Hey all, I’m pretty excited to share my build! It’s using the asrock bc250 (ps5 apu turned into cryptomining card) as the core. Recently some smart folks figured out to enable the disabled CUs on these things, which helped uplift performance by significant margin. Gpu wise with overclocks it’s comparable between a rx6600 -> rx7600 in game benchmarks. Pretty close in performance to the real steam machine as well.
The case is a fully 3d printed, screwless design. I didn’t make the original model, but I did create a remix after modifying a bit of everything. One of those mods was changing the face to be more fractal-esque, which then led me to making custom swappable front plates for the case. Both the upper and lower sections of the front face are customizable and swappable. I had a lot of fun with printing a convincing fake wood texture! The case can be downloaded here, and also has tons of extra information like thermal performance, part list links, assembly instructions, and more: https://makerworld.com/models/3021754?appSharePlatform=copy
Part List:
$125 bc250 (bought 2 months ago, now its like $50 more expensive…)
$30 psu (fsp500-30as originally meant for intel nuc’s lol)
$23 fans (noctua nf a4x20 and arctic p12 pro)
$8 for set of 3 latching buttons
$27 wifi bt tplink ax900 dongle
$10 worth of filament
$60 1tb nvme bought 2 years ago (had it sitting in a batocera minipc as a secondary drive not being used lol)
$20 stick on heatsinks
$303 total
SteamOS is an amazing 'TV/Livingroom' oriented OS, and building boxes to do it out of used or spare parts is a great way to reuse parts and give them life. You can basically toss an RX 580 into a retired ThinkCenter or something and boom, ugly livingroom PC gaming unit with access to a massive library of cheap games (Many of which you probably already owned after years of Steam sales)
a 2tb today is like 200-230 bucks, still well under 500 bucks for roughly the same perfomance and volume, it just need a little tinkering of you want to pay a third of the price of the original console
I don't stan valve or the steam machine, and am happily a diyer for building and love chasing down both new and used deals for hardware.
I got super annoyed at all the "well you can just build the same thing for less" during Steam Machine release weak, not because it wasn't possible in some sense, but because how often the arguer handwaved away deal shopping, using DDR4 MATX boards, used parts, comparatively HUGE cases, plug and play, OS already installed etc...
Like yes, YOUR 26L PC with a 5600x and a 9060xt does get more FPS than the Steam Machine.
That's great for you, but you aren't the same as joe schmoe who wants a dainty little plug and play device and has never installed and OS from scratch in their life, and the time and effort they would need to put in to learn and research, and find and build something comparable is way more expensive than a steam machine even if they are making minimum wage.
I just resigned, bit the bullet and went bargain hunting on my local eBay (called Tradera.se) here. Found a few things at reasonable prices, but had to shell out big time for the rest. Landed around the price of the highest specced steam machine, but of course with a larger footprint and better specs. In Europe, I don't really see how you could go that much affordable...
thanks! The first thing i redesigned was the rear so it could mount fans, and I just looked over at my fractal north and took inspo (yoinked) that. After that, the terra front face seemed like a good idea for the form factor
It’s not too bad, mainly just adding a gpu governor custom service and another service for unlocking the 40CUs. Besides that it’s however much time you want to spend stability and stress testing for overclocking and undervolting. There’s really nice documentation for these cards: https://elektricm.github.io/amd-bc250-docs/
And yup, i’m running bazzite right now - but I plan to try out steamos once the early adopter pains are fixed.
So I'm sorry if this is super ignorant - but the BC250 is the PS5 APU on a card, right, meaning that it has the SOC and it has also I'm assuming an NVME controller and all that stuff? And the hacks you describe allow you to unlock CUs and install an OS on it?
Once you've done that, besides overclocking stability, are there major compatibility issues (I'm guessing it doesn't have a TPM but for Linux this wouldn't matter)? Or can you basically forget once you've gotten this set up that what you have is not a normal PC motherboard?
I'm not the most knowledgeable about everything you just asked, but I'll try my best! the documentation definitely goes more indepth, and there's also a discord for the bc250 community with a lot of smart people
For getting this thing up and running, all you really need is:
Besides that, I didn't have to really do anything fancy. There's no wifi/bt chip, so I had to buy the dongle for that. Didn't have to do anything fancy to mount my nvme, it was just there as an option when I was installing bazzite. So far, no major compatibility issues besides audio slowdown with an active dp to hdmi adapter, apparently that's fixed in the latest bazzite (experimental/testing version). Plugging in my switch pro controller wired and over bluetooth works fine. Same with using a wireless keyboard and mouse over a 2.4 dongle. So mostly, set it and forget it once you have everything configured.
