I’ve got a PC the kids and I built years ago as a gaming machine that we don’t use anymore. Thinking of repurposing it for use with my home automation setup (replacing my current Raspberry Pi 4 with Home Assistant installed).

It’s certainly COMPLETELY overkill for that, so I’m curious what other ways I can make use of it as a home automation server of some sort. Or maybe there’s some reason it’s actually a bad idea to use it at all for this?

Specs…

  • CPU: Intel i3-8100 3.6Ghz
  • Memory: 8GB
  • Storage: 2TB
  • GPU: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 Ti
  • Motherboard: B360M Pro-VDH MS-7B24

Currently has Windows 11 installed on it.

    • RydRychards@alien.topBEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      This. If it’s completely overkill it’s likely going to use a lot of power and you’ll pay for compute power that you don’t actually need.

      I’d stick with the pi4. I had 12 or so services running on it without problems.

      • ankole_watusi@alien.topBEnglish
        1·
        1 year ago

        Not only that depending on how old you might get something much more powerful in a little fanless case that uses way less power. Especially if ARM architecture. Though there are decent Intel chips targeted t this market.

    • iamjamir@alien.topBEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      8th gen intel has really good idle, so not power hungry at all. most likely in 20-30w range depending on PSU