I built one of these. It is not possible to do so for 60$ anymore since the board itself goes for 150+. On top of that you still need a PSU, NVMe, a high pressure fan, DP to HDMI adapter, possibly BT and Wifi adapters, and a 3d-printed or DIY case.

It is also a very hacky build. You need to flash the BIOS which enables a few interesting unlocks: from 24 to 40 GPU compute units and 6 to 8 CPU cores. It's a bit of a silicon lottery and will depend on your specific board and you need to test everything thoroughly yourself, honing on a config that works for you.

The software side of things is Linux, so if you're familiar with setting it up it shouldn't be difficult to go through the different steps. There are a few distros that work well. I use Bazzite and boot directly to Steam big picture, the UX is great. You can exit to desktop and you have a fully usable Linux box that you can play around with from the comfort of your sofa.

One of the downsides is that it uses a lot of power when idling, about 80W. I just turn it off after using it. I'm working on a QOL feature: an ESP32-based power switch that starts the board when a specific BT device is detected (usually a controller). Once everything is setup the board works very nicely. It can be a bit loud depending on your fan/case combination. I'm currently printing this one[0]

It delivers about the same punch as a standard PS5. The hardware is remarkably similar, and much better than mini PCs set up with AMD APUs, unless you go Strix halo but that is another price league (10x). You can play Cyberpunk 2077 decently on it on settings similar to an AMD RX 6700XT or slightly below RTX 3070.

A pretty impressive number is the memory bandwidth at ~410 GB/s, which should run local LLMs like Gemma 4 or Qwen3.8 27B at decent speed but with limited context size as its just 16Gb

Would I build it again? It was a lot of fun, but financially is not a crazy deal if you need to buy all the materials and factor your time in. Still much cheaper than a Steam Box!

- [0] https://makerworld.com/en/models/3021754-bc250-case-mkuu-fsp...

Edit: GPU performance comparison

I bought one while waiting to see if my Steam Machine reservation would be fulfilled.

I paid ~$186 shipped for the board on eBay 5 weeks ago. I use an ATX power supply and NVMe that I had laying around and I printed a big case for it[0].

I seem to have gotten a good one as it has no problems after unlocking the extra CPU/GPU cores.

I run vanilla Arch on mine configured to boot into Steam. The jank factor is pretty high but it does trade blows with the Steam Machine for a fraction of the price.[1]

I did end up going through with the purchase of a 512GB Steam Machine for $1160 w/tax and swapped in a 2TB NVMe. It is definitely a more polished/living room-ready product and I'm happy with the hardware but it's definitely a questionable value.

It's worth reading over the docs[2] first before committing. There are lots of options for cooling, storage, and power supplies. Just depends on what you want to get out of it and how much time you want to invest in it. There are pre-made images so you don't necessarily need to be a Linux expert but it would help if you want to stay on top of the latest developments. There is still on-going work to get even more performance[3]

- [0] https://www.printables.com/model/1789618-bc-250-atx-case-dua...

- [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Sw1SdU9buQ

- [2] https://elektricm.github.io/amd-bc250-docs/

- [3] https://github.com/lonewolf0622/BC250-Native-Mesh-Shaders-

You are _not_ getting one of these for less than $300, and because of this post and many like it, there are countless scams selling just cases for them at this price from a dollar or two of filament.

$60 gaming PC's are doable if you buy an "untested" Dell Optiplex and get lucky. A few years ago, I bought a couple of these in that price range that not only worked, but had a GPU of some kind. Good enough for Left4Dead at least, and some other Indie games. All they needed was an HDD with Windows 10 (both of which I had lying around - Win10 licenses can be had for a few bucks).

For anyone wondering about local LLM applications:

- current price $200+

- limited VRAM (12-14 GB)

- poor performamce in clusters [1] - only 2 lanes of PCI-e 2.0 (still better than CMP XX HX mining cards)

[1] https://ciroluciotecce.it/en/posts/bc250-cluster-inferenza-l...

There's a similar board called the AMD 4800S (or 4700S). These are also repurposed PS5 SoC that didn't pass the graphics quality control. So what you get is a motherboard with CPU and 16GB RAM soldered on. No HDMI out, but it has a 16x PCIe slot (PCIe 4x 4.0) to connect a graphics card. The 4700S model is limited to 4x PCIe 2.0.

