Hi,
I recently bought a tablet. And have been enjoying gaming on it. Particularly as, due to recent circumstances, I often can't be at the desktop computer at home, but I can be at a tablet. Or, sometimes, a laptop.
It has given me a lot of time gaming that I wouldn't have normally had. I put in the largest capacity microSD card I could find, and loaded it up with games. I bought dozens from Google Play, and the rest I used for roms and emulators. But, thanks to PlayStation isos, I quickly went through all of my internal and SD storage.
I also felt the desire to play newer games, or more obscure emulated systems like the PC-98. That simply are either too powerful for my Android device, or don't yet have an Android emulator app. So I decided to finally give Splashtop a try.
I was very surprised and impressed by how fun and capable playing games with Splashtop was. I immediately made a on-screen setup for the entire PlayStation 2 controller, with very large buttons for the most commonly used buttons, and smaller ones for less commonly used buttons like L3 and R3. And the buttons were surprisingly non-intrusive and playable in game. I immediately tried playing Tales of the Abyss on PCSX2 with Splashtop and my newly formed button layout. And had much joy that I was simply able to play Tales of the Abyss on my tablet anywhere in my house. The was no lag or framerate issues, and the buttons were very playable. It was a complete joy and surprise to be able to do this and do it so well.
This made me want to play and beat Tales of the Abyss again right away. And play all my games via streaming, and to more strongly consider "home cloud storage" or NAS storage for all my games. I wouldn't need large capacity MicroSD storage devices to hold all of my games if I could simply store them on a NAS device and access them via wi-fi. And I could have all of my games on one wi-fi storage drive, and access them on all of my devices.
With all of my roms, isos, Steam library, games, music, and pictures, on one, hopefully backed up RAID device. I could have a centralized and well organized place for all of my most important information. I would never have to install a Steam game more than once, because I would immediately and always install and access all of my Steam games via a NAS device. I would never end up with duplicates of roms or isos on my various computers, because they would all be backed up on the "home cloud" storage device and broadcasted via wifi, allowing me better organization of all of my games.
There are many cases where my roms and isos have been left on an obscure hard drive somewhere, so instead I searched out the cartridges or discs in order to extract the roms or isos again. With one centralized solution, I wouldn't need ever do that again or wonder where my games are. I could have a perfectly organized library, for instance, of all of the PlayStation 2 games I have extracted the .Isos from, and never worry about them again. They would be backed up on a RAID NAS device. It seems like the perfect way to organize and access all of my data.
Even better, it would allow me to focus on SSDs for my desktop. And less on buying more internal hard drives for my desktop computers. Which means less capable management and less SATA plugs being taken. Hard drives and managing SATA plugs can be one of the most difficult piece of cable management for working with desktop computers. With sufficient wi-fi speeds, I won't need internal hard drives for any of my computers any more. And I can just focus on having one good internal SDD drive and maybe a single extra HDD or SSD. Instead of the five or six internal HDDs I have per desktop right now.
Better yet, ever time I build a new computer, installing all of my essentially drivers and software will be much easier because I can store them all on the "home cloud" without searching out various websites, or using a flash drive. I can simply keep up to date versions of all my most important programs I install every time I build a new computer in a folder called "Essential Software" or so forth.
Furthermore, I wouldn't even need to play most of my games via the internal software of my Android devices, because I would be able to play all of them via streaming. I don't have to be as patient for mobile Android CPUs to be powerful enough to play Gamecube games via Dolphin, when I can simply stream my desktop. That's not to say I'll stop playing games via Android emulators, but having stream as an option is great for home use. And definitely allows me to play a lot more games and have more options.
Meaning, I can basically do everything via the "cloud". Or, the home cloud, at least. With little latency or problems. I can access all of my devices remotely. And my main storage drive for the entire house can be a NAS. For all of my devices, whether they be a handheld video game system, a video game console like the PlayStation 3 or 4, my various desktop and laptop PCs, or my "mobile" devices like my tablets or possibly devices like the Nvidia Shield in the future.
I've been very pleased by Splashtop. And I'm sure other programs exist and will surface that will be even better. I have heard that Splashtop was CPU intensive, so I was worried about emulating games with it, as emulators tend to be CPU intensive as well. But I found no lag, no framerate issues, and no problems with my Intel 2500K. Gameplay was very smooth and enjoyable.
The joy of simply being able to play Tales of the Abyss via a tablet, however, was halted by the fact that one day, when my router was under heavy load from several devices, started lagging heavily and disconnecting frequently. It was completely random and unpredictable. And would not lag or disconnect in the same places twice. This leads me to believing that it is not my Intel 2500K CPU not being able to handle PlayStation 2 emulation and video compression for Splashtop at the same time. And that the problem is that my router is weak.
My router was inexpensive and probably less than 300Mbps. I bought it for simple internet usage rather than home networking. I had been interested in home networking for a while, but had never fully committed to the idea, and thus never bought a proper RAID card or a home network server, or expensive and powerful router. I very much wanted one, but ended up spending the money on other things.
I'm looking to surmount this problem. I want to finish playing Tales of the Abyss on my tablet without problem. And I'm looking to continue doing this. I want to play more games and continue playing games this way. And look into both more remote desktop or desktop streaming or remote gaming usage, and more home networking. I'm longer overdue for home networking, buying NAS devices and setting up home servers and the like.
This means I need to look into investing into NAS devices, and possibly eventually making a home server computer. But more importantly, a better router. A router capable of PC gaming streaming, something I would want to play an MMORPG over. With no lag, disconnections, and as little latency as possible. And, hopefully, as well, have a high enough data rate to also have high rates for a NAS device also holding games themselves. Both broadcasting the desktop and gameplay of the games, as well as the data files of the video games themselves.
