Building a Budget Steam Machine with the ASRock BC-250, a Variant of the PS5 APU

Valve has been teasing a Steam Machine comeback, but a group of enthusiasts have discovered an interesting alternative in repurposing outdated hardware from the wild west of cryptocurrency mining. ASRock’s BC-250 boards first appeared in mining rigs, jammed into server racks to fit as many units as feasible.

Each of these boards is built on a proprietary AMD APU named ‘Ariel’. This is essentially a variant of the AMD chip that powers the PlayStation 5, but instead of eight Zen 2 CPU cores and 36 RDNA 2 compute units, this chip scales things back to six CPU cores with 12 threads and 24 graphics compute units, all running at around 3.5 GHz. No surprises here, given that the console doesn’t require as much power as a typical desktop PC.

Sixteen gigabytes of GDDR6 memory are squeezed into the board, shared by the CPU and GPU; designers can then experiment with the BIOS to see how they split it up, frequently saving a small part, such as 512MB, for general system use while leaving the remainder for graphics. There are no RAM slots since everything is kept compact on a single card-like motherboard.


The ports on these boards are simple but effective: one DisplayPort for TV output, Gigabit Ethernet for networking, and two USB 2.0 and 3.0 ports for peripherals. Storage is handled by an M.2 slot that accepts NVMe SSDs and is supported by PCIe 2.0 x2 lanes or SATA. Power is supplied via an 8-pin PCIe connector, with a maximum power output of around 220 watts.



Now we get to the tough part: cooling. Mining rigs used to rely on rack airflow, but if you’re building one for yourself, you’ll need to figure out a decent heatsink or spend some time 3D printing a custom case to keep everything under control. A solid 350-watt or higher power supply is required, as is adequate active airflow to keep things operating smoothly throughout extended gaming sessions.


Modern Linux distros perform best on the hardware, thanks in large part to the availability of open-source drivers. Bazzite is a gaming variation based on Fedora that has been modified to boot directly into a console-style interface, similar to SteamOS. There are numerous community instructions available to help you upgrade the BIOS and allocate memory for the smoothest operating possible.



Performance-wise, you’re looking at respectable 1080p territory, which means that modern titles will run at medium to high settings, with frame rates frequently exceeding 60 FPS. The 24 compute units on these boards produce performance comparable to a desktop Radeon RX 6600 in many scenarios, which is useful considering that the high-bandwidth GDDR6 memory is almost asking to be exploited.


Prices fluctuate according on demand; early birds were able to get boards for under $100, but with recent interest, prices have risen to anywhere between $150 and $200 on resale sites. Even at those higher prices, you’re getting a great deal for a whole computer core that’s almost ready for gaming.
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