Meanwhile...
looks at old Thinkpad and raspi
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Meanwhile...
looks at old Thinkpad and raspi
I have been an IT professional since 1995. Never have I ever had a personal PC that wasn't either a refurbished laptop or some sort of Frankenstein abomination that I put together from whatever was on sale and upcycled parts.
I have been an IT professional since 1995. Never have I ever had a personal PC that wasn’t either a refurbished laptop or some sort of Frankenstein abomination that I pit together from whatever was on sale and upcycled parts.
I've been in the game for about the same amount of time. I stopped doing that about 15 years ago when I saw that the electricity I was paying on older gear was equaling or exceeding the cost of buying newer, faster, and lower power consumption hardware.
Power costs is a poor tax in the same way skipping the dentist and getting a root canal later is.
Also in the process of power efficiency-izing my lab. It just wasn't a feasible option before, I didn't have the means. I just paid interest via electricity.
Do we need to update Sam Vimes ‘Boots’ Theory of Socio-Economic Unfairness to Sam Vimes **‘Compute’ ** Theory of Socio-Economic Unfairness?
I swear it folk have the shittest hardware and jankiest setups and create more problems for themselves than any user ever could.
It’s why we’re able to fix all the things. We dogfood shit setups, unsupported configurations, and weird edge cases so you don’t have to.
I don't even restart when installing new software that needs it, I just reload whatever service or dependent software on the fly 😎
It is impossible to pull any enthusiast away from their 7-row Thinkpad
The secret is to give yourself as Elitez Hacker objectives things like "least maintenance time required" or "maximum computing power lowest energy consumption" (or it's companion "silent yet powerful").
Maybe "I'm fed up with the constant need for tweaking and the jet-plane-like quality of my heater-that-does-computing-on-the-side" is the real mid-life crisis of techies.
I try do everything with 2nd hand stuff as cheap as possible. This causes me and unbelievable amount of trouble because I have to try get all this ancient shit to work in a spaghetti network. half the time I don't even know what I'm doing I'm just happy to be there.
You can get old servers on eBay for surprisingly little money, like this PowerEdge T410 for $200. Add some drives, install TrueNAS SCALE and you've got a good home server platform.
Also a space heater for the winter and some white noise so you can sleep better!
Isn't that a bit like buying an old truck instead of a year old Miata?
Afaik those CPUs use so much juice when idling ... sure, you dont get all them lanes or ECC, but a PC at the same price with a few year old CPU outclasses that CPU by a lot & at a fraction of the running cost (also quietly).
Just something to keep in mind as an alternative, especially when you don't intend to fill all the pcie bussy (several users with several intensive tasks that benefit from wider bus to RAM & PCI even with a slow CPU).
Ok, and you miss out on some fancy admin stuff, but ... it's just for home use ...
I have a ThinkServer with a similar Xeon, running proxmox -> Debian, so I was looking like "huh, interesting" until I saw the internals.
Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck all that. Damn it Dell, quit your weird bullshit. It's just a motherboard, cpu, cooler, and ram. Slap in intake and exhaust fans. Figure it the fuck out.
E: and it better have a goddamn standard psu, too. Fuck yourself, Dell. I've seen your shit.
The one saving grace is that their one-off custom damn shit always feels well designed, and they move a lotta units (which helps with repairs when everything is GD custom). Dunno if that's changed in recent years.
With that said I avoid them for personal use usually for the same reason, why have a desktop if you don't get the benefit of parts compatibility?!
Hmm, I don't have direct experience with ThinkServers, but what I see on eBay looks like standard ATX hardware... which is not really what you want in a server.
The Dell motherboard has dual CPU sockets and 8 RAM slots. The PSUs are not the common ATX desktop format because there are 2 of them and they are hot swappable. This is basically a rack server repacked into a desktop tower case, not an ATX desktop with a server CPU socket.
I hate this meme and yes absolutely
Is it really a midlife crisis when you're just buying the toys you ways wanted because you can finally afford it?
I built a ridiculous computer with RGB everything a few months back... It's dumb as hell but I always wanted one and at this point why not?
Sorta. But I think the problematic part of a midlife crisis is the irresponsible reckless behavior (say unaccounted for big expenses) that affect the people around you. If you're not doing that then pop off, have fun, life is short!!
It's not a midlife crisis!
I actually desperately need this, my current server's just not specced right for the 2 dozen VM's I still want to add.
Mid-life crisis? I'm in my mid-20s!
Who's gonna tell him?
That's not mid-life, that's entire-life.
Why not both? My homelab supports car related activities.
Probably why I don't have the Porsche though.
I have 4 DL360s with 96GB RAM each to run a K8s cluster with a handful of containers
I don’t know who needs to hear this, but your internal use only web-app for syncing your garage door with your media sever don’t need all that
YOU DONT KNOW ME
Lies
Yea! He just needs a single dual proc server with 1TB of RAM like mine instead!
I have 4 DL360s with 96GB RAM each to run a K8s cluster with a handful of containers
If someone is paying you to host those and covering your costs, go wild! However, as a hobby you may be spending $925/year or more for electricity to run those in the Midwest. $1,387 if you're living in Boston, $1,850 if you're living in California.
In one year you may have been able to buy more new power efficient hardware from just what you're spending on juice.
I am sure there are people who spend more than that in a year on their own hobbies.
My point is, you can possibly spend the same money and get better hardware that isn't so power hungry and have a better experience with your hobby.
makes same sound
Gento fans go brrrrr
The more you're willing to do yourself, the cheaper the car gets.
It's basically a hobby meant for sysadmins and they don't even realize it!
I watched my father go this way and I shan’t let it happen to me! I’ve bought a motorcycle like a normal fat, middle-aged man.
Me who finds really cheap eBay hardware:
Me who digs stuff out of e-waste bins in office building parking garages.
A super fast car is a toy, fast electronics are useful tools.
Sure, but from some point up enterprise-class tech stops making sense for home use.
A super fast car is a tool to make me happier. Not that I'll ever be able to afford one.
Some of these cases are so expensive. I am wanting a Super Micro CSE-836 style case to upgrade my NAS and I have an eBay alert I set a few years ago when I couldn't quite justify spending the money. Turns out I should have because even used the prices are going up and up.