That sounds like a very demanding task. And I've been trying to look into the most powerful consumer routers possible to accomplish this.
What I've come upon, and have been strongly looking at and considering is the
ASUS RT-AC68U. It seems to be one of the most powerful consumer-level routers on the market. With data rates up to around 2Gbps. Or 1900Mbps. With a long distance and strong connection, also capable of increasing strength by connecting to other routers.
It seems like it would be worth the investment since I am planning on doing a lot of streaming and NAS usage. I would want to eliminate latency for streaming as much as possible, and I would like to have as good of read/write speeds as possible for my NAS device.
It seems like it wouldn't be overly powerful. And that making the investment of $220 for a router would be worth it. But I'm not sure whether it is an over-investment, and would be far too powerful and far more money than I need to spend. Or far too weak to handle both heavy streaming and NAS usage. And I would need to look into something even more expensive as a solution, where a single more powerful router, or several routers working together.
I'm not averse to spending a little more than I need to. I've done that often with building PCs against the advice of others. And have often bought GPUs and motherboards more powerful than what I need. And I'm not against doing that again with a wireless router. Particularly since I want very good data speeds.
Is the ASUS RT-AC68U good for my needs in the area of wireless routing? It is too much money and too powerful for my needs? Or, is it too weak and too cheap for my needs? I assume that it should be plenty good for my needs as a desktop streaming device. But desktop streaming and NAS I am less sure about.
Also, what NAS devices should I be looking into? I want something that will be reliable and won't be a bottleneck for my games. I am, for instance, planning to run games like Tera, Final Fantasy XIV, Final Fantasy XI, Blade & Soul, Phantasy Star Online 2, Minecraft, Ikaruga, and my various PlayStation 2, Nintendo Gamecube, and Nintendo Wii isos off of it. I don't want any bottlenecks in terms of my wifi or my storage speed. I also want something reliable, and something hopefully affordable.
The Western Digital
"My Cloud" 3TB seems reasonably priced. And would have enough storage to hold at least my most important and valuable games and anime. I could put my entire Steam library, GoG, and Desura on it, as well as my doujin imports and other non-digital distribution available PC games. As well I could put all of my PlayStation 2, Gamecube, and Wii library. Together with most of my favourite anime would be pushing it on just a mere 3TB. But I might be able to manage all of my PC games, and of my roms and isos, and all of at least my most important anime. I definitely couldn't hold all my music, though, or my pictures. Especially as I have at least 3TB of Touhou music alone.
3TB is pretty good, though. Especially for the most important data you want access to.
Unfortunately though, I've heard people having bad experiences with Western Digital. All of my friends have had bad things to say about Western digital. And I wouldn't want the hard drive to fail on me.
There's also the
SAMSUNG GT-B9150ZKYXAR. With significantly less storage, but possibly more reliability. I'm also a fan of Samsung products. But the device seems to be getting poor reviews.
There's also
this drobo device. Drobo device is one of the pioneers of home NAS and are a very well known name. Kind of a silly sounding name, but I've heard good things about their products and reliability. I also like the aesthetics of that device. It's very clean and curvy. Having an almost bubble look to it, and I like bubble shaped devices. It would be a significant investment, at $550, also not including hard drives. But with 5 bays, RAID support, and 4TB HDDs becoming as cheap as $100 occasionally(for this Black Friday, and I assume will soon be standard in the future), for $500 more dollars, I could have as much as 20 TB of NAS storage. Lower, if using RAID, but preferable as the data would be securely backed up and I could safely trust the device with all of my most precious data. Assuming that the device supports 4TB drives.
A device like that would be quite an investment, but perhaps, it would be worth it. Particularly if I could hold all of my most important video games, anime, music, and pictures on it. In a well organized securely backed up fashion.
And
this is what I mean by affordable 4TB drives. I anticipate them costing around $100 regularly soon.
Seagate also has a 2TB NAS solution, for around $100. That can be found
here. I definitely like the look of the Western Digital and others, better. Also, I worry about either of these being reliable. But these might be a good temporary solution, at the very least, before spending a thousand dollars on a 5 HDD drobo solution.
Drobo also has the very elegant and portable
Transporter system. Drobo products have a good reputation for function and reliability. I think they have a very attractive design. And they're small and lend themselves well to portability. The only downside I see is if the encryption slows the data transfer, or that the software is unwieldy. Also, the device, being small and portable, only uses 2.5" hard drives, rather than 3.5" hard drives. These are smaller capacity and more expensive hard drives. And I would want to want to own several for my storage needs.
However, it might be a good start. And I could have one transporter for my Steam library, one for my PlayStation 2 games, one for my Gamecube games, one for my Wii games, one for all of my classic roms and isos like my PlayStation and SEGA Saturn games, and some for various anime, music, and pictures. And access them all via the wireless router.
I must admit, I have no idea how most NAS devices work together. And whether it's okay to invest in multiple devices. I assume it shouldn't be a problem. But I don't have any experience with NAS.
Here's the short version for those not wanting to read all my text. I am looking to play video games over streaming. Right now, via Splashtop, though in the future, possibly also devices similar to the Nvidia Shield or Razer Edge. I'm also wanting to centralize my information with a "home cloud' or NAS device. Is the ASUS RT-AC68U appropriate for my needs? What should I look into buying? Can I affordable do both high definition PC gaming streaming with low latency and fast NAS access? Also, what kinds of NAS devices should I be looking into?
Thanks a lot for your time.
