ASRock BC-250: Building the Budget Steam Machine

Posted by plug_world 1 day ago

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Comments

Comment by altairprime 1 day ago

The fan comparisons are interesting. Seems like CFM is the 'peak performance' limiter here, and the P12 specializes in dumping way more RPM/CFM/dBa than the Noctua. The case fan I have, Silent Wings Pro 4, in 120mm goes up to 80CFM with even more dBa at max. There are many more!

https://www.cybenetics.com/evaluations/fans/175/

https://www.cybenetics.com/evaluations/fans/4/

https://www.cybenetics.com/evaluations/fans/101/

Note that if you alter the 3d case print to wedge a 120mm x 30mm fan into it, as opposed to Noctua's 120mm x 25mm, then you can fit the Phanteks T30-120 which hits 105CFM at 43.6dBa, beating the P12 by a solid +30CFM for +4dBa. Its fan noise is described as 'pleasant white noise', as opposed to the jet engine crying baby hell whine that anyone who's booted an HP ProLiant can describe:

> the Arctics actually left HDD temps 1˚C worse than the Phanteks when run at the same speed (around 2,200 RPM) and were significantly louder even at that speed. It wasn't just volume, but their pitch was similar to the 80mm server fans I had tried previously - the kind of sound that echoes throughout my house. By comparison, the Phanteks sound like pleasant white noise, not purely the sound of whooshing but very much like it - and they're virtually silent when run closer to 1500 RPM.

— https://old.reddit.com/r/homelab/comments/1jpl1g0/quieting_a...

Comment by mk_stjames 1 day ago

The prices of these boards have gone up it seems since the knowledge on how to bring them up and effectively utilize them has proliferated.

After the crypto miners dumped them (that was, what, 2 years ago?), I saw one of the entire rack systems on eBay- I think they held 12 of these in one rack on a common backplane - for $800. (or maybe less?)

That's $66 per BC-250.

Comment by nsbk 1 day ago

I checked eBay and they are now around 200 usd and up. All the sellers located in the US and Canada, so a bit more involved for hackers looking into building one from Europe. I still pulled the trigger on one, not sure I will use it much but I'm definitely gonna have a lot of fun building it!

Comment by PowerElectronix 1 day ago

Support for the board is also way better than before. Now you can customize RAM assigned to cpu/gpu, idle power, in some cases unlock cores, distros work out of the box, etc.

And the alternative of getting a gpu, cpu, ram, storage is like 5 times as expensive.

Comment by latchkey 1 day ago

You're welcome. I was the one who uploaded the firmware mods.

The CU's is genius though, I didn't know about that.

Comment by PowerElectronix 20 hours ago

Well, thank you very much, then!

Comment by kersny 1 day ago

I bought a full rack for $240 (free shipping) Thanksgiving day 2024 - got lucky!

Comment by ValdikSS 21 hours ago

Right now the same situation happens with CMP 170HX.

These GPUs physically have 64GB RAM but locked to 8GB RAM. You can unlock all 64GB RAM with a patched driver.

They used to cost $200-250 but now cost $700+.

Comment by haunter 1 day ago

Yeah, too expensive now for what it is

Comment by latchkey 1 day ago

It was a box of 12 and 6 shared one of 2 PSUs in the box. Each board was effectively an independent "server".

Comment by saidinesh5 1 day ago

This is a really good card that keeps on getting better.

After my steam deck battery puffed up and my RX580 became too old to play any modern games, I had two choices:

1. Upgrade to a new GPU - this was costing me $300 at the very least for a 3 year old card

2. Hope to get a steam machine - but the crazy queue and the $1000 price tag really soured me on this

3. Get a bc-250 for $150 and make do for a year or two before upgrading.

I'm so glad I went with this option. I just used my old atx power supply and old PC case. Everything almost just works. It consumes lot less power than my previous gaming PC. It's a lot more silent. Some times there's a crash or two. I'm waiting to upgrade the power connector before unlocking it's full potential (40 compute units, and the two extra cores). So far I've finished playing Spider-Man 2, Hogwarts legacy, now playing 007 first light.

Comment by ThePowerOfFuet 1 day ago

Why not just replace the battery in your Steam Deck?

