I came across some articles about how people are upcycling a specific cryptocurrency mining single-board computer and decided to pick one up myself and put together a rig. The board is the AMD BC-250 which is similar to the APU in the PS5.
I’ve been out of the gaming scene since the Xbox 360 and never could justify the expense of building a gaming rig, but I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to build something decent for under $200. This thing rocks and can play my entire catalog of Steam games, many of which I bought on sale and worried later about having a PC that could actually run them.
Specs
- CPU: 6x AMD Zen 2 cores @ ~3.5GHz (actually has 8 cores/16 threads, but I haven’t yet unlocked the other 2)
- GPU: 24 RDNA2 Compute Units with 1536 shaders. Actually has 40 compute units, and you can unlock the remaining ones pretty easily. The PS5 has, I believe, 36 CUs active.
- Memory: 16GB GDDR6 shared memory
- TDP: 220W (50W idle - 235W max load)
- OS Support: Linux only (no Windows GPU drivers)
I/O
- 2x USB 3.0 (A only)
- 2x USB 2.0
- 1x RJ-45 gigabit ethernet
- 1x DisplayPort output
- 2x buttons. One is power and the other seems to be reset
Cost and Parts
- BC-250 APU - $125 (sadly they’ve jumped in price again and are now $165)
- 300W 12v PSU - $35
- 500 GB NVMe SSD - $0 since I already had a few spare ones on hand
- 120mm Fan - $17 for a 3-pack
- 8-pin PCIe power cable - $3 (to connect from the PSU to the APU)
Total cost: $180 though would have been closer to $250 if didn’t already have an SSD on hand. Price also doesn’t include the filament I used to print the case as I already had that on hand. I didn’t check the exact usage, but expect to use the better part of a 1 kg roll on the print. It used about half a roll of red and half a roll of black in my case.
A few optional components I already had on hand:
- Game controller (you can use a Xbox or PS4 controller if you add a USB bluetooth adapter)
- USB Hub
- USB Wifi adapter (it’s only got wired ethernet onboard)
- Passive DP to HDMI cable (to connect to my HDMI-only TV)
Depending on the parts you have on hand, you could still potentially build this for $200 or less even after the price hike of the boards.
I’m running Bazzite on it and booting directly into Steam Big Picture. Works great!
Resources
- Building a Budget Steam Machine with the ASRock BC-250, a Variant of the PS5 APU
- AMD BC-250 Documentation
- GPU Governor Guidance
- Modified BIOS to Enable GPU Memory Split
- Case Model
- Power Supply - Any decent 300+ watt one will do, but this is what I bought to fit the case I found
- AMD BC-250 eBay Listings - I paid $125 but they’re sadly $165 and up now
View of the Guts
Note: These aren’t mine and are from the Printables model page as I neglected to take photos as I went, and it’s kind of a pain to disassemble this because of the way it goes together. I also modded the heatsink and cut off the little ridges since it was originally made for rack cooling and didn’t cool well with just a fan on top.
Thank you for making me spend 200 EUR this evening ;-) Difficult to get here in Germany.
That controller is fantastic for the price
Yeah, I like it after figuring out how to get it in the right modes. Bought it for playing emulators but works great with Steam.
If i didn’t already have a rig, I would totally build one of these.
the low low chance of finding these affordably these days. There is someone in the next town over that is selling complete units starting at 600 or so which is cheaper than I would be able to get the parts.
Saw them on eBay last week for under 200.
Where did you end up getting your bc-250 from. I have looked on eBay and AliExpress and am seeing them listed for over $200.
eBay (US) like a week ago. I got it for $125 but they were going for under $100 before I heard about them.
I don’t think you can buy them new anymore. All the stock I’m aware of are from decommissioned crypto-mining rigs and being sold secondhand.
I included an eBay search link in the Resources (https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=bc-250) and just checked it. Looks like they jumped in price again and are $180+ now.
Assuming you’re in US or Canada, here’s the listing for the one I bought (same seller). It’s the least expensive at $165 with $16 shipping. Some listings include the SSD, so that may be why some cost more. Basically I think the cat is just out of the bag and now that people have found an easy way to repurpose these, demand and price is up.
