What can you do with a Phenom II X4 with 16GB of DDR3?

[Brons2]

I have this power hog sitting around from many years ago. Was going to put a bunch of videos on it and keep it powered off until I need to access them (VR180 video at around 8K resolution). Then I was thinking, maybe it makes more sense to move those drives to my main desktop by adding a PCIe SATA card.

What would you do with such an old system? I know for sure it won't run Win11 so it is going to be sitting around or recycled one day.

I'm sure it will run Linux so long as there are drivers for your video card, or if the card will do ok with software rendering. But yeah where you live isn't electricity over 40 cents a KWH if I remember right from your participation on the EV forum? I'm probably with the others to just dispose of it once you have put the data somewhere else. The value is very minimal.

Someone snapped up a similar PC that I had when I gave it away, it had a nice windowed case and decent PS, I guess that made the difference. It didn't last very long at all. Opteron something or another quad core with a Radeon 4950. It used 150-200 watts just sitting there doing nothing with Windows running, according to Kill-a-watt. And made a LOT of heat, it would take an air conditioned room into the mid-80s in 15-20 minutes if you were gaming with it. I backed up the data and wiped the hard drive with DBAN then put it out there for people to come get it. Gaming PC from the mid-late late 00s that I built.

 

[Bottom_Feeder]

Sanitize and sell it. There is always someone who will want it to play with.

And yes, you can still put Windows 11 on it with very little effort if you (or someone else) wanted to.

Funny, I inherited a very similar machine just this weekend, an AMD Phenom II X4 945 with 8GB of memory, a GTX 460 SE and a small SSD.

Unfortunately it has thwarted all attempts at installing Windows 11 with a Rufus-hacked installer which is not something I've ever had a problem with. Oh well. Time for Linux!

 

[Zee09]

I like messing with old computers
I have over 50 and my business machine is 14 year old dual core and I'm going to run it until it fails.

 

[ripcord]

The only old computers I haven't binned are old, old Atom single cores in micro atx form factor.

 

[dogememe]

Take it to the e waste recycler

 

[gathermewool]

I have a 1st gen core i7-920, 12GB of DDR3 that I upgraded to SATA SSDs, upgraded the PSU, graphics card (1070 ti bought from a member here, no less), and WiFi card. I likely won’t upgrade it to W11, but will only use it to game. I doubt Steam and the like will be risky. Zero internet surfing and zero financial stuff.

It’ll also make a great heater in the winter. Yes, we have all electric baseboard heat, so samesies