I got a stack of PCS that are very similar if not identical. Third gen i7, 8 gigs of ram, one terabyte hdd, all but one are the same HP model with the same motherboard, etc too. I upgraded the RAM in a few of them, and I have enough spare TB hard drives to put an extra in each. Two have Nvidia GeForce 210 gpus, and the unique one out of the bunch I’ll probably throw in a spare RX 570 I have.

But, what to do with them? Easiest answer is probably sell them all for $75 each but that’s not what we do here, right? Right now I’m assuming they all support w o l and I can easily set up ansible/awx for orchestration. I’m just looking for some fun experiments, projects, or actual uses for this Tower of PC towers

  • hendrik@palaver.p3x.deEnglish
    1·
    2 months ago

    I’m not sure about anything useful. Best thing would probably be to install Linux and donate them to people in need. For experimentation, sure, set up a Beowulf Cluster, learn FreeBSD, Orchestration, Kubernetes, Ansible… Use them to test your microservice architecture software projects, software-defined networking…

  • notgold@aussie.zoneEnglish
    1·
    2 months ago

    Build a proxmox cluster and teach yourself about high availability services. Tear it down and do it again with xcp-ng. Repeat using more and more complex architectures

  • pineapple@lemmy.mlEnglish
    1·
    2 months ago

    Kubenetes or k3s and some volunteer computing programs. Or mine monaro to offset the power bill of your other servers.

  • Possibly linux@lemmy.zipEnglish
    0·
    2 months ago

    Sell them and buy something newer

    Seriously though the going rate for old hardware isn’t that different from the newer stuff. Try price matching 3rd gen to 6th or 7th gen.

  • MXX53@programming.devEnglish
    0·
    2 months ago

    I would want to do a cluster. Just to learn how that works. But just thinking of the electricity cost, I would personally donate them.

      • Lka1988@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        0·
        2 months ago

        I run 3x 7th gen Intel mini PCs in a Proxmox cluster, plus a 2014 Mac mini on a 4th gen i5 attached to 3x 4TB drives in RAID5 (my NAS), plus an 8TB backup drive. I also run Home Assistant on a Lenovo M710q Tiny (separate because I use Zigbee and don’t wanna deal with USB passthrough and migrating VMs and containers…). Total average draw is ~100W.

        • flightyhobler@lemmy.worldEnglish
          1·
          2 days ago

          MY experience with the ZigBee dongle and HA in a docker container has been pretty positive. It was plug and play, IIRC.