Suggestions for uses of old computer hardware?
I recently “upgraded” my wife’s computer, since it was about 7 years old and I think the WiFi chip in the motherboard was starting to go (and the motherboard wasn’t Windows 10 compatible either, and she wanted to upgrade to Windows 11).
Of course, upgrading the motherboard to the latest WiFi standards meant upgrading the CPU (also swapped from Intel to AMD), which resulted in getting new RAM as well (a rough time for that, given the prices).
All of that to say, I’m now sitting on a mostly functional old motherboard, cpu, and ram. Basically an entire computer sans case and power supply (I’m sure I have a hard drive laying around somewhere).
Any thoughts on what I could do with it? I’d thought of trying to build out a NAS (or some other home server of sorts), but I’ve been thinking that for 2 years and haven’t done it yet because I haven’t really found a “need” for one. I basically just use my computer for gaming, and I don’t really have or plan to have media collections with seem to be the main use case of a hobby NAS.
I've been experimenting with Linux on a similarly old machine. It's been surprisingly easy to install and work with, games support is much better than in the past, and it seems to run faster versus the old Win10 install. Plus no worries about Microsoft ads, telemetry, or AI boondoggles.
(And in case it's a coincidence, one of the most popular and user-friendly distros is Zorin OS. 😉)
A firewall? I recently repurposed an old office computer - adding two NICs and installing OPNsense - and now it's serving as my network front line.
That + a small switch and one or more standalone wireless access points, and you've replaced your standard ISP router with a more flexible and powerful system (mind you I'm still using my ISP router for switching and wireless until I get hardware I'm happy with)
Do you have any friends without a gaming PC/with older parts and would be interested? That's been the deal in my friend group, I do the labor for free, pass the spare parts to somebody else -- they don't know what to do with them any way. Or in a case of an upgrade like that, let it serve as a starter for another person's build.