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.
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.
E-waste
Best use is ewasting it because of power draw.
Total e-waste and a power draw. Even a Raspberry Pi 4 Model B can beat it to oblivion:
https://browser.geekbench.com/v6/cpu/compare/6390478?baseline=5583060
You could use it for Windows 98/XP retro gaming if you add a graphics gard, but for anything else it’s far too inefficient to be useful