Here's the GitHub repository linked by the (currently unreachable) article in the OP:

https://github.com/csabakecskemeti/amd_bc-250_how-to

Hey all! I've wrote the original [blogpost](https://devquasar.com/hardware/the-60-gaming-pc-amd-bc-250/) last year and maintaining the [how-to](https://github.com/csabakecskemeti/amd_bc-250_how-to) repo. I'm glad you found it useful!

Yeah the prices were much lower last year, but I think this is still a good deal for the tinkerers.

I've just added the how to portion of the CU 32->40 unlock on Manjaro Linux. Plus added an AGENTS.md so you can use your favorite AI to guide you trough the full process.

Happy hacking!

Does anyone else immediately lose interest in an article when you realize it was written by AI?

I have a bunch of these as headless gaming PCs in a rack running sunshine and Steam on Linux. The kids stream from them using moonlight on whatever smart device they want to play on.

Had the idea from LTT but he went a bit bonkers and bought expensive hardware to transmit video and input over cables. Gigabit Ethernet is more than enough.

I wish I had learned about this when it was still $60. In Canada I can't find any for less than $300.

These are going for a few hundred dollars now due to demand.

This isn't necessary related to this project but I got thinking about while reading it. Isn't it weird that shared memory was a cost saving measure by not having GPU dedicated has now been rechristened unified memory and is now a feature?

I understand why the AI people want it to help with the latency between the CPU and GPU. But having people in some cases use it as for marketing is kinda like getting watered down beer and getting told its a good thing because alcohol is bad for you.

It’s an intriguing machine, but, by now, I’d have imagined someone would offer a sheet metal case with a PSU and fan (or mounting holes, at least).

The form factor is unfortunate. I wonder what was the intended usage (server side gaming?) and if other high-volume parts (as game console APUs are) can become small similar systems, preferably with expandable memory). The history of how this thing came into being must be really interesting.

Speaking of form factors, it’s a shame there is no generic desktop/deskside/tower conversion kit for 4 and 5u rack servers. Some machines have tower counterparts, but having an aftermarket option would save a lot of machines from the metal crushers.

the silicon lottery in reverse: ps5 chips that failed console binning now power cyberpunk 2077 rigs for ~$70. best e-waste redemption arc in a while.

If one were to actually build and design a SoC, ARM $60 game “console” that plugs into your TV in 2026 and sell it at a decent volume, what would the equivalent game console be potential-wise?

I’ve been doing 3D game development for retro consoles for fun and it’s actually quite impressive what you can actually achieve with little hardware.

The link died, but it's a cut-down PS5 APU previously sold for crypto mining apparently.

How could I have found out about these machines months ago before the price went up? Where do I have to browse and connect around?

Is there anything similar/newer that’s still a good deal?

Is this the only piece of hardware that can be repurposed like this or are there other crypto mining (or AI?…) devices that have similar potential?

Where are you all finding these for sale? I couldn’t find anything other than “kits” or on eBay for $400

some info links:

- https://github.com/mothenjoyer69/bc250-documentation

- https://gitlab.com/TuxThePenguin0/bc250-bios

- https://bc250.info/

Some of the smaller llm models run on it too but in practice the memory is way too limited for that use case.

Love these articles. Need a little more cash, a little more time. A little drop in ram prices...

I looked into a bunch of things like this, but in the end I decided to just pay for a Boosteroid subscription (cloud gaming service). Works great.

"many PS5 APUs that didn’t meet console spec (“binned” or “defective” for console use) got repurposed. Instead of being discarded, these chips were re-used for mining/higher-density hardware."

Not discussed much in the article, but it looks like:

TSMC → AMD controlled/qualified the usable off-spec parts → AMD supplied BC-250 parts to ASRock → ASRock sold mining hardware.

Much like the website, it's unavailable.

Wake me up when you can buy this for $60 again. Maybe in 2035

> The Linux version of Steam works out of the box.

So, essentially a decent Steam Link remote play server.

So this is the future of the Nvidia B200 cards as well

Site (Wordpress) seems to have gotten the HN kiss of death

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This is the guide you need. I run one of these. https://elektricm.github.io/amd-bc250-docs/

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> Ok it’s not exactly $60 but you can get the board itself for that amount of money on eBay if you’re lucky

I guffawed. And then closed the tab.