- Joined
- Dec 11, 2024
- Messages
- 213
- Level up in
- 37 posts
- Reaction score
- 473
- Points
- 1,727
- Location
- Santiago, Chile
I'm sure some of you have already heard about this, but I still think in the current PC component price hell we find ourselves in, I want to do the due diligence of making sure more people are aware.
The AMD BC-250 is a board that contains the APU of the PS5. They were made out of leftover chips AMD had lying around, which were sold as cryptocurrency miners, which were obviously replaced with stronger machines eventually.. After that, there was an overabundance of cards that could pretty much do nothing. That was until people figured out how to get drivers working on them. Now, its a genuinely powerful piece of hardware, considering it uses the exact same chip found in the PS5 (albeit with 2 less CPU cores). You can find these for around 150-200 bucks at the moment. They've been slowly creeping up in price and I feel like if you want to get yourself a good Gaming PC without having to pay those RAM prices, this is one of the best options. It comes with the APU and 16GB or GDDR6 RAM. All you need to bring is a Power Supply, an SSD or whatever other storage medium, and a cooling solution of some kind (I recommend the Arctic P12 Pro Fans for the best price to performance)
The performance I've been getting has been great:
Forza Horizon 6 - 1080p High Preset No FSR: 70-80~ FPS
Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade - 1080p Highest In-Game Settings: 90~ FPS
Resident Evil 4 Remake - 1080p High Preset with Textures set to Medium Quality FSR: 80~ FPS
Runs RPCS3, Xenia, and certain emulators for a certain hybrid system without any problems.
Sadly, for price to performance like this, there are some caveats. Firstly, this is kind of a hobbyist project you'll have to undertake. You'll need to do things like flash the BIOS with an updated one made by the community, and you'll probably come by many issues. You also probably have to modify the metal fins to get proper cooling. This isn't a device that'll be plug and play, you're going to have to troubleshoot. Thankfully there's a great community that (in my experience) are very friendly and will help you out with any issues you might face. Second, this is a Linux only device. Due to the fact that there is no official drivers for this device, you have to use the Open Source Mesa drivers, which are Linux only. There has been some work on getting Windows running, but its still in really early stages. If you play a lot of Fortnite, or Valorant, or Marathon, or Call of Duty, or any game that won't run on Linux, then this isn't for you. (If you're wondering if the game you play runs on Linux, go to ProtonDB. They have info on how something runs on Linux using Valve's Proton Transaltion Layer) Lastly, there are some weird limitations to the board. Despite having the physical hardware, there is no hardware video encoding, mainly due to Sony's drivers for the hardware being closed source and unavailable to anyone. The 16GB of RAM has to be split between the System and the Graphics, so you'll most likely find yourself fiddling with the BIOS settings if you're planning on playing any game that requires a lot of VRAM. There's only DisplayPort as output, and apparently DP to HDMI adapters have been hit and miss on this device. Some games that require Mesh Shaders, such as Final Fantasy VII Rebirth and Alan Wake 2, will straight up not work, due to the hardware not being able to handle mesh shaders.
I wanted to go through the cons of the device just to be thorough and to make sure if any of the things I mentioned are dealbreakers, then you can avoid. But if you're someone like me, then you can live with some of these limitations no problem. And the power you're getting at this price is utterly insane. Right now, its the most affordable gaming system you can get, and for its price, its utterly stellar. There's some fantastic documentation that I'll link to, and I hope this post made you interested in this hardware. I've been loving mine so far, and I want others to be able to get a good PC right now.
I'm an idiot and forgot to link the docs.
https://elektricm.github.io/amd-bc250-docs/
The AMD BC-250 is a board that contains the APU of the PS5. They were made out of leftover chips AMD had lying around, which were sold as cryptocurrency miners, which were obviously replaced with stronger machines eventually.. After that, there was an overabundance of cards that could pretty much do nothing. That was until people figured out how to get drivers working on them. Now, its a genuinely powerful piece of hardware, considering it uses the exact same chip found in the PS5 (albeit with 2 less CPU cores). You can find these for around 150-200 bucks at the moment. They've been slowly creeping up in price and I feel like if you want to get yourself a good Gaming PC without having to pay those RAM prices, this is one of the best options. It comes with the APU and 16GB or GDDR6 RAM. All you need to bring is a Power Supply, an SSD or whatever other storage medium, and a cooling solution of some kind (I recommend the Arctic P12 Pro Fans for the best price to performance)
The performance I've been getting has been great:
Forza Horizon 6 - 1080p High Preset No FSR: 70-80~ FPS
Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade - 1080p Highest In-Game Settings: 90~ FPS
Resident Evil 4 Remake - 1080p High Preset with Textures set to Medium Quality FSR: 80~ FPS
Runs RPCS3, Xenia, and certain emulators for a certain hybrid system without any problems.
Sadly, for price to performance like this, there are some caveats. Firstly, this is kind of a hobbyist project you'll have to undertake. You'll need to do things like flash the BIOS with an updated one made by the community, and you'll probably come by many issues. You also probably have to modify the metal fins to get proper cooling. This isn't a device that'll be plug and play, you're going to have to troubleshoot. Thankfully there's a great community that (in my experience) are very friendly and will help you out with any issues you might face. Second, this is a Linux only device. Due to the fact that there is no official drivers for this device, you have to use the Open Source Mesa drivers, which are Linux only. There has been some work on getting Windows running, but its still in really early stages. If you play a lot of Fortnite, or Valorant, or Marathon, or Call of Duty, or any game that won't run on Linux, then this isn't for you. (If you're wondering if the game you play runs on Linux, go to ProtonDB. They have info on how something runs on Linux using Valve's Proton Transaltion Layer) Lastly, there are some weird limitations to the board. Despite having the physical hardware, there is no hardware video encoding, mainly due to Sony's drivers for the hardware being closed source and unavailable to anyone. The 16GB of RAM has to be split between the System and the Graphics, so you'll most likely find yourself fiddling with the BIOS settings if you're planning on playing any game that requires a lot of VRAM. There's only DisplayPort as output, and apparently DP to HDMI adapters have been hit and miss on this device. Some games that require Mesh Shaders, such as Final Fantasy VII Rebirth and Alan Wake 2, will straight up not work, due to the hardware not being able to handle mesh shaders.
I wanted to go through the cons of the device just to be thorough and to make sure if any of the things I mentioned are dealbreakers, then you can avoid. But if you're someone like me, then you can live with some of these limitations no problem. And the power you're getting at this price is utterly insane. Right now, its the most affordable gaming system you can get, and for its price, its utterly stellar. There's some fantastic documentation that I'll link to, and I hope this post made you interested in this hardware. I've been loving mine so far, and I want others to be able to get a good PC right now.
Post automatically merged:
I'm an idiot and forgot to link the docs.
https://elektricm.github.io/amd-bc250-docs/
