I will be moving into a house where I'll be renting a well-sized bedroom w/ own bathroom (yes!) - we all have to live within our means - but more importantly it will come with a quasi private living/entertainment room just outside of it... or that's the plan anyway.

So I was thinking of looking into the proper gear I'd need for gaming on my PC - planning on finally picking up one of them new(er) Mac minis to use as my general purpose computer for my bedroom then, too :) - on a big screen TV, and since I never had the chance to do this before I don't even really know that well what's out there so I'm looking for recommendations if possible: TV, wireless headphones, wireless keyboard.

For the TV, I'm probably looking at some kind of 4k model; not only for gaming but also for watching media, obviously. I've kind of looked into projectors before, but the overall price tag and general endurance seems to be lesser than TVs oftentimes. Anyway, I'm still planning to play mostly if not all the time in 1080P, and I know that should still scale well with decent upscalers (as to be nearly indistinguishable from a native 1080P screen), but I've read some TVs are better than others in that department. Probably not an OLED because I just don't trust them enough regarding burn-in and the like. Just overall a TV that would double well as a giant monitor.

For wireless headphones definitely not a bluetooth one. As far as I've read up, quite a few of the modern 2.4Ghz band ones should be good for very low latency. Can be with or without mic - that's a rather unimportant feature to me. Mainly I'm looking for something with good battey life - if possible I'd prefer a swappable one since I'm not a big fan of built-in/glued-in rechargarble batteries - good sound, stable wireless connection, and relatively comfortable feel.

For the wireless keyboard, all I'm really looking for is something that's long-lasting and has no connection issues. As for the overall keyboard quality itself just something halfway decent - hell, I've been gaming on el cheapo Logitech K120s for years and years without a care. ;) I don't give two shits about RGB or mechanical switches. Preferably it's also a keyboard that runs on AAs.

As a bonus recommendation, what would be a good surface (probably with cushion) to get for when I do use keyboard & mouse on the couch?

Oof. Yeah, I know that's a lot to ask. I'd just really appreciate if you were able to provide some pointers so I can do further research on my own. Coming up with things from scratch is just a bit too daunting because there's just so much stuff out there.

https://www.nerdytec.com/produkt/couchmaster-cycon2-black-edition/

TV: Nah. What you need is a nice professional monitor, not a distraction box. 27 inch for under 300$.

Keyboard: You'll want the loudest keyboard the market can offer you, right?

Headphones, huh? What you want is the most boring and unassuming brand you can find.

Also, if I might ask, why a Mac Mini instead of a used refurb with Linux slapped on it? That way you don't have to worry about forced obsolescence and you can repair it.

edit: Nevermind.

We have a small "media" room with a TV connected to a computer for a few years. While I cannot give you any recomendation regarding the TV since I use a dumb 1080p, the headphones since I'm mainly a speaker user, nor the keyboard/mouse since the what I'm using isn't probably even available in your country, there are usually overlooked stuff that may help you.

Not every mouse work on rough surfaces like the couch. I have a few wireless mouses and the best are the el-cheepo 2.4GHz mouses but they consume a lot more batteries than the good quality, branded ones. There are some mouses that work on the couch but don't work on the table at all, see below.
The keyboard/mouse combo we ended buying was a not-so-expensive Rapoo brand mainly because the mouse has soft clicking keys wich annoys my soul-mate, the keyboard has somewhat well positioned arrows keys and the price was very reasonable. The price is important because I don't expect them to work flawlessly for a very long time, since we have a couple of dogs on our house 1 or 2 days a week, also they are usually not used on a table but on the couch itself (played hundred of hours of Battle Brothers that way) We tested the keyboard/mouse combo on a physical shop before buying. I wanted a Logitech MX keys mini but the price was a bit too much.
The Rapoo mouse don't work correctly on the table surface but I also have a Microsoft wireless mouse also connected and turn them on-off as needed. Since I'm lazy, I confiigure the computer (most of them actually) to sleep after a few minutes and if the mouse is not well placed, the pointer will move and turn the computer on, the el-cheepo wireless mouses need to actually click the keys to wake the computer (they enter a save-state after a few minutes unused).

My TV don't turn on when the computer turns on via HDMI, only when it's connected via VGA port so I use an adapter to that effect. Note that I actually need the TV screen to turn on automaticaly since the computer is in the wall behind the TV on another room and I dislike TV remotes.
Also some TV's have a unacceptable high latency, the old TV I have on the man-cave is connected to a old computer and old 4:3 Dell monitor, have a ~1s latency to mouse movements when noise filtering option is enable. with that option disabled the latency is almost acceptable but not really, so I only use it for videos and use the Dell monitor for all other stuff. Disabling the noise reduction filtering makes sense but I guess a new TV will have enough horsepower to filtering without creating too much latency, I have it always disable on any TV since.




With that said, a gamepad is probably the best thing you can get to a media room and the most fun we had, were playing old games emulated via Batocera operating system. We reboot the system out of Windows and the comsole it's ready to play :D

Note that bluetooth keyboards can't enter BIOS/UEFI or other adavnced stuff in case you need, since bluetooth only connects after the operating system is loaded.

Here I was, clicking the reply button like a raging dog, wonder why da heck did the reply button not work. Only after a minute or so, I refresh the page and noted that you edited the post. Silly me...

Anyway, the RasPi 4 is out of stock for a while and it's been pretty expensive since IMHO. I had my TV connected to a repurposed Thin Client, a laptop, a surface tablet and the Steam Deck, for no other reason than I always want to play something non available on the ARM arch, but that's just me.

I'd skimmed and missed that he basically said he was looking for accessories (TV, controller, keyboard, etc); Often hardware recommendations seem to be for a computer. So i dropped my post as it was basically useless. Depends. DosBox works pretty well so for older games it can have a nearly authentic 80's/90's vibe on ARM. I'll have to see if MechWarrior 2 will work on it decently...

