[hospitalJail]

As someone who uses their computers every day, for 7 years... Then I hand them down to my kids.... Then I turn them into servers.

I find the cost of computing extremely affordable, even for high end stuff. Whats the amortization on a 2-3k computer over 7 years? How about if I use it 4 hours a day actively and 24 hours passively?

I have considered spending 10-30k on a computer given the recent AI craze, but the thing stopping me is that by 2025, a 10-30k computer in the AI space is going to be 2-4x better. Only in the last 1 year are we finding out the importance of absurd amounts of VRAM. I feel like the 4090's 24gb VRAM is going to age alright at best, but most likely poorly. (Not that 4090 buyers are going to have qualms upgrading to the 6090)

[imranq]

This is pretty cool, do you find the server farm of older computers valuable for your own work?

[hospitalJail]

Oh yeah, I have a computer for a minecraft server. A computer hosting my kiddo's website(just for fun, its silly, but randomly he will want me to pull it up from outside of the house). That same computer hosts some listeners/watchdogs for a media computer, but I havent actually used much of that information or features in a year (WFH kind of removed the need for me to use my remote tools).

I suppose that's it for now.

Oh, I thought of another use, I run a small business on the side and my interns occasionally don't have a laptop, I give them a crappy laptop. (they are basically just using excel/google sheets)