In brief: Remember the BC-250, the cryptomining compute board that uses PlayStation 5 APUs? A YouTube channel has got its hands on one to test its gaming abilities. Surprisingly, the $120 purchase is able to run modern titles, including Cyberpunk 2077.
The BC-250 was famous for its use of a cut-down version of the APU found in the PlayStation 5. It has six out of the eight Zen 2 CPU cores enabled, and there's 16 GB of GDDR6 memory shared between the CPU and Radeon GPU – there is no typical system DDR memory in many configurations.
There were lots of headlines when 12 BC-250s appeared in a $14,800 Asrock mining rig in 2022, meaning each one would have been worth around $1,233. Now, they can be found in China for around $120.
YouTube channel Budget-Builds Official managed to acquire a BC-250. It was sold as "the PS5 graphics card." However, it comes with features you'd normally expect to see on a desktop motherboard, including a power button, USB 2.0 and 3.0 ports, Ethernet, and fan and front-panel headers. There's also a DisplayPort output and 8-pin PCIe power connector.
To power the board, the channel used a standard 1,000W ATX power supply, an SSD, peripherals, a monitor, a CMOS battery, and a 120mm fan taped to the heatsink.
After it booted into BIOS and the user loaded Linux, it was time for some testing. 3DMark's Time Spy and Fire Strike didn't work, which is believed to be due to Linux driver issues.
Running Half-Life 2 proved more successful with Valve's classic able to reach 290 FPS at 70 degrees. There were some rendering issues, but these were later addressed by using a different version of Proton.
Some other tested games included GTA V Enhanced Edition, which managed an average of 65 FPS at 1440p resolution with high settings. It could even pump out 25 – 30 FPS with ray tracing enabled.
The low-spec-friendly Counter-Strike 2 was able to reach an average of 130 FPS at 1440p. At 1080p, Hitman 3 managed 47 FPS, Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord came close to 80 FPS at very high settings, and the demanding Cyberpunk 2077 hit 42 FPS at high settings.
There were obviously plenty of issues with this setup, especially with RAM-intensive games like Oblivion Remastered or anything with anti-cheat (not supported on Linux). There were plenty of Wi-Fi problems, too. But many of the gaming benchmarks were impressive, especially when you consider this was a $120 purchase.