Saw a video going over the cu unlock recently. Pretty cool how much value is possible to get out of this thing. Wonder what performance/efficiency could be if the CUs were unlocked and then everything undervolted.
What drivers does this use, stardard Mesa?
Yep. You’ll need 25.1 (or higher) and a fairly recent kernel to have all of the drivers in mainline though it’s possible to build them for older distros if you really want to. Basically the guidance is to avoid LTS distros and use something more bleeding edge.
Bazzite has most/all you need already baked in. The only special consideration I had to make with Bazzite was installing the GPU governor. It’ll work fine without the governor, but it’s running full tilt the whole time even when it doesn’t need to.
Yes, the docs linked in OP’s post have this note:
Mesa 25.1.3+ minimum, 25.1.5+ recommended for proper RADV driver support.
This board seems to roughly be on par with the perfoemance leven that is expected for the steam machine. But the energy efficiency seems to be quite bad, 90 watts on the desktop, so a decent cooling is required.
Yep, it’s not the most energy efficient build but definitely affordable since it’s upcycling what would otherwise be e-waste. It’s not something I’m going to leave running 24/7 so I can deal with it eating some power (I’m pretty big on efficient computing since I’m installing a PV system).
A single 120mm fan is sufficient for gaming if you don’t unlock the extra CUs or overclock it, and you need to either use a shroud to direct the airflow through the heatsink fins or, like I did, 3D print a spreader tool and break the fins apart so more air can make contact with it.
If you’re gonna use it for LLM workloads or heavy sustained loads, you’re gonna need at least two fans and some airflow over the back where the VRAM is. I’ve seem some liquid cooled builds which look awesome but I can’t justify that expense haha.
Sick!
How much would the filament cost of you had to buy it?
The original model says:
Printed in PLA, it’s probably fine.
I’d probably go for PETG, myself, since it’s more heat resistant without warping.
Regardless, you can get 4.4 of JAYO PETG or PLA for about $56 CAD (~50 + taxes), so it’s about $13/kg if you are okay with whatever colours come in a 4-pack of spools. So it’s pretty reasonable.
Tack on 1KHh per ~4 hours of print time, (PETG prints at higher heat = more energy, PLA lower) which for a case like this might be up to 2 days print time, so maybe 12 KWh, or about another $1.50 CAD-ish. Rounding up a bit for error, $15 CAD would be the materials and power cost, roughly, using some of the cheapest filament available.
The biggest cost to 3D printing is really the time and effort to set up and maintain the machines, filament, and prints, especially for one-offs, if you value your time at a reasonable wage. Finding the right model, adjusting slicer settings, and analyzing and fixing print imperfections take up most of the cost. (Not even getting to costs in time and materials iterating on prints).
About one roll for $17-20. It used close to a full 1kg roll (half a roll of black, half a roll of red). So if you did it all in one color, you’d just need at most one roll (assuming no failed prints).
I didn’t factor that in since I already have a bunch I bought last year on sale and that money was already spent and waiting for a use.
Ooh nice salvage! Looking at the heatsink fan reminds me of a similar thing I did very recently :)
Ooh, that might fit this. When I have time, I’m gonna look for a different case that’ll let me add more active cooling and incorporate something like that.
Not bad. Not a fan of the USBC (A only) nor your pick of operating system, but those are personal and really kinda bullshit complaints. Everything else seems pretty great.
Very nice build, and an especially nice price point. 🍌🍌🍌🍌
Good for you! Thanks for sharing!
Edit: just for reference, I can’t get a single server-grade hard drive to upgrade my server for less than 3x this price!!!
How do you unlock the 40CUs? I didn’t see that in the docs
https://elektricm.github.io/amd-bc250-docs/system/40cu-unlock/#performance
I haven’t done it yet, but it seems to require a patched
amdgpukernel module and setting two values at build time. I’m content with it as-is but may explore that later. I’m also waiting until I have some more cooling before doing anything that will generate more heat. That’ll require a different case, and I just don’t feel like that right now (I’ve got games to play and all lol).This is outdated information. AMD’s UMR package can be used to set the required gpu registers to enable the CUs.
No kernel modification needed.
Here is a live installer script using this method: https://github.com/WinnieLV/bc250-cu-live-manager
Oh, nice! Yeah, I had yet to come across that project but will probably give it a try later.
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