CPUs i still own [#]
Intel Mobile Pentium 4-M 1.8 GHz [#]
2002, 30W, 1c1t
Status: In use (print server)
the first real computer i used a lot, lived inside a thinkpad t30, back when they still were made by ibm instead of lenovo. it is still used to this day, it runs debian stable with the lxde desktop environment and its used as a print server since the only computer i have with a parallel port. its also nice to have for nostagia purposes
Intel i7-6500u [#]
2015, 15w, 2c4t
Status: In active use
the heart of the main computer i use on a day-to-day basis, a thinkpad x260. i also have a thinkpad x260 with an i5-6300u. this cpu is fine for most people, and the whole laptop only cost me £110. it is dual booted with windows and debian unstable.
Intel Core 2 Duo P8400 [#]
2008, 25w, 2c2t
Status: In active use
you may think this cpu is old and awful, but cpu development has stalled so much that its perfectly fine to use day-to-day. i use it for web browsing, programming and writing latex documents with its excellent keyboard. in fact im typing this blog post on it now! its age has an advantage- core 2 duo era cpus can have the intel management engine totally removed from them. making this one of the few laptops that can be 100% FOSS. mine uses a custom bios called libreboot
flashing the bios with a raspberry pi
Intel Celeron J1800 [#]
2013, 10w, 2c2t
Status: In a cupboard
i got this bundled with a server case i bought off ebay. its basically worthless for reasons i will explain. its attached to an embedded itx motherboard. its too slow to run a decent desktop environment on (it's somehow slower than my P8400?) it would make an excellent pfsenserouter, due to its very low tdp, but it doesnt have hardware AES or enough pci lanes to run a dual port nic. my A4-5000 is actually older but has twice the cores, hardware AES, and more pci lanes. apparently AMD seemed to be better at including hardware features in their low-end processors back then
AMD A4-5000 [#]
2013, 15w, 4c4t
Status: In a cupboard
i actually have two of these. they are low power and reliable, and can be netbooted. they're used for testing currently. i formerly used them for a router, and for a backup NAS
Intel Core i5-8500T [#]
2018, 35w, 6c6t
Status: In active use
this is the cpu inside my dell optiplex 3060 sff pc. its only really used to play games (and i dont really play any games any more) so i'm probably going to sell this thing soon.
Intel Core i5-9400T [#]
2019, 35w, 6c6t
Status: In active use (main server)
this is the main cpu that my servers run off. its currently the host for this website too. it lives inside my main NAS, which runs truenas, and an ubuntu virtual machine. its got a 35w tdp so its fairly cheap to run, and has a passive cpu cooler for quietness. i got it for only 90£, used cpus are crazy cheap nowadays. this is likely to be the brains of my file server for a long time yet.
*i took this picture *before* doing the cable management ;3*
AMD R5-5600X [#]
2020, 65w, 6c12t
formerly used as my main pc, but is now used by my bf, who uses it to play hoi4 at a kjillion fps. main article
Intel Core i5-11500T [#]
2021, 35w, 6c12t
this is currently my main workstation pc main article
Intel Core i5-6400 [#]
2015, 65w, 4c4t
this is used as my main NAS, as it has a faster cpu than my old A4-5000, and has more pcie lanes, which means more drives can be attached, as well as a 10 gigabit NIC. main article
Intel Core i5-1145G7 [#]
2021, 12-28w, 4c8t
is used in my main laptop, my thinkpad p14g2, which i switched to since it has a gpu
CPUs i used to own [#]
AMD A9-9420 [#]
2017, 15w, 2c2t
Status: Sold to a friend
i still have a soft spot for this cpu, which lived inside the first decent laptop i had. i did my a-levels on this thing. it was also my first server. i used to run openmediavault on it and host docker containers on it. later it became a web server.
building a server from a laptop has some unique advantages: a low tdp so its cheap to run and a built-in UPS. however for some reason this laptop was crazy loud. eventually it was relegated to live downstairs.
the picture on the left is my first ever file server with a raspberry pi on top
Intel Core i5-6300u [#]
2015, 15w, 2c4t
Status: Broken
the CPU in my first thinkpad x260. sadly its broken
Intel Pentium Silver J5040 [#]
2019, 10w, 4c4t
Status: Sold
imo this is the most interesting CPU i've owned it blows me away how good low-end CPUs are nowadays. this is a quad core cpu with passive cooling in an embedded itx motherboard. it was used for my first proper server running ZFS. imo this is the best cpu to use as a simple file server. it has 4 sata slots and you can add more with a pcie hba like i did, and even more using the m.2 slot using something like this. its only real disadvantage is the lack of higher speed networking (i guess you could put a 2.5gigabit nic in), a limit of 8Gb of memory, or enough horsepower to run VMs.
Intel Xeon E5-4620 v3 [#]
2015, 105W, 10c20t
Status: Sold
i had this CPU for a while when i was experimenting with virtualization. it has lots of pcie lanes, but its single core cpu performance isn't that great.
