Sadly, there is though: as nice and fascinating as it is to get a usable computer out of vintage hardware - sometimes the power consumption is too bad to justify not recycling the hardware :(
This is a completely valid concern. I recently moved my homelab from core 2 era xeons (not second Gen core i-series… Core2), over to Xeon E5 v4 processors. I looked today and the systems take about the same amount of power, but now instead of six cores, I have 10, and they’re newer, faster in every way…
Power draw didn’t change but now I can run something like 3-4x the workloads, which means I can cut the size by 1/3rd and I would drop power consumption and gain more computing power.
There is absolutely a limit to what’s useful. You won’t find anyone running a Pentium 3 anymore, even with Linux. It’s just not sensible.
I’d argue that anything core i-series 4th Gen or older, probably needs to be decommissioned soon, if not already. Most of the workloads that you could use that stuff for can easily be handled by a raspberry Pi, which will use less than 1/10th the power to do it.
Basically, if what you’re doing can be 100% completed in whole on a pi, either you need to upgrade, or simply move it to a pi. Simple as that.
Anything else is just burning power and heating your home with little benefit.
Exactly this, I got a gaming tower for free from a Friend featuring a nvidia gtx 980 and learned a short time ago, that my new m4pro laptop has nearly 5x gpu power for a fraction of electricity power needed in comparison
Sadly, there is though: as nice and fascinating as it is to get a usable computer out of vintage hardware - sometimes the power consumption is too bad to justify not recycling the hardware :(
This is a completely valid concern. I recently moved my homelab from core 2 era xeons (not second Gen core i-series… Core2), over to Xeon E5 v4 processors. I looked today and the systems take about the same amount of power, but now instead of six cores, I have 10, and they’re newer, faster in every way…
Power draw didn’t change but now I can run something like 3-4x the workloads, which means I can cut the size by 1/3rd and I would drop power consumption and gain more computing power.
There is absolutely a limit to what’s useful. You won’t find anyone running a Pentium 3 anymore, even with Linux. It’s just not sensible.
I’d argue that anything core i-series 4th Gen or older, probably needs to be decommissioned soon, if not already. Most of the workloads that you could use that stuff for can easily be handled by a raspberry Pi, which will use less than 1/10th the power to do it.
Basically, if what you’re doing can be 100% completed in whole on a pi, either you need to upgrade, or simply move it to a pi. Simple as that. Anything else is just burning power and heating your home with little benefit.
Exactly this, I got a gaming tower for free from a Friend featuring a nvidia gtx 980 and learned a short time ago, that my new m4pro laptop has nearly 5x gpu power for a fraction of electricity power needed in comparison