There’s a lot of “turn a broken laptop into a computer”, but what about turning it into a small server? I was looking on ebay now and you can get a broken Dell Precision 7530 that boots for $55 plus shipping. That’s a Xeon E-2176M 6C/12T that can do 64GB ecc ddr4. If you’re lazy you run disks on the two usb 3.1 ports or the thunderbolt 3, if you’re not you can get m.2 to pcie or sata adapters, it should be able to handle 12 sata disks (3x m.2 x4 pcie lanes each). Again, if you’re lazy you just throw it inside a box and cut a hole for the network cable, if you’re not you can mount it on a plate of some kind so you can use it as a normal motherboard. There’s even holes you can use for the cpu cooler. You’ll have to take the power for the disks from somewhere else though.
