AMD BC-250 Mining Card/GPU

[Dtaylor2525]

Howdy Friends,  

I've searched around the internet for a while now and realized that I have some somewhat cool things that don't seem to have any real info online past a couple of articles: 

https://videocardz.net/amd-bc-250-mining-card

https://www.techspot.com/news/93980-14800-asrock-mining-rig-powered-12-playstation-5.html

 

I have on hand 120 of these AMD BC-250 Mining Cards as part of 10x AsRock mining rigs that were purchased ~18 months ago. Currently I run Ubuntu Linux 20.02 LTS w/Awesome miner installed on each card via a Sandisk 32GB usb. Mining wise they are on a profit switching setup through our custom AwesomeMiner config. 

As everyone can see, they draw roughly 80-100w depending on temperature mostly with the stock clocks. on ETC they run around the 48-51MH/s mark, though through minor tuning I have been able to hold around 55-57Mh/s without any noticeable temperature or power increase.

 

Here are the readouts of the cards from my controller: 

Core clock: 1145Mhz

Memory clock: 450Mhz

Core(s) 12/24

8GB Memory 

 

  

More pictures: https://photos.google.com/u/1/share/AF1QipMVlxImOsVOb18QG45vbgjZ1nplOY7Jv0DH2hZwIHgHoVaxOOLREKvvEHFPv-BMAQ?key=Y1NOaWYyMXptRGJVN2ZwdWVQeVE5Ny1STXE1Z0Rn

(will update with significantly better photos soon)

 

I know its not a ton of info on the cards, I'm just being lazy and not entirely sure what Is and isn't worth posting about them. I'm happy to field questions/give more photos as people wish. 

[Bitter]

Never heard of those, is that like a single board computer?

[Dtaylor2525]

31 minutes ago, Bitter said:

Never heard of those, is that like a single board computer?

Yeah, you can think of them as a blade design commonly seen in enterprise solutions.  

[MarcWolfe]

You the same guy trying to sell them for $500 each on eBay?

[MarcWolfe]

Yeah, this guy only made the post as an ad. he doesn't know what he's selling beyond "it's a computer; you can mine on computers".

[Dtaylor252]

On 11/22/2023 at 12:37 AM, MarcWolfe said:

Yeah, this guy only made the post as an ad. he doesn't know what he's selling beyond "it's a computer; you can mine on computers".

To answer your question, yes I do have them on Ebay. However this post was not intended to be an ad. I am aware of what I have and the intricacies of the Card/Systems. If you have questions about the cards I'm happy to explain what I know to the best of my ability, however just trying to call me out online for selling of some of the hardware I'm no longer using feels like a waste of time. Yes the price at 500 a card is expensive however when they came out I paid nearly 1800 per card. Notably they were never offered individually so that means I had to pay for 12 cards at a time + the enclosure (all as a bundle but you get the point) 

 

As for the comment "it's a computer; you can mine on computers", These are specifically manufactured to be crypto mining cards. The intention was always to mine crypto currency with them. I find them interesting and wanted to share because unlike something such as a P104/106 card, you can actually use these without any real roadblocks as a normal computer/server/whatever you feel like. 

 

Sorry this post upset you, let me know if you have any questions on the cards!

[MarcWolfe]

On 12/17/2023 at 8:55 PM, Dtaylor252 said:

Yes the price at 500 a card is expensive however when they came out I paid nearly 1800 per card.

And? The computer I'm running now would have cost something like $12,000 when new; I spent about $400. 

These aren't collector items that hold value. And mining is shit now; that changes the 'market value'.

On 12/17/2023 at 8:55 PM, Dtaylor252 said:

you can actually use these without any real roadblocks as a normal computer/server/whatever you feel like. 

You dispute my point then confirm it. 

Damn ChatGPT level response.

[MarcWolfe]

By the way, I'm the person who offered to review them. 

I'd use it for a while, then make a video explaining any hassles I had with it. That would make them easier to sell, and avoid disappointed customers returning them thinking they might be better; or people who are unsure they'll work, will know they work, as far as compatabillity, assuming you don't ship any busted units. My experience with seller that sound like ChatGPT are... well, they tend to be deceptive garbage merchants, then I need to make a return.

[Dtaylor252]

On 12/28/2023 at 10:47 PM, MarcWolfe said:

By the way, I'm the person who offered to review them. 

I'd use it for a while, then make a video explaining any hassles I had with it. That would make them easier to sell, and avoid disappointed customers returning them thinking they might be better; or people who are unsure they'll work, will know they work, as far as compatabillity, assuming you don't ship any busted units. My experience with seller that sound like ChatGPT are... well, they tend to be deceptive garbage merchants, then I need to make a return.

I'll skip the above responses as there's a disconnect i'm not sure how to get around. as for your Ebay message, I found it rather condescending 

 

"What makes these worth $500? Let me guess, you saw it as a money making oppurtunity and had to go for it, even though mining is basically dead now, and there's no info on these things.Is the only reason for your Linus tech Tips forum post for advertising? Hoping Linus would buy it like he has for other things then a bunch would sell quick?Give me one for dirt cheap and I'll make sure people know as much as possible.I've certainly help sales of the Instinct MI25.Before my video, there' was one reddit post, and a bunch of launch day ad style benchmarks."

 

I found no use in responding back then as I just threw the listing up to see if there was any interest. Funny enough in the past month I've sold 5 at my asking price. Notably including someone from the LTT staff, as well as another Youtuber with over 100k subs. Once/if videos come out about my cards and the support in getting them working, please let me know how I am a "deceptive garbage merchant".

