Gamers have found a novel way to build their own custom Steam Machines: Repurposed crypto-mining hardware based on the PS5 APU. The BC-250 is a slightly cut-down PS5 APU, with six Zen 2 cores (two of the original eight are disabled), and a 24 CU RDNA 2 graphics chip (16 of the original 40 are disabled), 16GB of shared GDDR5 memory, and support for a single NVMe PCIe 2 SSD. It has a DisplayPort 1.4 out , Gigabit Ethernet, and even a few USB-A ports for peripherals. Gamers have been hooking them up to old SSDs and installing Linux on them, and the performance is pretty solid. Not like a Steam Machine out of the box, but very playable across a range of games at 1080p. Modders have been able to unlock the two additional CPU cores, bringing the total to eight and massively improving overall performance. They've also managed to get the GPU's full 40 CUs working, leading to a big increase in gaming performance. Learn more at PCMag. #steammachine #ps5 #apu #hardware #gaming