What To Do With My Old Desktop?

The Ugly One

The Ugly One

I hate Linux
True & Honest Fan
kiwifarms.net
Joined
Nov 15, 2021
I have an old desktop. It's perfectly fine. I just replaced it because I wanted a new one that is tiny and has a skull on it and so I could run Windows 11 and brag about how my computer runs Photoshop.

Old machine:
i7-7700
Radeon 5700 XT
16 GB DDR4
1 TB SSD + 1 TB HDD
Windows 10 Home

So here's the question, what the hell do I do with this thing? Despite knowing a lot about software development and hardware architecture, I honestly know very little about computers as appliances. Should I give it to a homeless person?

Basically, what would be a useful thing to do with an old computer?
 
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Aidan said:
Install gentoo :smug:
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Funny story, Gentoo is the second version of Linux I tried to get to work after Slackware. This was maybe 2004?

But anyway, what would I do with it? What are computers even for besides video games and running cool & awesome Windows 11 applications?
 
thebigjoel said:
Doesn't matter. Install Jellyfin [1] instead.

[1]: https://jellyfin.org/
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I'm old and retarded. What do I do next? I literally have no fucking idea what comes next. Do I put this on my PC and an app on my phone? Then rip my CDs to MP3 or something? Play my music on my phone that's stored on my PC instead of hoping Pandora plays something I like instead of Girls, Girls, Girls for the 1000th time?

Is there any reason to do this on my old PC instead of my new one?
 
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The Ugly One said:
OK, so thanks to @thebigjoel I now learned things and am less retarded.

I can buy one of these:

So then I can add more NVMe drives. I have a closet with a power outlet in it, and I have a USB DVD drive that I can use to rip my CDs and my wife's movies onto the drives. It's still a stupid huge tower, but it will be out of the way.
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Is it stupid huge with room for extra drives? You could turn it into a decent DIY NAS if so.
 
The Ugly One said:
So then I can add more NVMe drives. I have a closet with a power outlet in it, and I have a USB DVD drive that I can use to rip my CDs and my wife's movies onto the drives. It's still a stupid huge tower, but it will be out of the way.
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Based. One time I got pissed off and bought a bunch of CDs on eBay of bands that I liked and ripped em all. That was a drunken night that I won't regert.
 
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Aidan said:
Is it stupid huge with room for extra drives? You could turn it into a decent DIY NAS if so.
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It has two SATA drives in it, but one of them can go. I need to uninstall MW 2019 (220 gb lmao), and there are 3 PCIe slots still open.

What is a NAS?
 
If you have any sort of need for an office PC and already hit the minimums to make itemized deductions worthwhile you could use it for that and write off some depreciated percentage of the original value of the parts. Even if you just do it for a year might be worth the effort since it seems like a reasonably high end machine

My personal use would probably be a NAS or plex server, just something to hold my ill-acquired-gains
 
The Ugly One said:
OK, so thanks to @thebigjoel I now learned things and am less retarded.

I can buy one of these:

So then I can add more NVMe drives. I have a closet with a power outlet in it, and I have a USB DVD drive that I can use to rip my CDs and my wife's movies onto the drives. It's still a stupid huge tower, but it will be out of the way.
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Who the fuck has an outlet in their closet. Seriously though you are on the right path. Jellyfin doesn't quite have the functionality I need for my media yet, but I love open source projects. If it works for you go that route. You don't need more NVMe drives. Add hard drives if you need more space. They are much cheaper. Hard drives are slow for booting or gaming, but your media is slower than a hard drive. If you need help building out your media server you can dm me, but I'm even slower than a hard drive. I'll give the advice that I can when I'm on. The best thing about having your own media server is when you get up from your computer to go take a shit you can just continue the video on your phone and when you get done and it's time to refill you gut you can just go to your kitchen and continue it on your kitchen tv and when you get done in there if you decide to go on a vacation you can go to Australia if you like and watch it over there because it is your media on your machine. If you want to rip movies you are going to need handbrake and google how to get around drm on handbrake. This is easy shit, but if you pull it off you will look like a super hacker to your wife and friends.
 
Catgirl Enthusiast said:
Who the fuck has an outlet in their closet. Seriously though you are on the right path. Jellyfin doesn't quite have the functionality I need for my media yet, but I love open source projects. If it works for you go that route. You don't need more NVMe drives. Add hard drives if you need more space. They are much cheaper. Hard drives are slow for booting or gaming, but your media is slower than a hard drive. If you need help building out your media server you can dm me, but I'm even slower than a hard drive. I'll give the advice that I can when I'm on. The best thing about having your own media server is when you get up from your computer to go take a shit you can just continue the video on your phone and when you get done and it's time to refill you gut you can just go to your kitchen and continue it on your kitchen tv and when you get done in there if you decide to go on a vacation you can go to Australia if you like and watch it over there because it is your media on your machine. If you want to rip movies you are going to need handbrake and google how to get around drm on handbrake. This is easy shit, but if you pull it off you will look like a super hacker to your wife and friends.
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My office closet has an outlet, no idea why. I'm not complaining, though.

Okay, so what gadgets should I buy to put a buttload of storage in this thing? Both SATA connections are now in use with SSDs. It just seemed like getting that card and putting a new NVMe in it every time I run out of room would be easy. 1 TB is under a hundred bucks these days.

I watch no TV and rare movies. Mostly I just have CDs from the 1990 and 00s that I haven't listened to in ages because technology changed too much on me.
 
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