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

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

#52
post #30

$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).

As long as you only want to play games from 2008. :)

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

#53

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

Linus Tech Tips dropped a video on this an hour ago, so the prices are already skyrocketing sadly.

Link: https://youtu.be/lmLh29LE2W4?is=QdRwtQS3xyyPt44E

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

#54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Automatically no 3d printed case is worth $300 because it's not possible to make it good enough quality. A metal and wood case could be worth $300. A good design is worth something, and a good printing job is worth something, and the convenience of a service is worth something, but no amount of good design and quality printing job and service convenience can make a 3d printed case worth more than about $50 before shi…

$300 is too high, but $50 is too low. 3D print sellers aren't doing injection molded parts at scale, nor offshoring the labor. For GP's linked case file; between the filament, the compatible linked switch and fan hardware not purchased by the thousands, and someone paying themself at least minimum wage to print all 46 individual parts and then to partially assemble and package it up nicely (and not counting printer h…

Fair

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

#55
post #17
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was it possible to build it for $60 when you built it though? As for the idle dray, a lot of PC's have Wake On Lan so you can power it on via a special IP packet. I could't get it to work on mine, so i pus an esp32 based power monitoring plug in front of it, and configured the PC to power on directly when powered. When the power monitoring sees the PC sleeping for some time, it cuts the power. I control the plug via…

No. I bought it for about 150 shipping included from Canada to Spain. I reckon I spent about 300$ in total, the most expensive thing being the 1Tb NVMe. I don't have an ethernet cable where the box is, so WoL is not an option for me either. I could have used something similar to your approach (very smart, by the way!) but decided to go ESP aiming for the most console-like experience of just grabbing the controller an…

Would you mind to share here or by DM where you ordered items from? I’m in Spain and would like to build something similar.

Thanks

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

#56
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it's advertised as a case and it works, why is it a scam? I don't own a 3D printer, nor do I know anyone who does. If someone is designing, printing, and selling a useful product, why is that a scam?

Automatically no 3d printed case is worth $300 because it's not possible to make it good enough quality. A metal and wood case could be worth $300. A good design is worth something, and a good printing job is worth something, and the convenience of a service is worth something, but no amount of good design and quality printing job and service convenience can make a 3d printed case worth more than about $50 before shi…

The cases are $60, the "original" price, not $300. Search ebay for BC-250, they're everywhere.

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

#57
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-

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

#59

> 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.

Also no display? What kind of games are we playing

It's got display port.
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