I saw you talking with Steve on Gamer Nexus, talking about ddr3. With memory and storage prices as it is. What are some ways you could use an old system, that has ddr3, in a home lab? Systems that you could get dirt cheap or maybe a find at a thrift store. There’s a place in San Diego that sells older systems dirt cheap. From older desktop and laptops. To a few Xeon based workstations. I just wanted to through it out to see what people could come up with. The main thing is, to see what you could get away with, using ddr3.
Welcome to the forum!
I think it’s getting difficult to recommend DDR3 systems due to electricity prices going through the roof in at least some areas. But if they had to be used I think software focused on compute efficiency should be used… which definitely pairs down the available software because of how lazy alot of modern devs have gotten with resources.
Murphy’s?
Nas and most mundane homelab stuff will work fine on a decent ddr3 system.
Gaming will be also possible if you choose the top end of that hardware generation and dont need to run everything maxed. Craft computing recently made a video about what gpus bottleneck on a x79 platform, ddr3.
Its still capable hardware for most “normal people” kind of use.
Power consumption will be the main drawback. But do the math to figure out how much that will actually cost at your rates. In many cases even running it 24/7 for years you will be paying A LOT LESS than buying new hardware at the current hilarious pricing.
With my pretty limited experience and sorta shallow depth of knowledge, you should only pickup DDR3 systems that have better specs for their time (don’t bother spending money on old really outdated gear that was entry level).
Should only consider a DDR3 desktop or server that is only occasionally powered up and running, like a server you backup to at a different house and can control remotely and shutdown, or have it power up automatically and perform backups. These machines have extremely poor performance for how much power they draw, most likely a somewhat modern $1-2k brand new laptop would run circles around DDR3 hardware for compute (outside of connectivity and some features like IPMI, newer basic hardware has extremely high performance per watt).
Running an old rig as a daily driver or a 24/7 server will EASILY have power usage out strip the cost of better, newer & more efficient options over a couple of months to years depending on the hardware. Penny pinching businesses dumped these old machines in favor of way more performance and efficiency at the expense of likely $10s of thousands per server cost to them. DDR3 rigs aren’t one or two generations old, the gear is very dated, often even missing instruction set capabilities and with extremely dated PCIe connectivity. Hardware vulnerabilities are likely not patched out, so be aware using old gear directly connected to the internet is not a good idea (same reason outdated Apple computers that aren’t running their modern OS versions should not ever be used online, sometimes running Linux is doable and greatly reduces vulnerability, but it’s a work around for old unsupported hardware)
If you go with old enterprise desktops or servers, BE VERY CAREFUL what you buy, they had tons of special parts, things like a white list BIOS that locks you into specific vendor parts and upgrades, locked down and pretty much useless hardware without an active paid $$$ license or software. Just lots of pitfalls with a lot of enterprise gear. Reddit /homelab has tons of posts about running old enterprise gear, lots of info on specific hardware and any issues to watch out for, should at least search specific hardware before buying anything.
Again, these old rigs can be great for the right application, and if you carefully select the right hardware to avoid excess power draw, noise, and hardware compatibility issues.
PS: thrift stores have for years almost universally been extremely over priced for computers & electronics, especially compared to eBay/ Craigslist (which can both be over priced as it is)
The place I have gone too over the last few years is Geeks Candy Shop. Last time I went I saw they where moving. I am not sure if they have opened up in their new location yet.
Note that electric bill, likely [will] give you eye waterworks
Gonn’ be older stuff— + a few weathered gems, from eras bygone
Think Intel 1150 // AMD AM3-AM3+, being the viable [consumer] platforms