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Build it yourself · B60 reference

Build it your way

You're not locked to
one parts list.

The B60 build works across a known set of components. Here's the exact build the guide validates — plus vetted swaps per category for budget or availability, and the honest tradeoff for each.

Why a mini-PC, not a tower

Because the box has two jobs, and they shouldn’t fight over the same silicon. The Ryzen 9 mini-PC is a genuinely powerful everyday computer — the spreadsheets, the email, the books, the browser, all the normal small-business work runs there, on its own cores and its own graphics. The Arc B60 rides alongside on its own dock with its own power supply, and it belongs to Boone: 24 GB of VRAM running a 30B-class brain, full-time, without borrowing from your workday. A normal tower makes you choose — one pile of silicon doing AI or doing your work, sharing heat, power, and attention. This shape is really two machines wearing one job, built so neither waits on the other.

It fails gracefully, too: unplug the dock and the mini-PC is still a first-rate office PC — and you can upgrade the GPU later without replacing your computer. And it’s honest money: the dedicated AI boxes in this class run $4,000–4,700 and do only the AI half; this build lands around $1,500–1,800 in parts and replaces your aging tower while it runs the AI. Who it’s for, plainly: the shop that needs a new computer anyway and wants local AI in the same purchase — a real workstation for the everyday, with a full-time AI riding shotgun.

The recommended build

The tested reference — the exact configuration the guide walks end to end.

A 30B-class local-AI workstation — ~31 tok/s measured on a 35B MoE (short context), fully GPU-offloaded, air-gap capable.

  • OCuLink AMD mini-PC — the host
  • Intel Arc Pro B60 24GB — the GPU that hits the 35B-MoE target
  • DEG1 open-air eGPU dock — runs the card off its own PSU
  • 650W 80+ Gold, fully modular ATX PSU — powers the dock
  • Short OCuLink cable — plus an M.2 adapter if your host has no native port

Figure roughly $1,500–1,800 to build (June 2026), depending on host and GPU choice.

Swaps that make sense

One pick, one alternative, one tradeoff — per component.

HostTested pick
Minisforum UM890 Pro

Alternative: GMKtec K11 — same Ryzen chip and OCuLink port. Must be OCuLink (PCIe 4.0 ×4). USB4-only mini-PCs can work, but they're slower and fussier — not recommended.

GPUTested pick
Intel Arc Pro B60 24GB

Alternatives: B50 16GB for a smaller budget and smaller models; B70 32GB for more headroom. The B60 24GB is what hits the 35B-MoE target. The B70 is newer and not yet validated on the dock — treat it as experimental.

DockTested pick
DEG1 eGPU dock

Why: open-air, and it takes your own ATX/SFX PSU. Any OCuLink dock that presents the card behind a PCIe switch is in the same family — the DEG1 is the one the guide validates.

PSUTested pick
650W 80+ Gold, modular

Alternative: any quality 650W 80+ Gold, fully modular unit. Headroom over the card's draw and clean modular cabling matter more than the brand here.

LinkTested pick
Short OCuLink 4i cable

If no native port: a matched M.2-to-OCuLink adapter kit. Keep the run short. The link trains at PCIe Gen4 ×4 after bring-up (Gen3 ×4 is plenty — the weights live in VRAM).

Straight talk: the guide walks the validated reference build. Anything labeled an alternative is "should work" — sensible picks, but you validate the substitution yourself. The newer/untested paths are flagged where they appear: B70 GPUs, USB4-only hosts, and blower-style cards.

However you build it, you own it

The parts list is yours to change — so is everything that runs on it.

A real Linux box, no lock-in

Boone on CampOS is the open-source CampOS suite + Boone on plain Ubuntu — it sits beside your computer, it doesn't cage it.

It's Ubuntu underneath

Open a terminal, install your own apps; ignore Boone entirely and you've still got a full Linux box.

Runs on standard GPUs

The stack isn't tied to the B60; that card is the value sweet spot, not a gate.

Data + model stay on the box

No telemetry, no phone-home; pull the network cable and it still answers.

Yours to keep and to change

Open-source suite, no subscription to expire; modify it freely (we just can't support what you change).

Remote access and updates are opt-in, over your own private channel — never a backdoor, never required.

The guide de-risks it

Parts are the easy part. The guide covers the validated bring-up, the boot sequence, and the troubleshooting logs for the three problems that stop this build cold — the part nobody else documents.

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