I got this PC from my dad when he upgraded in like December ish. I’ve been running Kubuntu on it and just using it like a sort of general purpose desktop for me and my wife, but I’ve got a hankering for some tinkering and feel like it has more potential, so I’d love some project ideas!
I had a 6700k until December just gone. For Linux it can do everything and anything. It’s totally usable! I only gave mine up because of CS2.
YUNoHost-server!
“same thing we do everyday, pinky. try and take over the world!”
That is a lot of RAM. Only a quad-core processor, but I imagine should still be fine for general-purpose desktop use.
What would you want it to do? Honestly I would call that over-specced for something like a file server and would probably consume a lot of power if left on all the time. Maybe a media server which can use the discrete GPU for video encoding?
I really don’t have anything specific in mind, but a media server is definitely something that’s been on my list of things I’d like.
As for the ram, it kind of is an absurd amount. I think it only started with 8 gigs (maybe 16), but since it was just my family computer growing up it would get continually more and more bloated and slow, upgrading the ram was the only way my dad knew how to upgrade it so he’d do it every now and then to try and speed it up lol.
For the media server, I recommend taking a look at Jellifyn. If you want some fancy statistics use, also give it a look at a Prometheus+Graphana config.
Run Docker containers on it, one for media server, one for DNS sinkhole etc.
definetly bazzite gaming htpc if you get a sufficient gpu in it. stream games from it ota.
if you take advantage of this amount of ram to virtualize, you could do both that and a server simultaneously, maybe more, you have 2 gpus and network that can be assigned independently.
the only downside would be power consumption if kept on, but that cpu can definetly handle more server stuff than you would expect.
i think you can also get one of those chinese xeons for dirt cheap on aliexpress and it might work as a hefty upgrade if you really need more cores for a few coins.
With that amount of ram you could make it a hypervisor and host a lot of containers and vms. Maybe proxmox would be a good fit?
Seconded! Recently switched my bunch of raspberries for a proxmox server. Would never go back!
Upgrade the GPU and its plenty good
it could probably run modern titles with a sufficient gpu.
My friend has a 2080 in his and he’s been able to play monster hunter wilds without much issue. It does support nvme.
(He’s on pop os)
Edit: that 6700 is a limiting factor in some titles. BeamMP really likes high core count CPUs.
YABS
Jellyfin server!!
You’ll eventually want more storage so LVM is the way to go for making your “drive” easily extendable.
I use my (very similar, just AMD and with a dGPU) for my Jellyfin server and to selfhost some AI models for experimentation, and I’m working on rolling out matrix synapse because selfhosting
Home server! Not sure how CUDA support is, but exo/petals node for AI and stuff? Immich for photos, Nextcloud for files, homeassistant!
GTX 745 is weird. It’s early Maxwell, not Kepler. It’s not particularly fast and as it is Maxwell, only supports fp32.
Truenas Scale NAS server, just add the storage.
Project 1: Install Gentoo on it. 🙂 Project 2: Keep Gentoo installed on it.
Install Linux on…
Never mind, carry on.
Imo too high power consumption for 24/7 operation so I wouldn’t use it that way. If I only had this machine to work with, i’d probably use it as a media server or NAS but turn it on only as needed. Wake on LAN to turn it on and configure it to auto turn off.
I have something similar, but with an old nvidia 1070.
I run a file server, nginx for my web dev, git server, postgres and, surprisingly, ollama.
The old nv 1070 is CUDA capable and it’s doing an OK job for my usage.
Check if you can put your hand on an old NV card for an AI agent.
Cheers!
Lol an old 1070 is my gaming rig. Computers are so friggin powerful these days
Switch to something that always delivers the latest KDE Plasma. That’s old.
