Comment on Don't throw away your old PC—it makes a better NAS than anything you can buy
PieMePlenty@lemmy.world 1 week ago
Why would I throw it away, when I can give it to someone who needs it more, or sell it? Using it as a NAS will use up more power than just buying a mini PC and using that. I calculated the costs and the energy savings would pay for one in two years.
I’d use an old PC as a NAS but turned it on only on demand, when it was needed. Which does hurt its convenience factor a little.
Note: talking about desktops.
SpaceCadet@feddit.nl 1 week ago
Because selling is always a hassle, dealing with choosing beggars and scammers, and it may not be worth much anymore for general use.
For example, my old PC is a i7 4770k… it can’t run Windows 11 or play remotely recent games. I don’t know anyone who could use this thing, so to save a few watts I took out the GPU, put it in eco mode and have been using it as my Linux server.
I have played around with some mini PC’s (minisforum and beelink brand), they’re neat but they turned out to be not very reliable, two have already died prematurely, and unfortunately they are not end-user serviceable. Lack of storage expansion options is an issue as well, if you don’t just want to stack a bunch of external USB drives on top of each other.