Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

devquasar.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 108 posts

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

#61

Post by serbuvlad »

jolan wrote: post #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 hi…

What's the performance delta? I'm waiting on a SM reservation but I wouldn't mind saving $500+ :)

Is there any "jank" during active use or is this mostly a set up thing?

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

#62

Post by jauntywundrkind »

nsbk wrote: post #12

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 si…

I got one for $130 ~8-10 weeks ago. Whew. Lucky. The Steam Machine I think is part of why these things are now suddenly super in demand but also, yeah, it was a riotously good deal for a long time; thank you for this one good thing crypto.

Just to note there are already over a half dozen esp32 based power controllers. The BT detect is cool. Reddit is at the "Yet Another esp32 controller" phase, has been for a while. (I'm not sure if yours is the first or not to do that, I think I've seen similar but maybe it was just yours I saw.) Bless you esp32. Thank you for actually having the obvious good thing, wireless, available for the world (and why did no one else deign do so?)! https://www.reddit.com/r/BC250Gaming/comments/1uylmj0/yet_an...

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

#63

Post by omgwtfbyobbq »

droidjj wrote: post #53
Atotalnoob wrote: post #51

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

Yuck... They increased a bit ($150+?) after the GPU unlock came out, but they're nuts now.

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

#64

Post by serbuvlad »

mjmvisser wrote: post #60

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.

Cloud gaming is incredible tech, I used GFN for a while and it was incredible.

HOWEVER, I will inevitably want to play weird stuff like "milk inside a bag of milk inside a bag of milk", Pseudoregalia or Civ V Lekmod, which these cloud services do not offer.

The other alternative is "rent a VM" systems like Shadow Gaming, but they're much more expensive, and have much worse latency and streaming tech. Also the questionable practice of putting the credentials for my precious steam account in a random VM in some random data center.

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

#65

Post by Dylan16807 »

Aurornis wrote: post #27
OptionX wrote: post #16

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 b…

> I understand why the AI people want it to help with the latency between the CPU and GPU. The reason AI users like it is because it provides a large amount of higher-bandwidth memory at a price much lower than an equivalent GPU. If you had 16GB of DDR5 in a normal 2-channel consumer board it would not be this fast. This gives 16GB of high speed memory for a very low price compared to a full GPU. The larger unified m…

> The reason AI users like it is because it provides a large amount of higher-bandwidth memory at a price much lower than an equivalent GPU.

But unified memory isn't providing high bandwidth. Apple's specific implementation on pro or higher chips does. There's a zillion desktops and laptops running unified memory at low to medium-low speeds, and the baseline M series is part of that with its 128 bit bus.

Most unified memory devices are handicapped because of the unification, not boosted. Yet people keep praising unified memory.

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

#67

Post by Brian_K_White »

14u2c wrote: post #56
Brian_K_White wrote: post #21

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…

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

Agreed a $60 case, even if 3d printed as long as it's good, is no scam.

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

#69

Post by nsbk »

snadal wrote: post #55
nsbk wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Hello fellow Spaniard! I just checked the prices and they don't make any sense anymore. A few weeks back you could find the board in Aliexpress for 150eur, now it's twice that price or even more. I got mine fom eBay, didn't think of checking Aliexpress at the time. As per the other parts, I got a quite fancy Metalfish PSU [0] (was on sale when I got it), a power button [1] from Ali (not necessarily needed) and an ESP32 [2] for the remote power on. Then a high pressure fan, I went with Arctic P12 Pro [3]. Wifi and BT adapters whatever works on Linux will work.

[0] https://es.aliexpress.com/item/1005009609601844.html

[1] https://es.aliexpress.com/item/1005011847734240.html

[2] https://es.aliexpress.com/item/1005007479144456.html

[3] https://www.amazon.es/dp/B0DJDC74BP?th=1

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

#70

Post by snadal »

nsbk wrote: post #69
snadal wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Hello fellow Spaniard! I just checked the prices and they don't make any sense anymore. A few weeks back you could find the board in Aliexpress for 150eur, now it's twice that price or even more. I got mine fom eBay, didn't think of checking Aliexpress at the time. As per the other parts, I got a quite fancy Metalfish PSU [0] (was on sale when I got it), a power button [1] from Ali (not necessarily needed) and an ESP…

Ouch! Thank you for checking it! It’s always nice to find Spanish people here :D
Post reply on HN