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

[PandaBear]

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.

 

[goingplacesanddoingstuff]

Personally, I’d cannibalize what I could and throw the rest away. It’s pretty much worthless 16 year old tech. Not worth the power it draws.

 

[ripcord]

I second the cannibalize and dispose plan.

 

[Quattro Pete]

Power hungry and

Not worth the power it draws.

Yeah, very power-hungry while not delivering much in terms of performance, so no good for home server duty. Take whatever parts you can salvage and get rid of the rest.

 

[ripcord]

Most modern routers have a USB 3 port intended for attaching a USB drive for shared storage. That might be fast enough for viewing 8K content.

 

[BMWTurboDzl]

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.

Turn it into a streaming PC and run Hot Tub streams?

 

[lakestone]

It would make for some cool keychains, because there are far better options out there.

 

[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.

 

[Rand]

its 1/2 the speed of my 13 year old laptop.

Drill holes in the hdd and recycle.

 

[PandaBear]

Most modern routers have a USB 3 port intended for attaching a USB drive for shared storage. That might be fast enough for viewing 8K content.

Have one, tried it and not stable enough, video was choppy.

 

[wwillson]

I have a 13 year old i2700k with 32GB RAM and hardware RAID that has been quietly running in the corner doing useful things since it was new. It consumes about 90 watts of power 24x7. I tried replacing it with a Raspberry Pi 5, but I can't make the RP5 reliable. It will randomly crash about once/month. Not tolerable.

 

[ripcord]

I have a 13 year old i2700k with 32GB RAM and hardware RAID that has been quietly running in the corner doing useful things since it was new. It consumes about 90 watts of power 24x7. I tried replacing it with a Raspberry Pi 5, but I can't make the RP5 reliable. It will randomly crash about once/month. Not tolerable.

Oh, yeah! I was given a brand new workstation powered with one of those back in the day. Like a rocket ship compared to the laptop I was issued.

 

[PandaBear]

I have a 13 year old i2700k with 32GB RAM and hardware RAID that has been quietly running in the corner doing useful things since it was new. It consumes about 90 watts of power 24x7. I tried replacing it with a Raspberry Pi 5, but I can't make the RP5 reliable. It will randomly crash about once/month. Not tolerable.

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.

 

[GemStater]

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.

Recently at a Goodwill, I found a similar timeframe HP Pavilion running an AMD processor. Paid like eight bucks for it just for fun. With some spare parts I had laying around, I got it up and running; loading it up with Linux Mint. It's not terrible. I can surf the web, check e-mail, and watch YT vedios at 720p. If expectations arn't too high they can be kind of fun to see what they will do. Plus I find a bit of nostalgia computing on the older hardware. That said, it's not my main work horse but a backup computer if the others are tied up at the moment. Maybe not the best option for you but an option nonetheless...

 

[Merek]

At work I bought a Lenovo desktop that had an AMD business class CPU that was a dual core. I can't remember the model but upgraded it to the x3 720 which had the same specs but with the extra core. I think that was around 2010-2011, it came with Windows 7 32 bit. 4gb memory and 300gb hdd. We are actually still using it for email and the typical internet browsing. It has 4x memory slots and I've replaced the memory but had to move them around to the other ones because some are bad. I found a replacement board on eBay but haven't had time to swap it as it's still used literally everyday.

I was messing with it today and I know it's been slow but ran a speedtest and it only got around 200mb or so down..... I don't know exactly what the plan we have with Comcast but my phone on wireless was getting 600mb so something is significantly wrong here. I plan on taking a laptop to see how it compares. The original plan was to replace the board and then upgrade with an SSD to Windows 10 64 bit which I may still end up doing if I can get something else to use in the meantime.

Back in the day I actually bought a new AMD x4 965 but never even used it, I still have it around here somewhere. I think by the time I was going to get around using it I was already moved on from that.

 

[dubber09]

My main home PC runs AMD x4 965 BE since I've put it together approx 15 years ago...

 

[Pew]

I was messing with it today and I know it's been slow but ran a speedtest and it only got around 200mb or so down..... I don't know exactly what the plan we have with Comcast but my phone on wireless was getting 600mb so something is significantly wrong here. I plan on taking a laptop to see how it compares. The original plan was to replace the board and then upgrade with an SSD to Windows 10 64 bit which I may still end up doing if I can get something else to use in the meantime.

Nah, nothing is wrong. Older PCs do get slower internet speeds. IEEE 802.11n that was released in 2009-ish with mimo will net you around 300Mbps.

 

[Merek]

Nah, nothing is wrong. Older PCs do get slower internet speeds. IEEE 802.11n that was released in 2009-ish with mimo will net you around 300Mbps.

The Lenovo desktop is using a wired gigabit lan connection. I tested it again today with Speedtest and got 243mb down. We have Comcast business internet which includes the phone and the modem/router is a special unit that we have to use because of the landline but it was a new unit that was installed sometime over the last year or so. I have some older Dell Vostro laptops that I was going to use as a test but are actually the same vintage and also very slow. I may just end up using my Google Pixelbook with a USB C adapter.

I have a lot of experience with these older AMD systems, not really all that powerful but they just seemed to work well and were very reliable machines

 

[2009Caraman]

That was an awesome cpu in its day especially for the price.

Its pretty useless today. Youd do better to buy a $150 mini pc if you need a 2nd pc.