Ask HN: What to do with a powerful PC if you don't play games?

3 pointsangryGhost2y ago4 comments

I bought and assembled a fairly powerful/expensive PC (at the time) intel 12900k + RTX 3080. Within a few weeks of building it I stopped playing games on my PC to focus on other parts of my life.

Should I sell it? Is there anything interesting people who no longer game do with their machines?

4 comments

BeetleB2y ago

How much will you make from selling it? Just use it as a regular PC.

Ideas:

Install Gentoo (not a joke! I have a 22 core CPU and it really helps)

Do heavy video processing.

Get a 4 channel TV Tuner card and a lifetime Plex membership, and use it to DVR OTA broadcast. Transcode them, which is where a beefy machine comes in - the default ts format takes up too much space. Lots of good shows on PBS. And as much as people complain about Plex, there is no good substitute for their DVR service.

Can the GPU be used for ML applications? Things like Stable Diffusion? If so, go wild with it.

theGeatZhopa2y ago

I assume, it would be better to give your computer to me :)

If you keen to help the world, you can do some seti@home stuff. Or, setup a Tor node..

Otherwise, just keep it. In 10 years it will be not a powerful computer anymore. Or give it to some NGO or some other guys

superchroma2y ago

For what it's worth, my decent PC from ten years ago is still not awful now. PCs aren't moving quite as quickly as they used to.

theGeatZhopa2y ago

Yes you're absolutely right. It won't be trash after 10 years. My laptop is already 12. Got a new SSD 5 years ago and it runs faster than ever. I can't do LLM training on it, but one can't have everything at once.

Refurbish and reuse :)

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse

Ask HN: What to do with a powerful PC if you don't play games?

3 pointsangryGhost2y ago4 comments

I bought and assembled a fairly powerful/expensive PC (at the time) intel 12900k + RTX 3080. Within a few weeks of building it I stopped playing games on my PC to focus on other parts of my life.

Should I sell it? Is there anything interesting people who no longer game do with their machines?

4 comments

BeetleB2y ago

How much will you make from selling it? Just use it as a regular PC.

Ideas:

Install Gentoo (not a joke! I have a 22 core CPU and it really helps)

Do heavy video processing.

Can the GPU be used for ML applications? Things like Stable Diffusion? If so, go wild with it.

theGeatZhopa2y ago

I assume, it would be better to give your computer to me :)

If you keen to help the world, you can do some seti@home stuff. Or, setup a Tor node..

Otherwise, just keep it. In 10 years it will be not a powerful computer anymore. Or give it to some NGO or some other guys

superchroma2y ago

For what it's worth, my decent PC from ten years ago is still not awful now. PCs aren't moving quite as quickly as they used to.

theGeatZhopa2y ago

Refurbish and reuse :)

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse