PC Modder creates an AMD-powered GameCube Sleeper PC

A few weeks ago, a PC modder called “Tech By Matt” created a “Sleeper PC” within a Nintendo GameCube, replacing its innards with powerful new PC hardware, albeit with a few notable restrictions. Crazier still, the console’s controller ports work, and the console’s power switch remains active, making this a properly stealthy gaming setup. 

Now I know what some of you are thinking, isn’t the GameCube too small for ITX motherboards? It is, but that didn’t stop Tech By Matt going smaller than ITX. 

Powering this PC is an AMD Ryzen series processor and the motherboard of ASRock’s DeskMini A300 PC, a system which contains a full AM4 motherboard, and a compact power supply. This makes this system perfect for this GameCube Sleeper system. This also means that this system is still, kinda, powered by ATI, thanks to its use of a Ryzen/Radeon APU. 

The GameCube used for this setup was a broken unit from eBay, which was disassembled to fit ASRock’s DeskMini A300 motherboard inside. This required lot of material removal and the creation of a custom motherboard tray. The GameCube’s original power button was also re-wired to turn on the PC within. 

Tech By Matt also used a GameCube adapter to connect the GameCube’s original controller ports to his DeskMini A300 motherboard via USB. This required a lot of soldering but resulted in working GameCube controller ports, making this system ideal for GameCube emulation. 

Within this system is AMD’s Ryzen 3 3200G processor, 16 GB (2x8GB) of Crucial DDR4 memory at 3200MHz and an OCZ 512GB SSD. The Gamecube’s original cooling fan was replaced by a Fractal 50mm replacement fan, which was enough to cool this PC in conjunction with the system’s stock CPU cooler. 

Externally, this system looks just like a GameCube, aside from the rear IO of the system’s mini STX motherboard. The system was also shown to be able to run GameCube and Wii games without any issues through emulation, though Wii U games proved to be too much for the PC.  

The video below showcases how to build a GameCube Sleeper PC using an ASRock DeskMini A300 barebones PC.