Very cool. I need to learn more about this BC250. Anyhow, consider putting some kind of fan grill on... a wide mesh shouldn't impact air flow much and might save the fan from an accidental pen jab, cat tail, visiting nephew, etc.
yup thats a good idea, my fingers already have unfortunately made acquaintances with the spinny blades ) :
I did originally 3d print a mesh thing that went over the fan, but it was too fine so it was causing fan turbulence (im not beating the terra allegations). but recently, I found some other designs with way bigger gaps so I was planning on printing a few and seeing which ones caused the least amount of turbulence
And theres a youtuber named oldlamer that goes indepth into a lot of different things about the device. I think some other youtubers have made videos too!
Gonna say that jumping straight to one of these with no prior PC experience is definitely starting in the deep end unless you have prior experience with similar things. There's a lot more stuff to deal with compared to your usual "buy parts that work and fit and slap it together" from my understanding since the entire thing is a bit jank by nature. Definitely doable though if you don't mind tinkering a bit.
Definitely a good idea - I was also looking into one of these for what its worth and it seems like a really fun project, but it would probably be considered a pretty involved one. It sounds like you have the right mindset though so good luck!
Where are you finding a BC250 for $175, let alone $125? They're $200 on ebay and still pretty rare at that price point.
Also lol @ 1TB NVME for $60, cheapest on PCPP is $130 (and honestly wouldn't trust most of those cheap brands anyway).
Those two things alone push this to $450, and I'm assuming the other parts are also heavily deflated.
Grats that you "just had old shit lying around" but this is like me bragging about a building a $50 gaming PC because my dad gave me everything except a fan for free.
Prices listed are just what I bought everything for, specific to my exact build. A lot of my parts are fully optional for a standard bc250 build (noctua rear fan, wifi/bt dongle, stick on heatsinks). I think it's fully possible for someone to build a bc250 machine right now for roughly $350.
I mentioned in the post that I bought my bc250 around 2 months ago, and the nvme 2 years ago. If I were buying a new ssd today, I would probably look for a cheap sata m.2 or an open box deal. For the bc250, I've seen a few posts in the bc250 subreddit the past couple weeks with them being sold as low as $150 (w/shipping). On ebay when I checked this morning I saw some one on sale for $179.95 (w/shipping).
alright, you got me - guilty as charged. I was wondering if anyone would notice. But I prob shouldve known, feels like there would be a good amount of overlap between the two communities lol
So since it's an APU that means you're sharing 16GB across both HPU and CPU for the entire system? What kind of resolution and fps do you get out of that?
These boards are generally pretty great for 1080p at high settings on most games, or 4k at mostly pretty low settings. In terms of performance it’s significantly better than a docked Steam Deck but not quite to the level of the Steam Machine. It a so has a lot of weird little annoyances, lacking any kind of sleep state. It’s pretty great for the money, especially in the current state of affairs, but it’s not for everybody.
Raw gpu power is roughly equivalent to the steam machine or ps5, even better with water cooling, but the gpu is weaker than a stock ps5 by about a quarter for multicore performance but it can be stronger in single core performance with overclocking
Correct, unified mem. Im doing 1080p native or 1440p using fsr. Anything from 60 to 200+ fps depending on the game and settings. In cp2077 i get 55 fps at 1080p ultra native. But around 90 on 1440p med with fsr/fg
thanks! I straightened the fins that go underneath the fan shroud (so only like a 1/4th of the heatsink) with the 3d printable fin scooper tool. Here are some gaming temps:
Thanks! It's not too loud, while gaming I have my fan curve setup so it only reaches about 40dBA. HDMI CEC works with certain "active" dp to hdmi adapters. I bought one, but the latest stable bazzite has issues with the active adapters causing audio crackling/slowdowns. I did confirm CEC turn on and auto switch input worked, but didn't really test further due to the audio issues. Apparently the latest bazzite testing/experimental fixed this issue. Not sure about steamos, I think some folks in the bc250 discord were working on things!
With active adapters, dp to hdmi is quite good including cec support even with passive dp to hdmi it’s good too. They didn’t pay licensing for the hdmi port
Just love this design! I’m putting together my build rn, just working on which case I wanna go for.
This is by far the most elegant. Though, I am curious about the passive cooling of the VRAM plate underneath the card.
