Personally I stopped messing with old hardware on the desktop side.
Old laptops make great servers though -- built in UPS and KVM! Fire up some containers and enable all the P states
But as a desktop there is a lot that is obnoxiously slow or flat out unusable on old gear. The modern web is really taxing on old hardware like this and its super frustrating to experience severe lag on even basic sites like youtube
Old laptops make great servers for the very reasons you mentioned Built-in UPS, good enough performance and also reusing old hardware instead of a landfill.Am currently using an 8GB laptop for a server as it's become rather expensive to use a 400W (on average) 4U server 24/7.
Old laptops make great servers though -- built in UPS and KVM! Fire up some containers and enable all the P states
But as a desktop there is a lot that is obnoxiously slow or flat out unusable on old gear. The modern web is really taxing on old hardware like this and its super frustrating to experience severe lag on even basic sites like youtube