I'm sure the Pi4 will come down in price as it becomes available again, or they will push the Pi5 or something. Still repurposing old hardware/laptops is great for this kind of thing, so long as you don't expect it to do anything amazing.

Actually with people buying a dozen Pi's at a time making clusters, they may be better making it a modular system that interconnects better and uses a more centralized power supply....

Actually... Repurposing a computer case and using it's power supply and plugging them together may sound interesting... though other than currently encoding videos, compression and/or background processes not sure i need that many. Still gotta finish my xargs cluster base setup.

Mouse and keyboard don't work great on a couch. I would use a gamepad where I could. Where you can't I'd get a coffee table to sit in front of the couch that you can place the mouse/keyboard on and use it like a makeshift desk.

I'd also use a regular PC monitor on top of the coffee table instead of a TV. The monitors look better and support fast refresh rates.

Alternatively, get a mini PC. You can get one for under $100, if you don't mind it having performance that isn't much better than a Raspberry Pi (and/or if you're willing to get a refurb). Or, you can spend more and get something more like what I have; for $400 you can get one that's, at least on paper, more powerful than that steam deck (but note that it still needs to be connected to power, and you still need a display, keyboard, and mouse).

For that so-called "modular system" you mention, there's the Raspberry Pi Compute Module that would fill that role.

Almost at this point, i'm more happy with $50 and $100 refurbished chromebooks that i can flash, they perform very well for their price, and are probably better than the Pi4. But takes a little DIY magic. I'll have to look into it, though i don't think i would be trying to do anything for a while, budget considerations and all that jazz.

I've got a cluster idea using xargs, master/slaves setup where using the network when you use xargs it instead puts it up as jobs that any other computer can pick up and work on. At least that's the idea, shouldn't need more than several scripts to make work if done right. Good for booting with fixed slave iso's and one that is the master they all listen to.

Yup, plus any modern gamepad supports blutooth. If your motherboard does not have blutooth built in a cheap USB dongle added to the PC is all you need and you can do away with the wires.

Didn't know of Chromeboxes, though it sounds like it might be a good choice seeing as you remove keyboard/battery/screen and more is put into the core system, it might be worth it.

I'll look into it next time i'm glancing at NewEgg and see if there's any to grab. I'm sure i can give them tasks to do.

A mac mini? Well I am no fan of apple but thats your choice but if you want my reccomendation this little guy can be picked up for about $500 USD.

"EliteMini HX90"

Processor

AMD Ryzen™ 9 5900HX , 8 Cores/16 Threads
(Total L2 Cache 4MB , Total L3 Cache 16MB , Base Clock 3.3 GHz , up to 4.6 GHz)

GPU

AMD Radeon™ Graphics (Graphics Frequency 2100 MHz)

Memory

2 × DDR4 3200MHz Dual channel (SODIMM Slots×2)

Supports a maximum of 64GB(32GB x 2) of DDR4

Storage

M.2 2280 PCIe3.0 SSD

Storage Expansion

2.5 inch SATA HDD Slot×2 (SATA 3.0 6.0Gb/s) ,maximum thickness 7mm

Wireless Connectivity

M.2 2230 WIFI Support (Wi-Fi 6，BlueTooth 5.1)

Video Output

① HDMI 2.0 (4K@60Hz) ×2

② DisplayPort(4K@60Hz)×2

Audio Output

HDMI ×2, DisplayPort ×2, LINE OUT ×2

Ports & Buttons

1 * RJ45 2.5 Gigabit Ethernet Port

5 * USB3.0 Port (Gen1)

1 * USB-C Port

1 * Clear CMOS

2 * MIC

Power

DC 19V / 6.3A (adapter included)

Consumes Power : 119.7W

System

Windows 10 Pro (versions with SSD) / Ubuntu

Product Dimension

195x190x60mm

Package Weight

2.5/KG

Net Weight

1.22/KG

Launch Date

Mid-October

Package Content

1 * HX90

1 * Power Adapter

1 * HDMI Cable

1 * Mounting Bracket

1 * User Manual

1 * Computer Stand

https://store.minisforum.com/products/hx90

Its a good little beast of a mini computer. Or if your willing to wait this guy

https://store.minisforum.com/collections/amd-%C2%AE-ryzen-%C2%AE/products/minisforum-um590

from the same company sporting a ryzen 6900HX APU which is going into high end AMD laptops without a dedicated gpu. DDR5 and a 680M iGPU.. this thing is apparantly around the same price but I think thats a typo. I really want one myself.

As for accessories, anything that is USB/bluetooth/windows/linux compatable should work and its all HDMI which is great for TV's. Personally I use a wireless Xbox controller and a USB headset. But a 3.5mm Jack just for some ear buds works too.


Also consider the steam deck if your looking for a kind of baseline to go off of.. the 6k series has RDNA2 iGPU's like the APU in the steam deck but a better CPU overall. You can also install the steam OS in these things and everything should work smoothly.. with the added benifit of not having to buy an OS. Also I that price $500 usd is the bare bones model I would expect 600 to 700 pre tax for anything with RAM and a SSD of resonable size.

I don't have any hardware recommendations, but as a fellow couch-gamer on PC, a word of advice: you'll need glasses or to lower your resolution if you're sitting reasonably far from your screen and plan to play older games that weren't designed with UI scaling in mind. I sometimes have to go as low as 720p, but at least you can compensate for the jagginess by pumping up AA.

Pick a wireless mouse/keyboard combo you're comfortable with and enjoy. Remember to make yourself comfortable during longer gaming sessions otherwise your back will hurt :P.