Modified PS5 APU board turns into '$100 Steam Machine' with Bazzite

YouTuber ETA Prime has managed to get their hands on an ASRock BC-250 board and has shown off how it can become a cheap Steam Machine alternative if the motherboard can be bought cheaply. Of course, this isn't the first time the board has been highlighted, as the first reports about it trace back to March 2022.

As we reported back then, these boards were being sold by Asrock as a part of the company's "cryptomining rig." These motherboards basically feature a cut-down version of the PS5 APU, with fewer CPU cores and a scaled-back GPU. Even so, as YouTuber Budget-Builds Official recently showcased, it packs a decent amount of gaming power. Now, ETA Prime has showcased what it can do with Bazzite installed.

For context, ETA chose Bazzite instead of official SteamOS because of how relaxed the former is about hardware permissions. This eventually allowed the YouTuber to make necessary tweaks to convert it into the "$100 Steam Machine" alternative.

Among the notable tweaks is VRAM allocation, and ETA Prime has allocated 8 GB out of the 16 GB of unified GDDR6 RAM to the GPU. The YouTuber has also undervolted and overclocked the GPU to 2,000 MHz from 1,500 MHz. This modification apparently delivers a 30% performance gain.

Gaming performance overview

The gaming performance is quite decent for a $100 board. ETA tested five games, and here's how the BC-250 handled them:

• Left 4 Dead 2 ran at over 150 FPS at 1080p with the Max visual preset
• Spider-Man 2 ran with an average of 100 FPS with frame gen turned on at 1080p with the High visual preset
• The Witcher 3 ran at over 60 FPS at the 1080p resolution with the High visual preset
• Forza Horizon 5 ran at between 70-95 FPS at the 1080p resolution with the visual preset set to Medium
• Cyberpunk 2077 ran at a near steady 60 FPS at the 1080p resolution with FSR turned on and the preset set to High

Now, while these are impressive numbers for a $100 board that can be paired with a $10 system fan and a 350 W PSU. However, since the release of these videos on YouTube, the price isn't the same. On eBay, it's currently going for over $150, while on AliExpress, it can cost over $200. Even at the $200 range, this setup may be worth it if 1080p is the target resolution and the tweaks aren't something that's too concerning.