Comment by saidinesh5 1 day ago

I intend to.

They don't sell steam deck/it's parts where I live. So the next time people visit me from far away, they'd have to bring one along.

That being said, steam deck isn't as powerful to play some of the games like Spider-Man 2. The stuttering is quite high on that.

Comment by stavros 1 day ago

Seriously, please don't throw away perfectly functioning hardware just to avoid unscrewing a few screws.

Comment by embedding-shape 1 day ago

Cries in my ongoing Apple Watch Series 6 battery replacement

Seriously, how close can you even put a screen and a metal casing?! Incredibly tiny gap that is impossible to jimmy open. I'm on day 3 trying to get this bastard open now...

Comment by infofarmer 1 day ago

Incidentally, just replaced batteries in my Apple Watch S6, MBP M1 2020, and iPhone 12 Pro Max during a one-day visit to Shenzhen. A dude in Huaqiangbei did everything in two hours for a small fraction of what Apple would charge.

ECG stopped working reliably after the battery replacement, but otherwise the watch should be good for another few years (stuck on watchOS 26.x)

Comment by embedding-shape 1 day ago

> A dude in Huaqiangbei did everything in two hours for a small fraction of what Apple would charge.

I much prefer my approach of ordering hundreds worth of new equipment first just to change the battery on my wife's watch, over the course of maybe one-two weeks in total (pending I actually manage to open it, new tool for opening just arrived today!), which may or may not end up with me breaking the screen. Well, or breaking ECG it sounds like, the cables inside seem brittle indeed.

Comment by stavros 1 day ago

Yeah, it's a tragedy that we throw devices away because the battery has a short expiration date :/

At least I guess watches are on the more understandable end of the "hard to repair" continuum.

Comment by 2dvisio 1 day ago

Looking at you Withings. My perfectly able and capable Steel HR needs to be binned and repurchased (quite hefty price too) after 8yrs of good use as now the battery lasts only 3 days. Tried to contact them to swap the battery (at a cost) they suggested the only option is the bin... 8yrs is definitely more than an Apple Watch probably, but way less than the Zenith my father wore for more than 30 years.

Comment by embedding-shape 1 day ago

Truly does suck, imagine the waste... To be fair to the average person though, we're a far away from when you could just pop open the back casing of the phone and switch the battery with your bare hands, no wonder people are afraid of doing these things themselves.

I'm fearing the day my waterproof bone conduction headphones have poor battery health, changing the battery on that will be a whole 'nother challenge.

Comment by stavros 1 day ago

Yeah, anything waterproof is going to be a problem. I'm curious to see how the new EU laws on battery replacement deal with this.

Comment by bzzzt 4 hours ago

The EU battery replacement laws do not apply to waterproof devices.

Comment by Joel_Mckay 1 day ago

Nice, the bc-240 is around a GTX 1660 Ti GPU in performance, and some AAA RT eye candy games are less fun anyway... but many still work... so the VRAM requirements are not as big of an issue.

People are figuring out what is playable on the platform, and it is a growing list:

https://elektricm.github.io/amd-bc250-docs/gaming/compatibil...

I was impressed Cyberpunk 2077 is on the list. ymmv =3

Comment by pipes 1 day ago

I have a 1660 super and I believe it is only a little less powerful than the ti. It definitely is not as powerful as a ps5. Though the original post is saying the bc250 is. I'm not sure which is correct!

Comment by Joel_Mckay 1 day ago

It is a silicon lottery if the hidden BC-240 cores are stable when unlocked.

Almost ps5 level, but not quite... still a lot cheaper than a GPU these days, and the discounted racks came with NVMe ssd on each BC-240 as well. =3

Comment by pipes 8 hours ago

I see thanks :)

Comment by ThatPlayer 1 day ago

Recent development has 2 / 8 of the CPU cores able to be unlocked too. Originally shipped with 6 CPU cores enabled.

Comment by Sayrus 1 day ago

> The script is hardcoded to read the stress binary at /usr/bin/stress since it doesn’t exist, the program errors out. To fix this, edit stress_helper.py.

Script is good, but the directory is missing from PATH. The edited scripts hardcodes the path to the user's home. Earlier in the article, the binary was copied to ~/.local/bin/stress so the given code suggestion should not work either.

