• Resurge@lemmy.ml
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    20
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    Yeah, using a 9 year old work laptop as my home server. Then with the surging energy prices last year I decided to switch out that laptop with a raspberry pi 4 as server.

    Conclusion: I now have a laptop and a RPI running 24/7 🤦‍♂️

    • dotfiles@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      1 year ago

      Conclusion: I now have a laptop and a RPI running 24/7 🤦‍♂️

      Sounds like a win to me. lol

    • TheInsane42@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      1 year ago

      My RPi4s and 3s will out perform my older laptops, apart from the just retired P50 (gpu nearly died). That one is 6y, the others are 11y old HPs and a 16y 32 bit Xxodd (wierd brand). tje RPis are sufficient for normal server use, the nwew laptop (last gen i9 with 64G mem) can host (nested) kvm clients, so no need for extra hardware. (And still I save them, just in case ;) )

        • TheInsane42@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          0
          ·
          edit-2
          1 year ago

          I’m glad I don’t need computing power then. It just runs a webserver, 2 databases, mail environment, puppet master, icr client and some random stuff I just start and forget.

          It does the trick here and it and it’s predecessor Rpi3 and 2 managed, are quiet and enough for here. Both 3s boot from microsd and run from USB SSD for the OS, data is on nas. All are stock, no extentions, apart from an extra USB nic on my firewall. (Somehow having 2 different physical interfaces sounded preferable to me for a firewall)

          The old 3s are now interface for my smart meter and a domoticz system.

          BTW I see the Thinkcenter you mention for €250 online, My RPi4 cost me as kit €108 (8GB version). That was before all prizes went trough the roof though, as I see the separate board now for €125.

  • I_Miss_Daniel@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    17
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    I turned my ten year old Toshiba i7 with a cracked LCD into a virtual fish tank after the last fish died.

  • penguin_knight@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    12
    ·
    1 year ago

    i disaseemble all my laptops so they are just a motherboard, screw them into sheets of MDF, place vertically, and use them as servers.

    NAS, pihole, plex, etc

      • Bitlummo@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        1 year ago

        This article talks about turning a laptop into a rack mounted computer. Each computer will be different recreating something like this based off what ports it has and where.

        • dotfiles@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          0
          ·
          edit-2
          1 year ago

          I’m talking about the LCD/monitor. Maybe @penguin_knight keeps the LCD and mounts it to the board as well. If not, it’s headless. Mouse and keyboard are not the issue. I always set up raspberry pi headless because the OS allows it. All you have to do is add an ssh file to the /boot dir and wpa_supplicant.conf file in root dir. Other distros typically don’t, they need a monitor to be installed.

          • Kadath (she/her)@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            1
            ·
            1 year ago

            I know, that’s why I wrote external peripherals and not external inputs. I don’t want to sound cocky or be an asshole (we all know how easy it is by just reading a message someone you don’t know wrote), but after 24 years of being in system administration/engineering/architecture I may have sufficient grasp of what I am talking about. 😅

    • heimchen@discuss.tchncs.de
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      0
      ·
      1 year ago

      My problem is that the ethernetports Clip is part of the case, without it, the Ethernet cable just doesn’t stick. Do you have a solution for this problem? A photo would be really cool.

  • AcidOctopus@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    9
    ·
    1 year ago

    I’m patiently waiting for someone (anyone) I know to decide to throw out an old laptop.

    Gonna bite their hand off for it, install Linux and proceed to fuck around and find out.

  • Mugmoor@lemmy.dbzer0.com
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    8
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    Do you mean a server with a built-in UPS, monitor, keyboard AND mouse? Hell yeah! My old Samsung Laptop has been running my game servers for quite a while now, and I have an old Asus running PiHole and Headcale. Works great!

  • RoyalEngineering@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    5
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    Old laptops can are actually great servers—hear me out:

    • Built in KVM
    • Low power consumption
    • Battery = UPS for power blips
    • SSD (sometimes)
    • Wifi + Ethernet = Redundant NICs
    • Quiet (sometimes)
    • Small form factor
    • utopianfiat@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      1 year ago

      The battery is usually long gone by the time it becomes a server though.

      Really old laptops have PCMCIA slots too that you can hook into newer interfaces. I used a PCMCIA eSATA card for a laptop NAS!

      • Olgratin_Magmatoe@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        edit-2
        1 year ago

        The battery is usually long gone by the time it becomes a server though.

        Absolutely. I still have my laptop from high school, and it’s battery has been long gone. The screen is on its last legs.

        Maybe it will be a server one day, but for now it’s my DnD laptop. Sucks a bit when somebody bumps the power cord and the battlemap turns off. But it’s still limping by.

  • ChillPill@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    4
    ·
    1 year ago

    I’m actually hosting things on my 2 year old gaming pc (which is no longer used for gaming) and using my 8 year old laptop daily… How the turn tables.

  • LordChaos82@fosstodon.org
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    4
    ·
    1 year ago

    @rockhandle That’s how I started. Proxmox on a 9 year old laptop with LXC and VMs. Even now that laptop runs proxmox with pfsense and pihole VMs and is serving as my home router :)

  • lemme_at_it@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    4
    ·
    1 year ago

    All day long. I ssh into mine & run docker. Works surprisingly well. Better than the $5/month droplet.

  • Kazumara@feddit.de
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    4
    ·
    1 year ago

    No, I use the old desktops for that.

    Old laptops usually seem to go to other people:

    • My first one I gave one to a girl who’s house burned down in my street.
    • The second one went to my ex who is on really hard financial times and the old Macbook she got from another good soul died on her.
    • The third one I traded in with my mom who really wanted a light one, and in exchange she contributed to…
    • My fourth one that had more power for compiling things in my studies. This one I still have and use occasionally.
  • phx@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    3
    ·
    1 year ago

    The big issue with laptops tends to be cooling, but something with a decent CPU and enough RAM can still do a good job since in many cases you’re not tapping the graphics chip/core, which is often the biggest source of heat.

    That said, for small personal services even an 8GB Pi4 can do a pretty decent job.

  • tristan@aussie.zone
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    3
    ·
    1 year ago

    I use old Lenovo tiny units… Can pick them up cheap when businesses upgrade, chuck in a bit extra ram, a new SSD, add it to my proxmox cluster… Then look for excuses to use it so I can justify having yet another one