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What can I make out of a Old Pentium D desktop? (self.homelab)

submitted 5 months ago by reddit_sux to c/[email protected]

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Hello homelabbers,

Recently I came into possession of an old Desktop PC. Its configuration is,

Pentium D 820, 2.8 GHz dual Pentium 4 core processor, supports 64 bit.
512 DDR 333 memory
90GB HDD
no graphics card
3 PCI and 1 AGP slot

I was planning to put a ethernet card and use it as a router. It was to theown as garbage. Is what I am planning feasible or a good idea. Or it would be better as trash.

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Your primary issue is going to be the power draw. If your electricity supplier has cheap rates, or if you have an abundance of solar power, then it could maybe find life as some sort of traffic analyzer or honeypot.

But I think even finding a PCI NIC nowadays will be rather difficult. And that CPU probably doesn't have any sort of virtualization extensions to make it competitive against, say, a Raspberry Pi 5.

[–] reddit_sux 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I have a Realtek and an intel NIC which I have not tried. Both are PCI. I am more worried about software, OpenWRT or DDR WRT work with it.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago

Code is code -- if it's compiled for the CPU and you have the libraries then it will work. The question is why? That hardware is ancient and will get destroyed by SBPCs that will pay for themselves in a few months of electric bills.