I’ve got a problem. I’m a technology hoarder. I still have the first PC I bought myself some 15 years ago cause “I might use it for something!”
My desktop after that one is an unRAID box. The one after that is my “lab” PC (3d printing, embedded projects etc) and then finally, my current generation main PC.
I want to upgrade my main PC soon (can’t run new games, CPU and GPU limited), which means potentially kicking everything else “down the chain” to a new purpose as it gets a slightly better version of itself. I find the thought of this exhausting though. So much configuration/setup to give upgrades to things whose existence is only because I didn’t want to part with functioning hardware.
My current thought is to “break the cycle” by condensing all non-primary functions to my current PC, as an unRAID box hosting everything other than main gaming PC. From there, the rule needs to be tech goes into one of those two boxes, or it gets sold/donated.
What do you all think. Is that reasonable? How do you manage your spare equipment post upgrade?
If I don’t use the parts for another server or something, I will donate or sell at a steep discount to friends.
Although it’s probably not great for me to be seeking out new excuses, another server implies you might have a few… Any cool uses you’d like to share?
Nothing of great importance; nfs, jellyfin, proxies and tunnels, docker containers with a variety of self hosted apps. I’ve been getting into infrastructure monitoring with Prometheus, grafana, some databases, syslog, etc.
I have a supermicro frakenserver with a couple xeon that I use for net sim and vm.
Ive also got an old repurposed HP thin client runnin home assistant, too. That wasn’t really leftover PC parts though. Just cheaper than a raspberry pi, lol.
I don’t rebuild all that often though. My last three main builds were phenomII to 6th gen intel to 12th gen intel.