 

I wasn't looking to sell these at trickery for people to buy bad mining equipment. It was more thought of as a Collectors Item (they can be considered that based off the little amount of them out there), yes still expensive for that use case. However the fun of open markets is that if these cards were not worth my ask, people would not buy. No one was forcing anyone to click my Ebay posting outside their own free will. 

[MarcWolfe]

Yeah yeah, sell things that only make sense to people that make their money back off ad money. What a market.

[Bitter]

It looks interesting but only as a curiosity to me and not worth the asking price. I'd say like $100 to mess around with it if it had the supporting hardware and stuff to run it in a tiny case or something.

[bitemyshorts]

Hey as one of the few people you speak of that have these. I have some questions for you I'd hope you would be willing to answer for me.

 

I am running Ubuntu Server 20.04 LTS and using the AMD 21.50.50000-1 drivers.

 

1. What drivers are you using?

2. Are you using Awesome Miner on Ubuntu or are you using the Linux Agent and monitoring remotely. (when I try to use the linux agent it causes the card to kill all network connections until reboot)

3. Would you be willing to provide your "Custom Awesome Miner Config"

4. What are your tuning settings

 

Seems like the other people who have bought these cards are stingy with the information they have on them. If anyone has any questions for me other than some rhetorical bs feel free to ask (though I only signed up to ask these questions so if they get answered I will likely abandon this account)

[MarcWolfe]

Seen one for sale for $60 recently.

[Bitter]

For $60 it could be fun to play with and see what else it could be used for. Supposedly getting Linux running with 3D acceleration is a CHORE and Windows 11 thinks it's an HP laptop for some reason but does install and run but with only partial 3D acceleration. Some games that do run have texture glitches like there's a possible memory timing/clock issue which would jive if the memory was tweaked at the BIOS level for mining specifically. You'd need to get a GPU BIOS dump from a PS5 to fix that probably. It sounds like way too much work for way too little gain. If these were plug n play as a blade form factor PC then I would be interested.

[MarcWolfe]

1 hour ago, Bitter said:

was tweaked at the BIOS level for mining specifically

I bet. 

And I bet Sony has its own BIOS tweaks.

[realderyn]

On 9/23/2024 at 9:27 PM, Bitter said:

For $60 it could be fun to play with and see what else it could be used for. Supposedly getting Linux running with 3D acceleration is a CHORE and Windows 11 thinks it's an HP laptop for some reason but does install and run but with only partial 3D acceleration. Some games that do run have texture glitches like there's a possible memory timing/clock issue which would jive if the memory was tweaked at the BIOS level for mining specifically. You'd need to get a GPU BIOS dump from a PS5 to fix that probably. It sounds like way too much work for way too little gain. If these were plug n play as a blade form factor PC then I would be interested.

I can see that you saw the reddit threads; those aren't exactly up to date anymore. Also, 3d acceleration never worked with windows. It is fully working with linux now as far as I can tell; I'm typing from it right now. The setup is super jank but once everything is setup it actually works pretty well, there's a launch argument you have to turn on in steam after you install the drivers (RADV_DEBUG=nocompute %command%) that fixes the graphical issues.

 

(the hair looks bad in the picture because AA was off, I was messing with the in game graphics settings)

[Bitter]

4 hours ago, realderyn said:

I can see that you saw the reddit threads; those aren't exactly up to date anymore. Also, 3d acceleration never worked with windows. It is fully working with linux now as far as I can tell; I'm typing from it right now. The setup is super jank but once everything is setup it actually works pretty well, there's a launch argument you have to turn on in steam after you install the drivers (RADV_DEBUG=nocompute %command%) that fixes the graphical issues.

 

(the hair looks bad in the picture because AA was off, I was messing with the in game graphics settings)

I'm an experienced Linux user but not an experienced Linux troubleshooter, how hard do you think it would be if I'm expecting to just slap a USB in it and install Ubuntu would this be? Cause that's pretty much my level of commitment to something like that. I hate fixing software.

[realderyn]

2 hours ago, Bitter said:

I'm an experienced Linux user but not an experienced Linux troubleshooter, how hard do you think it would be if I'm expecting to just slap a USB in it and install Ubuntu would this be? Cause that's pretty much my level of commitment to something like that. I hate fixing software.

I haven't used ubuntu on it at all, I've only gotten things working in nobara, I've actually written up a guide on how to get it working in that distro though. I've only had luck getting it working in distros based on fedora personally but some people have gotten it working in arch with custom kernel patches

[realderyn]

3 hours ago, Bitter said:

I'm an experienced Linux user but not an experienced Linux troubleshooter, how hard do you think it would be if I'm expecting to just slap a USB in it and install Ubuntu would this be? Cause that's pretty much my level of commitment to something like that. I hate fixing software.

In terms of how hard things will be, it shouldn't be too hard now but it's definitely not as simple as a normal linux install

[Bitter]

Maybe when they're $30 then. I'm only familiar with Debian based Linux and just kind of stay in that corner because most times things sort of just work, and work easily enough and well enough for what I need.

[realderyn]

On 10/15/2024 at 9:35 PM, Bitter said:

Maybe when they're $30 then. I'm only familiar with Debian based Linux and just kind of stay in that corner because most times things sort of just work, and work easily enough and well enough for what I need.

The only thing is now that they work for gaming the price might end up going up rather than down. I'm planning on buying a few and making steam machines out of them