First, when our clients get into these questions and concerns, especially with a budget, they focus on the emulator in question
Requirements for PCSX2
CPU Requirements
•AVX2 support
•PassMark single thread performance above 2100
•4-cores/8-threads
•Dual channel memory controller
GPU Requirements
•Radeon X1900 GT equivalent or greater
•2GB of VRAM, dedicated or shared
RAM Requirements
•1Rx8 dual rank DDR4, 2Rx8 preferred, in dual channel mode
These will meet the required specifications to run @ 60 FPS. PCSX2 is a CPU demanding emulator. Running the software from a PCIe 3.0 NVMe SSD with read write speeds of 3,000/2,000MB/s is suggested for optimum performance.
Requirements for Dolphin 5.0
CPU Requirements
•4-cores/8-threads
•Dual channel memory controller
GPU Requirements
•Direct3D 11 or greater
•OpenGL 4.4 or greater
•Vulkan 1.1 or greater
Integrated graphics may work, depending on driver support.
The above, is your starting point.
As far as CPU performance, what clients are finding to be the most optimal is the Infinity Fabric Architecture found in AMDs Ryzen Zen 3 APUs, like the Cezanne and Barceló 5000 Series.
With the requirements, this places your starting point with the Ryzen 3 5400U or 5425U, and the new 7330U.
Currently, the most client purchased model in the price range, is the ATopNUC MX60, which is slightly over your budget
It does bring more to the table, with the Ryzen 5 5600U 6-core/12-thread upgrade, as well as 7 Vega compute units.
Post clients will eventually upgrade to a 2Rx8 dual rank RAM kit, to optimize both CPU and iGPU to maximum PTR (Peak Transfer Rate) for the best, bandwidth/throughput.
But without downgrading quite a bit, it's hard to hit the $220 budget. Most of our clients shooting for emulators often have budgets much higher. But they're trying to get the most out of the emulator as possible.
MaxProAndU Team