Special PlayStation 5 APU-turned cryptominig card runs Bazzite
Apparently it is easier to set up than expected, reports Budget-Builds Official.
Source: Budget-Builds Official
The BC250 graphics card is something some of you had no idea even existed. Technically, this is not a graphics card but a full board with CPU, GPU, and even memory that may work as a full PC, technically at least.
If we go back to 2021, the crypto mining boom was eating up almost anything with a GPU. That included custom boards based on console hardware, such as AMD’s BC-250 designed for PlayStation 5-class mining systems. Those farms are now being torn down, and their parts are showing up on eBay and AliExpress for around $100–120, which is how the YouTube channel Budget-Builds Official ended up with a “PS5 graphics card” shipped from China and decided to turn it into a Linux gaming PC.
Source: EBay/Aliexpress
Despite the listing calling it a graphics card, the BC-250 is closer to a compact server board. It has its own power button, USB 2.0 and USB 3.0 ports, DisplayPort output, Ethernet, an 8-pin PCIe power socket, plus various fan and front-panel headers. There is no PCIe edge connector, so the board is meant to sit in a rack or custom chassis and run standalone. Units now on sale are ex-mining hardware, sold used, often as bare boards wrapped in bubble wrap with no cooler, no documentation, and no accessories.
At the center sits the AMD BC250 APU . It is a cut-down version of the PS5 chip with six Zen 2 cores and twelve threads at around 3.5 GHz, paired with an RDNA 2 GPU with 24 compute units (remember the PS5 chip has 36). Memory is console-style too: 16 GB of GDDR6 on a shared bus, split by firmware into 8 GB for system use and 8 GB as VRAM. That puts raw GPU specs somewhere in the ballpark of a Radeon RX 6500 XT to RX 6600-class device, while the CPU side is close to a slightly trimmed PS5.
Source: Budget-Builds Official
Getting the board to boot did not require much more than a 1,000 W ATX power supply, a CMOS battery, an SSD, and a fan taped onto the passive heatsink. Keep in mind its easy to find 3D print models that can make a proper air tunned for this passive cooler design.
Gaming performance is where the board stops being just a curiosity. In GTA V Enhanced Edition at 1440p with high settings, the BC-250 delivered around 65 FPS without ray tracing, and around 25–30 FPS with ray tracing enabled (yes it does support it). Cyberpunk 2077 at 1080p with a mix of medium and high settings sat in the low 40 FPS range. Counter-Strike 2 at 1440p with competitive settings hovered around 130 FPS in the built-in test, while Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord at 1080p and very high settings hit close to 80 FPS. Hitman 3 and Fallout 4 were also playable with high or ultra presets. For roughly $120 plus storage and cooling, the board behaves like a budget gaming PC built around mid-range RDNA 2.
Source: Budget-Builds Official
The strange memory configuration does cause problems. Because all RAM is GDDR6 and split 8/8 between system and GPU, RAM-heavy titles such as Oblivion Remastered triggered crashes once usage climbed too high. Stability improved once swap space was added on the SSD, but some games still ran into limits. The creator also ran into recurring Wi-Fi driver issues on this Linux setup, and the board runs hot under load, which is not a surprise for hardware designed to sit in a dense mining rig with dedicated cooling.
When I see such console-like hardware, I always think that Microsoft and Sony should at some point start offering full Linux/Windows support to let gamers use their old consoles for something else, but maybe that wouldn’t be as interesting as putting everything back together yourself?
Source via NotebookCheck :
