- My Forums
- Tiger Rant
- LSU Recruiting
- SEC Rant
- Saints Talk
- Pelicans Talk
- More Sports Board
- Fantasy Sports
- Golf Board
- Soccer Board
- O-T Lounge
- Tech Board
- Home/Garden Board
- Outdoor Board
- Health/Fitness Board
- Movie/TV Board
- Book Board
- Music Board
- Political Talk
- Money Talk
- Fark Board
- Gaming Board
- Travel Board
- Food/Drink Board
- Ticket Exchange
- TD Help Board
Customize My Forums- View All Forums
- Show Left Links
- Topic Sort Options
- Trending Topics
- Recent Topics
- Active Topics
Started By
Message
When to retire a home server?
Posted on 6/6/25 at 6:46 pm
Posted on 6/6/25 at 6:46 pm
I know the corporate rule was four and now six years, but what about your janky home equipment?
I’ve had an old Dell workstation with dual broadwell for years now but this year it went down for mobo and ram. Total cost was $50 but there was downtime, moving VMs and what not. I also had to upgrade the power supply for more GPUs.
When do you guys give up on an old machine and where is the sweet spot for buying the next homelab? I think pcie 4.0 and at least 6 channel mem will be my consideration for the eventual replacement. Any recs? Should I hold out a couple more years until I actually need more compute?
I’ve had an old Dell workstation with dual broadwell for years now but this year it went down for mobo and ram. Total cost was $50 but there was downtime, moving VMs and what not. I also had to upgrade the power supply for more GPUs.
When do you guys give up on an old machine and where is the sweet spot for buying the next homelab? I think pcie 4.0 and at least 6 channel mem will be my consideration for the eventual replacement. Any recs? Should I hold out a couple more years until I actually need more compute?
5
Posted on 6/6/25 at 8:39 pm to Dallaswho
Run it until it breaks or I get the itch to upgrade
Posted on 6/6/25 at 8:55 pm to bluebarracuda
quote:
Run it until it breaks
Ya but how many times? Fixing a Broadwell machine is basically free now and it’s still super capable. You can buy an E5-2650v4 for $5 now and it can run anything.
The Lenovo P620 looks tempting at $700. Doesn’t give me any more CPU or any less heat but gives a ton more throughput. I’m stuck with workstations space wise.
This post was edited on 6/6/25 at 9:24 pm
Posted on 6/6/25 at 9:29 pm to Dallaswho
quote:
Ya but how many times?
Whatever your budget can handle. This is a hobby after all
Posted on 6/7/25 at 5:42 am to Dallaswho
For home, I just buy used office equipment. If something dies it gets replaced with something newer. That stuff is always on sale at eBay and the like. Zero reason to try to repair, except for maybe if it s a drive that fails.
Posted on 6/7/25 at 10:14 am to Dallaswho
My home server is a corporate hand me down. I'll retire it when something newer comes my way.
That Lenovo P620 is a lot of horsepower for $700. It would be overkill for my needs. If I had to buy something, I'd get a $150 Dell OptiPlex refurb off eBay and put a big spinning disk in it.
That Lenovo P620 is a lot of horsepower for $700. It would be overkill for my needs. If I had to buy something, I'd get a $150 Dell OptiPlex refurb off eBay and put a big spinning disk in it.
Posted on 6/7/25 at 11:49 am to Dallaswho
About 18 years for me but still no desire to upgrade. I love keeping old machines purposeful.
I just rebuilt a machine last week with a q9650 and 32GB of RAM and put Lubuntu on it. Runs fantastic and can host everything I need including Minecraft servers.
I just rebuilt a machine last week with a q9650 and 32GB of RAM and put Lubuntu on it. Runs fantastic and can host everything I need including Minecraft servers.
Posted on 6/8/25 at 6:55 am to Dallaswho
I just pulled 3 R610's from the rack, hauling them to Dallas next month for my young nephew who wants to get into the homelab hobby and a potential career. Replaced them with a little newer Broadwell X99 servers for now.,
Actually starting moving VM workloads over to N100 based systems, the biggest downside is the reduced memory capacity per host, dropping from 192 or 256G to 32G requires more capacity planning. But not hearing 1U or 2U fans screaming like a 747 on takeoff is nice and the power draw is approaching RaspPi cluster levels.
Actually starting moving VM workloads over to N100 based systems, the biggest downside is the reduced memory capacity per host, dropping from 192 or 256G to 32G requires more capacity planning. But not hearing 1U or 2U fans screaming like a 747 on takeoff is nice and the power draw is approaching RaspPi cluster levels.
Posted on 6/8/25 at 7:54 pm to dakarx
quote:
Actually starting moving VM workloads over to N100
Great. Now you’re making me want to sell my GPUs and move over to Jetson devices. Found my next project.
Nevermind, Xavier 32GB w/ board is only $139 on eBay but I’d prob need Orin to make the transition bearable. Still tempting.
This post was edited on 6/8/25 at 10:04 pm
Posted on 6/9/25 at 1:53 pm to Dallaswho
quote:
Great. Now you’re making me want to sell my GPUs and move over to Jetson devices. Found my next project.
Glad I could help!
For my next trick... squeezing 6 mini-ITX N100 mainboards, power supplies, 2.5G switch, and a handful of Raspberry Pi's into a 12u 10" minirack. Of course will need to contain some sort of storage, maybe a little 25-30T SSD NAS? Then I can power down most of my 42U cab most of the time...except for my primary and backup storage..
Page 1 of 1
Back to top
Follow TigerDroppings for LSU Football News