“Gaming” PC the Size of a Stick of Gum: YouTuber Runs PS1 and Minecraft on a $15 Board

YouTube blogger from the channel Lecctron decided to find out just how small a gaming computer that actually runs games can be. In the end, he built a working system on a Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W board, spending around $15 (about 1,000 rubles). The device easily fits in your pocket and can still handle PlayStation 1 emulators and even Minecraft.

The Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W board measures 65×30 mm — roughly the size of a pack of gum or an earbuds case. Inside, there’s a quad‑core ARM Cortex‑A53 clocked at 1 GHz, a VideoCore IV GPU, and 512 MB of RAM. For context, the PlayStation 3 also had 512 MB of RAM, but sadly this “gaming” PC won’t run PS3 games. The project’s author admits he could have gone with even smaller boards, but they wouldn’t work as a regular PC because they lack video output for a monitor. The Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W turned out to be the smallest board that can still be used as a full‑fledged desktop. The Raspberry Pi has some very unusual devices, like the PocketTerm35 portable computer.

Tests showed surprisingly good results for a $15 device: Minecraft Pi Edition runs at about 60 FPS in Creative mode. PS1 emulation is nearly flawless — DOOM, Wipeout XL, Silent Hill, Tomb Raider, Final Fantasy IX all run smoothly with no noticeable drops.

Things get trickier with Nintendo 64: The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask do launch, but with occasional freezes. N64 emulation is traditionally heavier than PS1, so that’s expected. PSP results are mixed: simple 2D games like LocoRoco deliver a steady 60 FPS, LittleBigPlanet (2.5D) runs at its native 30 FPS, while Wipeout Pulse barely manages 15–20 FPS. Tomb Raider: Legend finally killed the system: 9 FPS in static scenes and black artifacts on the screen.

The most painful part was setting up the PSP emulator. The blogger tried five different methods, and only the sixth one worked — the whole process took an hour and a half. It also turned out that the board is so light it keeps sliding off the desk, and he had to get the hang of holding it in place. The Raspberry Pi Zero 2W won’t replace a gaming PC, but for $15 it’s a functional system that runs PS1, part of the PSP library, and an older version of Minecraft. The Raspberry Pi 500+ is already being used as a gaming device inside a keyboard case.

Would you build a mini‑PC like this for retro games, or have you already tried something similar? Let us know in the comments.