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!
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Install Ganeti, or K3s, and do a lot of things!
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.
definetly bazzite gaming htpc if you get a sufficient gpu in it. stream games from it ota.
if you take advantage of this amount of ram to virtualize, you could do both that and a server simultaneously, maybe more, you have 2 gpus and network that can be assigned independently.
the only downside would be power consumption if kept on, but that cpu can definetly handle more server stuff than you would expect.
i think you can also get one of those chinese xeons for dirt cheap on aliexpress and it might work as a hefty upgrade if you really need more cores for a few coins.
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.
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!
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.
Install Linux on…
Never mind, carry on.
Project 1: Install Gentoo on it. 🙂 Project 2: Keep Gentoo installed on it.
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.
Upgrade the GPU and its plenty good
it could probably run modern titles with a sufficient gpu.
My friend has a 2080 in his and he’s been able to play monster hunter wilds without much issue. It does support nvme.
(He’s on pop os)
Edit: that 6700 is a limiting factor in some titles. BeamMP really likes high core count CPUs.
Switch to something that always delivers the latest KDE Plasma. That’s old.
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!
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.
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?
Convenience, time saved.
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.
You can migrate without downtime from one proxmox host to the other
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!
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.
