So i always dreamed of owning a Vewlix arcade cabinet but holy shit, the prices of getting a real one is insane! Like probably USD$3000+ not including shipping and taxes and fees and shit. They look like this:

I figured i’d get a Chewlix instead, a China made clone that’s the next best thing. The best i could do for now.

I previously built my own PiCade and bar top cabinet from MDF kits back in 2016. Both running on Raspberry Pis.

Some old pics from 2016:

Decided it was time to splurge on a proper arcade cabinet in 2023.

I settled on getting one from Guangzhou Funzone Electronic Co., Ltd. on Alibaba and chose the Vewlix F design.

Important to get the right one though and not the shitty clone. You need to get the GOOD clone.

Got in touch with them through Alibaba on 24 August 2023 (Monica was the one i spoke to) and placed an order for an 8 button layout cabinet without a monitor or a pandora’s box. Everything else intact, just missing a monitor and the ‘game board’ as they call it. I also requested for Sanwa buttons and sticks.

They provided an invoice which came to US$450 for the cabinet and US$260 to ship to over to Brunei. Made the payment via bank transfer the same day and was informed that the cabinet would be ready by 6 September.

Surprisingly, they messaged me back on 31 August and said the cabinet was ready. They sent over a bunch of photos and videos and plugged in a pandora’s box to show the IO testing for the sticks and buttons. Everything looked good!

They asked what type of power cord i would like and i requested for a UK power cord.

Then all i had to do was just wait until the cabinet shipped.

I preemptively got a forwarding company here in Brunei for their customs brokerage service to handle customs and import permits etc etc.

All i needed to do was just provide the forwarding company a brochure of the item, the commercial invoice and the packing list.

While waiting for the cabinet to arrive, i placed a couple of orders to modify the control panel:

• Extra Buttons Control Panel, letterless version (from Acrycade Gear on ebay)
• USB mounts (USB 3.0 Panel Flush Mount Extension Cable with Buckle for Car Truck Boat Motorcycle Dashboard 1M on Aliexpress)
• Volume Knob (uxcell a09101400ux0130 Black Aluminum Volume Control Amplifier Knob Wheel on Amazon)
• Volume Controller (AXXESS RCA Level Controller on Amazon)
• 6x White Sanwa buttons (for the control panel)
• 1x Xin Mo 2 Player Arcade Controller Interface (but i eventually upgraded to 2 pico fighting boards running GP2040-CE)

Most of those parts would go into this thing:

I already had a 32″ monitor that i was using with my Mini ITX PC, both of which i’ve since put inside the cabinet.

Monitor is a Samsung M7:

https://www.samsung.com/my/monitors/flat/smart-m7-32-inch-uhd-4k-ls32am700uexxs/

Cabinet was shipped and then it arrived.

Left China on 10 Sept and arrived at my local port on 13 Sept.

Got though all the customs clearance by 16 Sept and the cabinet was delivered to my door on 19 Sept.

Took 3 people to carry it upstairs where my mancave is. I ordered the cabinet without a monitor or pandoras box. Still heavy!

All the other parts had arrived earlier so i just had to put everything together.

I took off the glass from the monitor mount.

Added some double side foam tape to protect the monitor a bit and stuck it all in there.

Fit and perfectly aligned!

I got some artwork and some stickers printed and here’s the final result:

Everything is running on a PC, running the Artax TTX3 image with the community patch from the Artax Image Continued Discord.

I fuckin’ love it.

How much did it cost? Just the cabinet and not including all the other shit i did to it:

BND$970 Cabinet + Shipping (USD$450 + USD260)
BND$60 Bank transfer fee (USD$40)
BND$1056 Customs and import fees (USD$780)

= BND$2086 total

Which was equivalent to around USD$1527

Totally worth it and a dream come true.

My wife was pissed lol.