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

PandaBear said:
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.
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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 said:
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.
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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!
 
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.
 
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
 
Zee09 said:
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.
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Lastest release Debian 13 system requirements:

1 GHz cpu (minimum), Dual-core 2 GHz or faster (recommended). 2GB RAM (minimum), 8GB (recommended), 25GB storage (minimum) 50GB (recommended)

That would slide onto many old units.
 
GemStater said:
Lastest release Debian 13 system requirements:

1 GHz cpu (minimum), Dual-core 2 GHz or faster (recommended). 2GB RAM (minimum), 8GB (recommended), 25GB storage (minimum) 50GB (recommended)

That would slide onto many old units.
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My old DC was 4.0....GHz
 
Zee09 said:
My old DC was 4.0....GHz
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I'm running Linux Mint Debian Edition on two computers and Windows 11 on another. Got to say after using both operating systems back-to-back I'm disliking Windows more and more and favoring Linux. Windows is just so overly bloated for it's own good in my opinion and I don't think that's going to get any better. So other options are appreciated
 
GemStater said:
I'm running Linux Mint Debian Edition on two computers and Windows 11 on another. Got to say after using both operating systems back-to-back I'm disliking Windows more and more and favoring Linux. Windows is just so overly bloated for it's own good in my opinion and I don't think that's going to get any better. So other options are appreciated
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I tried just about all the Linux OS several years ago and I settled on Mint too, but for business I had to stay with MS.. I may try them when I retire and definitely return to Mint..
I even had that loser Lindows...a waste of time
 
Been running Mint on a couple of machines and I can't complain. I should dig into them as boot time is a bit long... not nearly as bad as Windows, but they seem to toss up some warnings and I've just never bothered to look into the complaints. i5-6500 on both of them. Although today I found out that my graphics card won't drive both monitors "well", not at 2k, so today I'll remove the card and reconfigure.
 
I had the first gen Phenom back in the day, and enjoyed it. My older box could crash out trying to render videos, but the AMD would just rip through the same operation in a fraction of the time. Very satisfying.
 
Windows 10 IoT LTSC 2021 (extended support til 2032!) would be a good option if you'd like to stick with a Windows OS, or maybe try Chromium OS Flex on it
 
PandaBear said:
Yeah I think something like a celeron would probably be a better choice for something like that. If ARM based need to be something more beefy than a Pi to handle the workload burst between fast forwards.
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When I do huge SQL queries I want something faster than a Celeron and I don't want to buy a new PC, so the i2700 is going to stay around until it dies. It has an Intel motherboard which is stupid reliable. It will probably go for another decade.
 
Brons2 said:
Windows IoT doesn't have a regular GUI, IIRC.
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Windows IoT Enterprise LTSC Evaluation is a de-bloated yet fully functional Windows OS. It has a 90-day trial license and is not intended for the general public but it does work well. You just need to reinstall it every 90 days.

 
Bottom_Feeder said:
Windows IoT Enterprise LTSC Evaluation is a de-bloated yet fully functional Windows OS. It has a 90-day trial license and is not intended for the general public but it does work well. You just need to reinstall it every 90 days.

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There's a script you can run that resets the 90 day trial timer, at least with Windows regular desktop and server OS. I forget what it is, but it can be done. I used to do that when I had a Windows server lab in my office, back in the Server 2012 days, to keep each CI going. Cheap, I know.

Not sure if it would work on IoT, but anyway.
 
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