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ThinkPad as a server: third time’s the charm

Turns out that using stable and performant computers as a home server is way too boring for me.

Running my ThinkPad T430 with an eGPU in 2024

Not all experiments end up being successful.

About the time my ThinkPad T430 ran with an external GPU

I had dumb ideas during my university days as well, but the budget was smaller.

ThinkPad T40: it can still run modern Linux, for now

Not bad for a laptop originally released in 2003.

Monitoring energy usage with smart plugs, Prometheus and Grafana

My obsession with measuring the power consumption of my devices reached a whole new level.

ThinkPad as a server: the follow-up

The ThinkPad as a server is back, this time with a couple of adjustments.

Anything’s a portable speaker if you’re brave enough

All about that time I converted a JBL soundbar into a portable speaker

Testing a cheap ExpressCard to NVMe SSD adapter on my ThinkPad T430

I got curious about an ExpressCard to NVMe M.2 NGFF adapter I saw on Reddit, so I got one to try out myself, ending up with a total of 4 SSD-s on my ThinkPad T430. Yes, four.

The minimum viable fan control script

Some assembly required. No, not that one.

Accidentally turning the ASRock DeskMini X300 into a semi-passively cooled PC

Experimenting with my fan control scripts ended up with an interesting discovery.

Can a laptop from 2012 be a viable home server?

I took a spare ThinkPad T430 and put all my home server workloads on it. Here’s how it went.

Trying out VR on an AMD Ryzen 4000 series APU

A quick and dirty experiment: can the integrated graphics on an AMD Ryzen 4000 series APU run Beat Saber?

My self-hosting setup has an UPS now, here’s my experience with it

UPS, I did it again 🎵

Why I went back to using a ThinkPad from 2012

How trying out new laptops and messing with my personal computing setup motivated me to go back to a laptop that some would call ancient.

VR, VFIO and how latency ruined everything

Alternative title: “Honey, I completely changed my server setup again!”

DIY cloud gaming: NVIDIA and Moonlight

Comparing the experience that AMD and NVIDIA can provide in a DIY cloud gaming setup.

DIY cloud gaming setup with VFIO, Parsec and AMD

A build log of how I set up my own ‘cloud gaming’ setup, including all the issues I faced and attempts to fix those.

Testing GPU passthrough on AMD Ryzen 7 5700G APU

A quick overview of my experience with setting it up on a small PC box and things to consider when attempting this yourself.

I’ve reached the self-hosting endgame

If all you have is a powerful workstation…

Whacky setups: seedbox on a wall

This is what happens when someone takes the meaning of ‘brute force’ too literally.

Database optimization adventures on low-end hardware

Who would have thought that performing basic database optimizations could be fun?

Quest towards energy efficiency part 1: the water heater

Alternative title: ‘Obsessing over things that nobody else cares about

Disk is OK

It’s all good, man.

How I fixed one hardware issue with another one

Two issues make a solution after all.

The little Wi-Fi AP that could

Depends on your definition of could.