I got this PC from my dad when he upgraded in like December ish. I've been running Kubuntu on it and just using it like a sort of general purpose desktop for me and my wife, but I've got a hankering for some tinkering and feel like it has more potential, so I'd love some project ideas!
That is a lot of RAM. Only a quad-core processor, but I imagine should still be fine for general-purpose desktop use.
What would you want it to do? Honestly I would call that over-specced for something like a file server and would probably consume a lot of power if left on all the time. Maybe a media server which can use the discrete GPU for video encoding?
I really don't have anything specific in mind, but a media server is definitely something that's been on my list of things I'd like.
As for the ram, it kind of is an absurd amount. I think it only started with 8 gigs (maybe 16), but since it was just my family computer growing up it would get continually more and more bloated and slow, upgrading the ram was the only way my dad knew how to upgrade it so he'd do it every now and then to try and speed it up lol.
Run Docker containers on it, one for media server, one for DNS sinkhole etc.
For the media server, I recommend taking a look at Jellifyn. If you want some fancy statistics use, also give it a look at a Prometheus+Graphana config.
Install Linux on...
Never mind, carry on.
Uptime: 29 seconds
Don't worry about it, you're not in a rush to do anything. How about getting a cup of tea for starters?
That made me laugh too!
If you want to get into running a home lab, this world probably be a nice start. So throw proxmox on it and host all the services you want (in containers or VMs). Media server like jellyfin, maybe a nextcloud, storage/Nas services, automate your home with home assistant.
It has a relatively large amount of memory for that generation of system, but also will probably not exactly sip power for the performance your getting. So if power is expensive where you are, think twice about it.
What is the benefit of running it in Proxmox rather than just containers on bare metal?
Depends what you want to do. If you want only docker containers, it's the wrong tool. If you want to run a mixture of VMs and LXC containers, it's literally a management interface made for it. So it's pretty good at it.
Convenience, time saved.
You can migrate without downtime from one proxmox host to the other
With that amount of ram you could make it a hypervisor and host a lot of containers and vms. Maybe proxmox would be a good fit?
Seconded! Recently switched my bunch of raspberries for a proxmox server. Would never go back!
Project 1: Install Gentoo on it. 🙂 Project 2: Keep Gentoo installed on it.
Jellyfin server? it'll do hardware transcode handily! Lots of RAM is good for something like TrueNAS since ZFS will use it as a cache.
"same thing we do everyday, pinky. try and take over the world!"
I had a 6700k until December just gone. For Linux it can do everything and anything. It’s totally usable! I only gave mine up because of CS2.
It even has integrated graphics - so throw out that GPU, I have my server with a 6700k pull less than 20W at idle!
I have 7700 went with fanless case and ssds, 25w underload, 15w idle. 750w PSU doesn't use its fan until you hit 30% load.
Home server! Not sure how CUDA support is, but exo/petals node for AI and stuff? Immich for photos, Nextcloud for files, homeassistant!
GTX 745 is weird. It's early Maxwell, not Kepler. It's not particularly fast and as it is Maxwell, only supports fp32.
That's the last ATX compliant xps PC. I'd swap the wifi card for something else. It has some issues. That bug was patched out afaik.
(Friend has an xps 8900 and it was a unique experience)
I'd also find a cheap gpu to put in it. There is a mount for a 92 mm fan in the front. You just have to remove some tape in the front of the PC covering a vent.
Admittedly my friend games and does dev work on it.
Also it could do with a repaste.
As far as I know you can't upgrade the CPU on that past the 6700.
Cry.
Realistically some kind of home server, but only if energy is cheap where you live.
Upgrade the GPU and its plenty good
Jellyfin server!!
You'll eventually want more storage so LVM is the way to go for making your "drive" easily extendable.
I use my (very similar, just AMD and with a dGPU) for my Jellyfin server and to selfhost some AI models for experimentation, and I'm working on rolling out matrix synapse because selfhosting
Thought the same, although on a second thought Jellyfin would maybe use 1% of the resources of that CPU. But still, I started with Jellyfin and Audiobookshelf on my home server (it has approx. half the computing power of the XPS) and now it has expanded to Immich, LLMs, Nextcloud, and has basically replaced my whole cloud personality. It has a lot of disk space also, so actually - if you don't need the laptop - set it up as a home server and start with one project on it. I promise it'll grow fast, haha.
Imo too high power consumption for 24/7 operation so I wouldn't use it that way. If I only had this machine to work with, i'd probably use it as a media server or NAS but turn it on only as needed. Wake on LAN to turn it on and configure it to auto turn off.
Switch to something that always delivers the latest KDE Plasma. That's old.
This looks very similar to my MacBookPro 2013 but running on endeavourOS
Just don’t try to install the patched proprietary nvidia drivers on recent kernel and relay on nouveau. Then all works pretty good so far
😮but definitely enough RAM
It's a bit behind the times for gaming though it'll probably still play a decent round of Counter Strike.
I used a system even older than that (A core i7 with a three-digit part number, circa 2010) a couple years ago to rip DVDs and run MakeMKV/Handbrake, it did the job fine. Decade old computers aren't the problem, Windows is.
Install Ganeti, or K3s, and do a lot of things!
Head on over to the self-hosting community
Step 1. Replace plasma for something lighter like xfce or wayfire with all the fancier effects disabled
Step 2. GZDoom mods.
That’s almost identical to the ThinkPad I use every day. Sounds like a great daily driver.
Get rid of the dGPU power comsumption at all costs, as it's underpowered for anything serious.
Enable Intel AMT so that you get hardware level remote control, including power control.
Afet that it's a now-weak power-hungry CPU with weak cooling, but a decent amount of RAM, so, IDK, a buildserver or a VM host for scenarios when something needs to happen in the background, but latency doesn't matter.
Truenas Scale NAS server, just add the storage.
YABS
Run gentoo instead!
I have something similar, but with an old nvidia 1070.
I run a file server, nginx for my web dev, git server, postgres and, surprisingly, ollama.
The old nv 1070 is CUDA capable and it's doing an OK job for my usage.
Check if you can put your hand on an old NV card for an AI agent.
Cheers!
Lol an old 1070 is my gaming rig. Computers are so friggin powerful these days
YUNoHost-server!
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
Community icon by Alpár-Etele Méder, licensed under CC BY 3.0