Is the new "PS5" single-board computer worth buying?
Published
If you've been anywhere near PC hardware recently, you've probably seen it.
A strange-looking circuit board being advertised as a “PS5 PC”.
It's the AMD BC-250 — and while it isn't actually a PlayStation 5, there is a pretty good reason people keep making the comparison.
So, what's the deal?
The BC-250 was originally built for cryptocurrency mining. Instead of a traditional CPU, motherboard and graphics card setup, it packs the important bits onto one board.
Inside is AMD silicon based on the same family of hardware used in the PS5, with Zen 2 CPU cores and an RDNA 2 GPU.
It comes with 16GB of GDDR6 memory, giving it plenty of bandwidth for gaming.
And things get even more interesting when you look at what the community has managed to unlock.
Originally, the board exposes 6 CPU cores and 24 GPU compute units. With community-developed firmware and software, users have managed to unlock additional resources — with some configurations reaching 8 CPU cores and 40 GPU compute units.
Not bad for a mining board.
But it isn't a normal PC
This is probably the biggest thing to understand before buying one.
The BC-250 doesn't have proper Windows graphics driver support.
Instead, it's designed around Linux, with the community doing a huge amount of work to get the hardware running properly.
Thankfully, Linux gaming has come a long way. Steam and Proton allow thousands of Windows games to run on Linux, making the BC-250 surprisingly well suited to a small Steam Machine-style gaming PC.
But if you want something you can assemble, install Windows on and forget about, this isn't it.
What about performance?
For 1080p gaming, the BC-250 can be surprisingly capable.
Exactly how well it performs depends on the game, drivers and configuration, but continued community development has made the board considerably more interesting than it originally was.
The catch is that you'll need to be comfortable tinkering.
You're also buying a board, not a complete PC. You'll still need storage, cooling, a power supply and some way of mounting it.
Is it worth buying?
This really comes down to price.
If you can find a BC-250 cheaply, it's a seriously interesting option for a DIY Steam Machine or an enthusiast project.
But once you're paying £200+ for the board alone, we'd start looking at what el