Comment by doctorpangloss 1 day ago

From the article:

> MESSA_SHADER_CACHE_MAX_SIZE

MESSA indeed.

Comment by voxadam 1 day ago

At least we can be reasonably confident an LLM didn't write the article.

Comment by Joel_Mckay 1 day ago

Chat bots now inject random typos on purpose to seem more believable.

Also, test phrases for paradox resolution are manually hard coded to hide the LLM blind spots for average users.

People would also troll on old chat platforms, but now they have Billions in loan capital to fund the irritating behavior. =3

Comment by fatuna 1 day ago

Any fps measurements you can share? I'm also interested if you see a significant difference between CachyOS and Bazzite.

Comment by jimmydoe 1 day ago

wondering how is idle power after optimization

Comment by lucius_verus 1 day ago

According to the docs, with a governor installed you go from 85-105W at idle to 65-85W.

Reference: https://elektricm.github.io/amd-bc250-docs/system/governor/

Comment by plug_world 1 day ago

Unfortunately I don't have the tools to measure the power draw directly from the outlet.

But the software reports 30-45W power draw when the systems at max load. However lower-end titles and idle draw hovers between 10W-20W.

Comment by jauntywundrkind 1 day ago

I would absolutely not buy assuming this. People used to work hard to get 70W at the socket idle. Things have gotten better, much better, but at the socket those sound like miracle numbers.

Comment by dannyw 1 day ago

Those absolutely are miracle numbers and don’t seem remotely accurate. What does the wall report?

I remember people were saying this IDLES at like 80w wall, I’m sure it’s been optimised, but 35w at load is super unlikely

Comment by kelvinjps10 1 day ago

What case can I buy if I don’t have a 3D printer?

Comment by tylerflick 1 day ago

You can buy most ATX (or derivative) cases and have an adapter bracket printed from services like JLPCB. Make sure the material is ABS or another high temperature plastic to resist heat warp.

Comment by undersuit 1 day ago

You can find 3d printed cases on eBay for $50. The BC-250 slides into one end and a fan goes in a funnel end, and boom, functional if a little odd in shape.

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Comment by nsxwolf 1 day ago

How well does HDMI CEC work on this?

Comment by plug_world 1 day ago

If you get the right adapter, I've seen others get HDMI CEC working.

However, quality of life features like sleep/hibernate don't work at all on this system. I've also seen people use an ESP32 to power on the system with a bluetooth controller which is pretty neat especially if you combined that with CEC.

Comment by aleksejs 1 day ago

I just added CEC to mine today by soldering some wires to my DP-to-HDMI adapter and having Claude write some firmware to run on a Pi Pico to inject the CEC messages at the right time.

It's not the most elegant solution but felt in the spirit of the whole BC-250 experience.

Comment by stavros 1 day ago

This is why the Steam Machine is worth its money (or, well, what it would have cost if RAM hadn't gone to the sky). Getting 90% of the nice-to-haves costs $200, but getting 100% costs $1000.

"It just works" is expensive.

Comment by ThatPlayer 1 day ago

It has no HDMI port. Some DP > HDMI adapters do CEC.

Comment by falcojr 1 day ago

Not at all

Comment by latchkey 1 day ago

I ran 20,000 of these boards for an eth mining operation. The interesting thing here is that this was right before AI happened the way it has and we couldn't find anything profitable for these after eth switched to PoS. Company shut down and everything was probably sold for pennies on the dollar (I have no idea). Now, these things are actually worth something and people are doing all sorts of wild things with them. Heck, I had no idea there were locked off CU's and we had all the inside information and contacts!

I'm not saying that mining was a great industry or anything, I'm glad that eth switched to the much lower power usage option. I wish bitcoin would too. But, when people talk about the e-waste of the crypto mining industry... remember this one chip. One mans trash, is anothers treasure...

Comment by ThePowerOfFuet 1 day ago

This is the finest advertisement for buying a genuine Steam Machine that I have ever seen.

Comment by bigyabai 1 day ago

You can put SteamOS on any hardware. Your old gaming desktop, a mini PC, weird crypto mining hardware - it's all a testement to how flexible Proton is.

This project is pretty involved, but by no means is it the easiest alternative.