I was given a Dell G5 5587 from 2018 with an i5 8300H. Screen is broken, but I guess that doesn’t matter. There are:

  • 2 ram slots
  • 1 SATA
  • 1 m.2
  • 3 usb 3.1@5gbps
  • 1 gigabit Ethernet port
  • 1 Thunderbolt 3 @40gbps

I want to use it as a server for backups, file server, host a homepage, run git to sync logseq, if possible use it as a mediaserver, spin up VMS to learn sysadmin stuff, learn to deploy code, try out different operating systems like plan9, freebsd, nixos.

I’m thinking that there are probably some storage solutions that let me connect a bunch of hdds to the Thunderbolt connector. So is that what I should do? Any suggestions appreciated!

I also got my old desktop, i7 920, 24GB ram, but I’m worried about power draw. Better to use the laptop?