HN

Need help?
<- Back
The "$60 Gaming PC" – AMD BC-250 (2025)

The "$60 Gaming PC" – AMD BC-250 (2025)

networked

Comments (51)

  • nsbk
    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 16GbWould 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
  • jolan
    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-
  • monster_truck
    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.
  • RajT88
    $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).
  • Retr0id
  • Atotalnoob
    Where are you all finding these for sale? I couldn’t find anything other than “kits” or on eBay for $400
  • jamwise
    I wish I had learned about this when it was still $60. In Canada I can't find any for less than $300.
  • biglyburrito
    Here's the GitHub repository linked by the (currently unreachable) article in the OP:https://github.com/csabakecskemeti/amd_bc-250_how-to
  • hackersnooze1
    Does anyone else immediately lose interest in an article when you realize it was written by AI?
  • goda90
    These are going for a few hundred dollars now due to demand.
  • OptionX
    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.
  • addandsubtract
    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.
  • Levitating
    The link died, but it's a cut-down PS5 APU previously sold for crypto mining apparently.
  • stdatomic
    > Ok it’s not exactly $60 but you can get the board itself for that amount of money on eBay if you’re luckyI guffawed. And then closed the tab.
  • jrmg
    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?
  • swinglock
    Much like the website, it's unavailable.
  • tiahura
    "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.
  • haunter
    Wake me up when you can buy this for $60 again. Maybe in 2035
  • thefounder
    So this is the future of the Nvidia B200 cards as well
  • sparkling
    Site (Wordpress) seems to have gotten the HN kiss of death
  • pgporada
    [dead]
  • marbleotter115
    [dead]
  • EddieSpeaks
    [dead]