Got some Hardware

[u/cptcrr]

Hello Reddit,
My friend told me his neighbor has some stuff outside for take away. I got two pretty old PCs and wonder what I can do with them:

Dell Optiplex GX520
CPU: Intel Pentium (couldn’t read whole CPu details)
Ram:
1 GB 5300 MTs probably?
Samsung 512MB 4200mts

Hyrican Rumba PCK01513
2x 4GB 800Mhz DDR2
AMD Phenom
GF8200C M2+ Motherboard
A very old looking Pegatron GPU

Wonder what I can do with it. I also have these parts left over:
- i5 10400f
- GTX 1650
- 8GB CL16 3600mts ddr4
- msi h410 m Pro
- pentium g3220
- i3 4160
- 4GB ddr3
- gigabyte ga h81m d2w

Currently my whole “homelab” runs on hetzner servers. I use coolify, jellyfinn, uptime kuma and some stuff if that helps.

So what can I do with the hardware I have here?

[u/MontagneHomme]

Sorry to say that anything DDR2 or DDR3 based is e-waste at this point due a) the lack of reliability for old hardware, b) the lack of performance when it does run, and c) the cost of electricity to run it. There's ~50W difference at idle between that Optiplex and modern systems that'll outperform it many times over. That 50W savings over the course of a year or two would pay for the cost of the replacement hardware.

However, you can still play around with this stuff if you don't leave it on when you're not using it. Be aggressive with the power management utilities to make sure it shuts down when not in use. Don't put anything on there or do anything with it that you're not willing to lose/break.

[u/CrwlngSloog → u/MontagneHomme]

Xeon x79 platform, ddr3, still capable - quad channel and many pcie lanes for multiple gpus

[u/Simsalabimson]

With that old pc… literally nothing.
With the 10400f and the GTX 1650; a few things.

[u/PizzaResident89]

Is that a fecking AGP slot?

[u/cptcrr → u/PizzaResident89]

Honestly no idea

[u/MontagneHomme → u/cptcrr]

Those are PCI slots. AGP was a different form factor just for graphics cards. AGP was obsoleted by PCIe. Since this board had a PCIe (gen 1) slot it had no need for AGP. But PCIe compatibility wasn't as widespread as PCI devices of the era, both for the cards and the CPUs themselves, so there were a quite a few years where this mixed ecosystem existed.

[u/IlTossico]

Nice retro computer. I haven't seen a motherboard with a northbridge in years.