Well, to be fair, I actually bought it to use as a desktop and upgraded it accordingly. Then a few months later I decided to build a Ryzen system. Optiplex got moved to server duty.
Well, to be fair, I actually bought it to use as a desktop and upgraded it accordingly. Then a few months later I decided to build a Ryzen system. Optiplex got moved to server duty.
I bought an Optiplex 7050 SFF for $100 USD at the start of 2023. Upgraded it to an i7-7700, 32GB RAM, 300W PSU from an XE3 model (stock is 180W), and threw in a spare Nvidia K1200 Quadro for shits and giggles. Runs almost my entire suite of self-hosted applications without a hitch.
Mine returns a 404, but on purpose. Everything I want internet-facing is behind a cloudflare tunnel on appropriate subdomains.
Programming and fields like it can be done remotely. Manufacturing cannot be done remotely (like you said). I work in a semiconductor fab and my job is most definitely not compatible with remote work. I would like to transition to a job where I can be remote though, at some point.
It’s meant for hot swapping, so you don’t have to shut off the whole housing. But yeah, the fact that it doesn’t turn back on after a sudden power loss is… inconvenient. Mine is stationed at my parents’ place (they have gigabit fiber).
I ran Merlin for a couple years on an RT-N66U. Eventually switched to Tomato and was much happier with it.
It died a couple years ago. Replaced it with a Unifi Dream Machine. No ragrets.
I don’t know what your budget is, but I recently bought a Sabrent 4-bay housing for ~$230:
It’s got USB-C 3.2, so transfer speeds are plenty quick, and each bay has it’s own locking door and dedicated power button for easy hot swapping. The only downside is that if there’s an unexpected sudden power loss, you have to manually turn each drive bay back on, and there’s no way to do it remotely.
I’m glad I went with AMD for my custom PC and my laptop.