a different signal cause any sort of lag? If so, how hard would it be to install a VGA port to the existing prebuilt?

4. Going into 2024 is there any usecase for dual ram yet?

And finally, does anyone know what shipping service ultimatemister uses? I live in Canada and need to know whether it will come in our national post (Canada Post) or through a courier like UPS.

Thank you for any help, I'm excited to go on this journey with such a strong community!

1. An external drive tends to be cheaper than buying a large capacity microSD, both have similar read/write performance due to slow USB 2 speeds on DE10-Nano. If you want better IO performance look at a hard wired network connection and fetch large files via NAS (RetroNAS is a popular option).

2. Default fan isn't particularly loud however it is entirely subjective, if it bugs you upgrade it later.

3. You can use direct video via the HDMI port. It doesn't introduce any lag and outputs 24bit colour (analog IO outputs 18bit from the VGA port). You should read about it on the wiki.

4. The in-development Narc/Mortal Kombat cores may require them. PlayStation doesn't need it outside of an edge-case that it imperceptible in regular gameplay. Saturn core is currently picky about SDRAM modules (v3.0 modules seem fine) but current compatibility doesn't seem to be substantially improved with 2 modules but YMMV.

I would not use a stock power supply either, the 4A Meanwell supply is a must in my opinion.

No idea which carrier they would use, it may depend on the region they are shipping to. You can just ask Ricardo on the site.

UltimateMister ship with UPS service from Portugal.

You are gonna pay over $800CDN to order a pre- built?? You can buy the parts separately and put one together for around $600 yourself

Regarding #3, I have a digital IO board but my MiSTer is currently connected to a CRT via direct video. It goes through an HDMI switch then is converted to VGA to component, then goes through a component switch and finally into the TV. Yet, no added input lag, it's exactly like when I played games on the original console back in the days. Don't worry about it.

Also in North America Mister Addons and Legacy Pixels are good suppliers and closer to your home.

Ultimate MiSTer is great, I ordered from Riccardo.

However, it makes no sense to order from anybody but MiSTer Addons at your location.

If I may add that the major difference between the two is the way cooling is handled. Ultimate MiSTer uses a fan, and I recommend the Noctua for lower noise. Minor dust intake and very minor noise (to my ears).

MiSTer Addons uses an aluminum case as a passive heatsink, no dust, no noise. I don't think there's any definite proof that passive cooling causes any problems for the MiSTer as it's rated to work with very high temperatures, but YMMV.

Ultimate MiSTer best invest since a log time...and i own lots of real oldschool systems.
I play ecvery day with it.

Have fun

Yeah if you can put it together yourself you can do a complete nice system with metal case for about $400 total.

I guess some people may not have the skills to put it all together or just don't want to.

No problems with the fanless metal Mister Addons system, 1-2 years so far. Hate fans of any sort if I can at all avoid them and never like to add fans to things that don't need em because fans can fail and choke on dust. My small QNAP 10GBe switch is also fanless and so is my laptop . Misteraddons has digital and analog options, I think the analog may still be single ram only but most or all cores I'm aware of can run on either single or double ram. I think the digital system can still output analog if needed using direct video but look into it. I'm using a single internal micro sd card (512 or 1 TB I forget) because I don't want extra things dangling off the side when I move the system around. Don't think you'd see much load time difference with a faster external drive because I don't know how fast the USB ports will run and most games are so small you won't notice. Some larger games that are somewhat slow to load, that may be due to the core processing not the storage speed but can't say for sure.

I'll add my recommendation for the SD Card+External HD method. I had a spare 480GB SSD so I bought a cheap case for it (£10-ish from memory) and stored all my games on that. SD Cards 'wear out' much faster than SSDs.

Load times seem fine for stuff like PS1 games. Mine is currently formatted EXFAT but I'm going to re-format it to ext4, as that's a more robust file system. This is important because the MiSTer doesn't have a 'shutdown' feature - you just switch it off. File systems don't always like that

Edit: this is the case I got. It's worked well for me.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00OJ3UJ2S/

If you aren't planning to go dual Ram, I would highly recommend the MMS. If you can find one.

Here Ricardo from UltimateMister. Besides the MiSTer classic we also have the new Heber’s Multisystem and new upcoming cases and if you want something more robust, ITX and Jamma compatible (and possible new expansions coming ) you have the Jammix. We do fast worldwide shippings and products built in house factory.