My daytime work is being a Laboratory Engineer in Protein Engineering and Research. As is common for work places like mine, the turnover of computers is pretty high. There are always old computers being thrown away.
Last week we had a spring cleaning day, and in the electronics garbage, I found that someone had discarded a cute old Dell Optiplex SX270.
Since I finished my Xbox-build, I have been wondering what to do next for "an unnecessarily complicated SFF build". So when I saw this little PC, I thought that "Hey, this could be a nice, and challenging project". Because, as per usual, Dell obviously cannot stick to standardized parts, but instead has their own custom OEM motherboard and cooling system. But with the new Ryzen APUs, I see huge potentials for something badonkers.
My initial idea would be to create a G2400-based capture-card based PC with an Elgato HD60 PCI capture card. that also works as a gaming HTPC. But I am open to other suggestions, so please feel free to suggest something I haven't thought of. And since I haven't really looked under the hood yet, I cannot promise anything about this project; it might never turn out to anything.
And like the Xbox before it, it might take some planning and time to do, AND I am also planning a full custom looped ATX-system at the moment. So this would not be a high priority, but more of a fun planning-project.
So what do you guys think? Can this become something more than an dusty old Win XP-machine?
Last week we had a spring cleaning day, and in the electronics garbage, I found that someone had discarded a cute old Dell Optiplex SX270.
Since I finished my Xbox-build, I have been wondering what to do next for "an unnecessarily complicated SFF build". So when I saw this little PC, I thought that "Hey, this could be a nice, and challenging project". Because, as per usual, Dell obviously cannot stick to standardized parts, but instead has their own custom OEM motherboard and cooling system. But with the new Ryzen APUs, I see huge potentials for something badonkers.
My initial idea would be to create a G2400-based capture-card based PC with an Elgato HD60 PCI capture card. that also works as a gaming HTPC. But I am open to other suggestions, so please feel free to suggest something I haven't thought of. And since I haven't really looked under the hood yet, I cannot promise anything about this project; it might never turn out to anything.
And like the Xbox before it, it might take some planning and time to do, AND I am also planning a full custom looped ATX-system at the moment. So this would not be a high priority, but more of a fun planning-project.
So what do you guys think? Can this become something more than an dusty old Win XP-machine?