My reaction was "only 60% over budget"? This is a low volume custom computer. The way Defcon pushes promotion and recognition, I do not think they paid full commercial price.
EE claims, they stayed in Budget while also claiming they did not receive the agreed upon payment.
DC claims, EE went 60% over budget
A run with 30k badges is not that small and eight months is not that short of a timeframe.
Somewhere I read about a $20 target price all in which I find realistic for PCB parts and assembly, but not if the cost include injection molding ($10k / mold and $1/pcs I guess) and especially not if it contains hardware and software development cost