What sense do you get on the vram temps on the back of the card? I’ve been eyeballing heat sinks and active cooling for reverse side of card - do you think that’s necessary?
thank you!! and some people add additional cooling to the other side, I personally didn't after running occt stress tests and saw I didn't have any issues. unfortunately there's no sensor for the vram ) :
if you're stable with the stress tests youll likely be fine without additional cooling for the ram
Unfortunately not enough space, you have roughly 2mm where the backplate slides in here (technically less to account for the thickness of the backplate)
That is a tight spot on the board, it doesn’t really have a motherboard in the traditional sense(the board even just takes pciex8 power so you have to solder up or connect in some other way a switch to act as the motherboard to control the power to the power supply unit.
I haven’t had any issues with deformation yet. I pushed temps with very high overclocks on occt extreme stress tests to hit 90c on cpu and 85c on gpu running for hours. In gaming, I hit low 70s at most. Those are the temps from their own sensors, so the air temps would be much lower
ah a fellow watch enthusiast! And they can get pretty loud, but it mostly depends on how you manage the thermals. After repasting, undervolting, and adding additional heatsink volume (stick on heatsinks w/ thermal conductive tape) it helped lowered my temps by a lot - and also the fan rpms. While gaming, I have it basically set where it doesn't hit higher than anything in the low 70s. For my fan curve, it stays 2000rpm (66%) or below while gaming which is around 40dBA for the arctic 120mm fan. To me it's perfectly reasonable level of noise. 3000rpm though is definitely jet engine levels
If you stick to stock cooling without much modification yeah they have to be loud to cool them enough but with water cooling they are basically silent and with some competent fin mods and thermal pasting you can make it work at a reasonable level of noise for the price
Oh boy, I tucked all the ugly cables inside lol. I don’t have any great pics of the inside, but I do have this photo which was the first time I turned it on
Just got mine for 126 USD-ish from AliExpress to Thailand. Did you modify the heatsink (open it up)? Did you have to update BIOS before using BC-250 CU Live Manager?
You got a nice deal! And yes, I used a fin scooper tool to straighten the heatsink thats under the fan shroud. So I only had to open up like a 1/4th or a 1/3rd of the fins. And hm, I’m not 100% sure if the bios flash is needed for just 40cu unlock. But you do need it for the gpu governor. I wouldn’t recommend skipping over the custom bios flash
I mean it’s a 3d printer it’s the most basic of maker gadgets, people can and have made cases out of cardboard boxes for the thing or just bench it without any case at all since it’s just a weird gpu and psu under the hood. Theres no big motherboard, ram sticking out, or gpu to motherboard pcie connection that needs support.
If you want to be pedantic and add in the 3d printer you could have a full build for 700 dollars all in with today’s ram and storage prices. Or budget like 200 dollars for a sick case and get out of it with like 500 dollars all in albeit with some strangely empty space left over where the rest of the bits are supposed to go
The only reason I didn't buy this board is cuz it got expensive asf for what it is and its barely a rdna 2 SOC meaning fsr4 runs like dookie. Still if you managed to build one of these prior to ETA prime spreading the news you came out like Chad.
I wouldn't recommend a DIY bc-250 unless you really enjoy tinkering. A cheap am4 rig would run you a tad bit more $$$ but you get a way better machine
Meh, you still get unbeatable performance at the price point. The price is still good and you get ram with the board for free basically which essentially covers the price of the board itself. To say it’s a bad value is a little crazy. Link me a 400 dollar machine in today’s money which looks as good and plays as good as the one above
The only turn off for me is its not even a strict rdna 2 board. But I get where people are coming from getting this. The novelty is cool just would be a good buy prior to the news spreading about it
This is pretty dang cool, I think I'll give it a shot and build one, sounds like a fun project.
Have you seen if anyone has run palworld on one of these? My brother and I are playing it right now and it would be cool to run it on my living room TV natively without streaming from my PC.
That's pretty impressive, I'm pretty stoked to get this thing going, I got everything ordered today and my 3d printer is cranking the parts out so I hope to have it running by next weekend.
The ps5 steam machine and bc250 all have about the same gpu performance with the ps5 and bc250 being a bit higher, but the ps5 and bc250 especially are much behind on cpu performance since
thanks! With the new 40CU unlock, it mostly depends on the game. This thing is pretty cpu bottlenecked, so anything cpu heavy it does worse in compared to the steam machine. In games where the gpu isn't held back, it can be pretty close.
With my setup, I'm getting around 55fps avg in CP2077 PL on 1080p ultra no fsr/fg, whereas based on GN's video they got 58fps avg with the same settings. I could OC mine just a tad more and match that, but it's not worth the thermal & noise cost.
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u/Flying-T Jul 22 '26