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Old laptops in a colo as low cost servers

colaptop.pages.dev

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Re: Old laptops in a colo as low cost servers

#171

Post by Tade0 »

Havoc wrote: post #159

Ran an old laptop as home server for years. It’s OKish as a starting point into selfhosted world but overall not ideal. The battery is a fire risk and the entire thermal design isn’t really geared towards 24/7 operation. Not really something I’d co locate unless it was a DC physically near me so that stopping by is easy

First thing I learned attempting the same is that lid open vs closed are two very different situations in terms of thermals.

But overall without aggressive throttling these devices work a maximum of half an hour before the components get saturated with heat and performance tanks.

Re: Old laptops in a colo as low cost servers

#172

Post by prmoustache »

subarctic wrote: post #112
prmoustache wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most laptops work perfectly fine with the battery removed and for those who cannot replacing it with a large capacitor is usually a solution.

Using a capacitor sounds interesting but also pretty tricky, have you done that yourself?

I didn't as I never had a laptop with this issue but I have seen it done on a smartphone.

Re: Old laptops in a colo as low cost servers

#173

Post by matt-p »

I am surprised a serious facility would be happy having 100 old LiPo batteries in a rack. That is a (nasty) fire waiting to happen IMO. These are old batteries that may even have minor physical damage from being dropped and will be in maybe a ~25-30c environment.

Re: Old laptops in a colo as low cost servers

#174

Post by Havoc »

Tade0 wrote: post #171
Havoc wrote: post #159

Ran an old laptop as home server for years. It’s OKish as a starting point into selfhosted world but overall not ideal. The battery is a fire risk and the entire thermal design isn’t really geared towards 24/7 operation. Not really something I’d co locate unless it was a DC physically near me so that stopping by is easy

First thing I learned attempting the same is that lid open vs closed are two very different situations in terms of thermals. But overall without aggressive throttling these devices work a maximum of half an hour before the components get saturated with heat and performance tanks.

Yup. Gaming laptops with dedicated GPUs tend to fare better on this because internally the CPU and GPU is often bridged with a heat pipe and shared cooling

So thermals are specd for both running at same time but you only need CPU for home server so shouldn’t throttle

Re: Old laptops in a colo as low cost servers

#175

Post by eemil »

Maybe I'm in the minority... but this seems like an extremely compelling offering for certain use-cases. Not for enterprises, but for individuals and small businesses.

My off-site backup is a thinkpad x230 with a 1 TB HDD. It's currently at my friends house, and I access it with tailscale. 7 eur/month to colocate this in a datacenter with stable (and fast) Internet + power seems like a pretty good deal.

I can understand some of the concerns with user-provided hardware. Maybe a better model, would be for CoLaptop to offer hardware themselves. This would allow them to standardize on a few models, which opens up many possible improvements such as central DC power, power efficient BIOS settings, enclosures with cooling ducts, etc. They can still follow the "old laptop as a server" model by buying off-lease laptops from the corporate world.

Re: Old laptops in a colo as low cost servers

#177

Post by SadTrombone »

InsideOutSanta wrote: post #152
corvad wrote: post #20

This seems very sketchy. Give us your laptop and we promise we won't keep it... > © 2024 CoLaptop. All rights reserved. Website copyright is out of date by two years... And the website has been online since then. https://crt.sh/?q=colaptop.pages.dev > Thank you for your interest. Please submit the form below and we'll get back to you within 2 working days. > - Team @ CoLaptop.com Also colaptop.com is not even registe…

Also, isn't this just a huge fire hazard of they actually do what they claim? Or will they remove the batteries from these old, continually plugged in, poorly cooled laptops?

This is addressed on their site.

> We might modify your laptop to remove or power down the battery, wireless radios, etc. to ensure it can be used safely in the data center.

Re: Old laptops in a colo as low cost servers

#179

Post by [deleted] »

Havoc wrote: post #159

Ran an old laptop as home server for years. It’s OKish as a starting point into selfhosted world but overall not ideal. The battery is a fire risk and the entire thermal design isn’t really geared towards 24/7 operation. Not really something I’d co locate unless it was a DC physically near me so that stopping by is easy

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