Hello self hosters,
Recently I came into possession of an old Desktop PC. Its configuration is,
- Pentium D 820, 2.8 GHz dual Pentium 4 core processor, supports 64 bit.
- 512 DDR 333 memory
- 90GB HDD
- no graphics card
- 3 PCI and 1 AGP slot
I was planning to put a ethernet card and use it as a router. It was to theown as garbage. Is what I am planning feasible or a good idea. Or it would be better as trash.
Pentium D processors are pretty power hungry, so factor that into your thoughts. Also make sure you put a modern OS on it that is getting security updates. It probably has Win XP or Vista installed which isn’t safe to connect to any network.
It should work fine as a router as long as you don’t enable any of the packet inspection features. For basic routing and firewalling for a home network it should be plenty powerful. I would personally put a small SATA SSD in it as the main drive and ditch the 90GB HDD.
As an additional idea, if you put a larger SATA drive or two into it you could make it a NAS.
Thanks i was planning to put OpenWRT or DD WRT on it ditching Windows XP
You do not want a 200W router, ma dood. This thing is ancient, and not going to be optimized for power usage whatsoever.