Two "old" PCs - suggestions for useful redeployment?

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Lizard1977

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#214741 26-May-2017 09:13

I have two old(er) PCs which I'm not using and I've been wondering what I should do with them. It seems a shame to mothball them, but they're not really worth anything if I was to try and sell them (plus they have some sentimental value as well).

The first is a PC I built in 2009. It has a core i7 860 (Lynnfield) processor (quad-core, HT, 2.8Ghz), Radeon HD5850, 4GB RAM, a 250GB SSD and miscellaneous HDDs. It runs perfectly well, but it's surplus to requirements now and just gathering dust.

The second is a Sony Vaio laptop. I can't recall the specs off the top of my head, but they are not quite as good as the above PC. I installed a 128GB SSD in it a year or so ago and it runs perfectly fine.

I did briefly entertain the idea of using one or other as a server (I already have a QNAP 1-bay NAS which is running fine at the moment), but the power draw of the PC in particular means that it would likely cost quite a bit to keep running 24/7. The laptop presumably has a lower draw, but even so would cost something to keep it running 24/7. For a similar reason I abandoned vague ideas about mining crypto currency, because I figured the ROI would be too low.

So I thought I would see what the GZ community might suggest. Any clever/cool ideas for re-purposing this hardware? Would some kind of BitCoin mining setup actually be worth it?

davidcole

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#1788559 26-May-2017 09:37

Laptop makes for a good router/home automation system, especially if the battery still goes (built in UPS).

The computer I'd turn into a nas, I doubt it would actually draw much. Would be better if you didn't already have one as now its probably redundant. That would have been a decision for before the nas was purchased.

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xpd

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#1788563 26-May-2017 09:43

Im using an old Dell Core 2 Quad as a home server, loaded with about 6TB of drives, running Plex etc - SWMBO hasnt mentioned anything about power bill increasing - so if you dont have a home media box, that would do well.

Laptops, find some fun project to use it with your car or something :)

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davidcole

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#1788571 26-May-2017 09:51

xpd:

Im using an old Dell Core 2 Quad as a home server, loaded with about 6TB of drives, running Plex etc - SWMBO hasnt mentioned anything about power bill increasing - so if you dont have a home media box, that would do well.

Laptops, find some fun project to use it with your car or something :)

I added a zwave switch (like a wemo) to mine, 12tb worth of drives (7) and a 700w PSU and see it's only pulling about 127w (if this reads right).

But my CPU would be working fairly hard, it's got 5 VMs, Plex Server, Crashplan etc. So it's faiurly busy.

richms

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#1788613 26-May-2017 10:38

My 18 drives at the moment and a core2quad machine is fine on a 300VA UPS, so I dont think the power usage is that great.

When I had a power meter on it that gave $ amounts it worked out to be about $34 a month to run it. Not sure on the split between the horridly old CPU/MoBo combo and the ext drive cases as the power meter would always freak out and crash when the UPS cut over so lost those numbers.

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chevrolux

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#1788920 26-May-2017 20:49

Add a touch more RAM to the i7 machine and load up your virtualization platform of choice. Proxmox is an awesome alternative to VMware.

Load up some Linux distros and have some fun!

...Maybe my definition of fun is different....

Lizard1977

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#1790911 29-May-2017 09:24

Thanks for those suggestions. I bought the NAS about 5 years ago, and the PC has only been mothballed 6 months so it wasn't an option back then. But if it wouldn't draw that much power I might use it when we fill up our 4TB single-bay NAS. I suspect it will still draw more power than the low power QNAP NAS unit I'm currently using.

The idea of doing a cool car project with the laptop sounds fun. Any good suggestions?

The virtualisation and router suggestions are also interesting. I often hear about virtualisation but not really sure what it's for and what the benefits are. Anyone care to provide a cheat sheet on this? Ditto for the router suggestion. How would that work?

davidcole

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#1790942 29-May-2017 09:42

Lizard1977:

Thanks for those suggestions. I bought the NAS about 5 years ago, and the PC has only been mothballed 6 months so it wasn't an option back then. But if it wouldn't draw that much power I might use it when we fill up our 4TB single-bay NAS. I suspect it will still draw more power than the low power QNAP NAS unit I'm currently using.

The idea of doing a cool car project with the laptop sounds fun. Any good suggestions?

The virtualisation and router suggestions are also interesting. I often hear about virtualisation but not really sure what it's for and what the benefits are. Anyone care to provide a cheat sheet on this? Ditto for the router suggestion. How would that work?

Benefits with virtualisation are to play with various operating systems (I use a mix of Windows and linux), easier backups - you back up a whole vm, or take a snapshot before a major change allowing for a rollback to before the change. It also maximses your hardware. While it may mean you're chewing more CPU, it means you only need one box up rather than 2 - 3. I run a Windows 2012 machine as my "NAS", but it also runs 1 windows 2008, 2 x lubuntu server, and a window 10 full time. And I have another windows 10, another windows 2008 and another linux I can start as need.

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Lizard1977

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#1812436 4-Jul-2017 11:34

Just been reading a little about cryptocurrency mining. Forgive me if I sound naive or ignorant, but would there be any value in using my old computer for cryptocurrency mining? The GPU is a Radeon HD5850 1GB VRAM.

solutionz

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#1812475 4-Jul-2017 11:49

Lizard1977:

Just been reading a little about cryptocurrency mining. Forgive me if I sound naive or ignorant, but would there be any value in using my old computer for cryptocurrency mining? The GPU is a Radeon HD5850 1GB VRAM.

Yeah; scrounge together all the old HDD's you have and your PC is perfect for Burstcoin.

It's a bit of a learning curve so you'll have to invest some time into learning about it.

macuser

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#1812476 4-Jul-2017 11:49

Lizard1977:

Just been reading a little about cryptocurrency mining. Forgive me if I sound naive or ignorant, but would there be any value in using my old computer for cryptocurrency mining? The GPU is a Radeon HD5850 1GB VRAM.

Nah you'll use much more power than you will gain in currency