[PROJECT] Laptop into dedicated server!

[FlyingSpoon]

Laptop Project

Hi there, well my friend gave me his old, half-broken functioning laptop, and I thought I would turn it into something useful, instead of just throwing it away.

What's wrong with it?

- Screen broken/not functioning.

- Battery removed/lost.

- AC Adapter/Charger lost.

What are you going to do about it?

I am going to turn it into a fully functioning 24/7 dedicated game server. I have ordered an AC Adapter so it gives it direct power, ( no need for battery ) so it doesn't have any short-circuits or loose power, I want it functioning at it's best. The advantages are this -

It comes with this pre-installed which is great -

http://i.imgur.com/8RhTITq.jpg - Hard Drive, 160GB Capacity

http://i.imgur.com/WDpuSuT.jpg - 2x 1 GB RAM ( Altogether 2GB )

So I am deciding to re-install the default OS into Windows Server 2008, and run a gameserver on there, and turn off the laptop at the end of each month and take full care of it.

Tell me what you guys think, and suggest!

[WhoAmI]

Maybe install there some linux distribution there? Like Ubuntu which has nice desktop and good functionality.

[Bilal135]

You better purchase a laptop cooling pad as well, because if you are going to keep it on for a month, it will be heated up and eventually, it will shut down it self.

[FlyingSpoon]

I'll look into it, I might aswell leave it on 12 Hours, and switch it of each day rather than 24/7, I'll just do 12/7 : D

[Mr_Moose]

Usually it's not the screen that is broken but the contact from your graphics to the main board, if your screen started to show red lines randomly a couple of weeks before it completely broke it's most likely the graphics. That's nothing you replace in a laptop tho but there is a trick that usually works, open it up and pick out the main board, leave the CPU and GPU on it but remove the memory, hard drives and other loose components, then put it in the oven at 200 degrees Celsius for 8-9 minutes. That should fix the broken circuits.

Maybe install there some linux distribution there? Like Ubuntu which has nice desktop and good functionality.

Linux is a great idea here, but using Ubuntu with a desktop that takes 500MB RAM is pretty useless when you don't even have a screen. Ubuntu server might be a better choice with it's ~50MB usage. You may connect an external screen while installing tho until ssh is setup so you can login remotely using an ssh client like Putty if you're on Windows.

You better purchase a laptop cooling pad as well, because if you are going to keep it on for a month, it will be heated up and eventually, it will shut down it self.

Using it as a server usually gives more balanced performance usage than as a client, with those specifications given the risk of overheating is pretty low, however keep it away from anything that may burn. Even if it never get's overheated the temperature may still be high enough for some materials to burn. There are 2 rules to remember here, heat goes up and don't block the fans, they need a lot of room to remove out the heat.

[FlyingSpoon]

Well the screen is completely smashed, well not smashed but has a lot crack in it and the screen is completely white, you cannot see anything,

I have connected it to an external monitor, but the problem is, it only shows up on my external monitor, when you reach the password and username area. Also, when I use my AC Adapter, the Laptop switches off in 2-3 mins, no idea why.

So next,

- I will be ordering a battery.

- A new screen.

[Johnny Killstone]

Make sure you have regularly backup over USB or network, with just one 2.5" HDD (which most laptops has) he risk of a crash or a overheated system is huge, 2.5" drives aren't meant to be running 24/7. It might work a few months then you'll probably get disk errors and has to restart everything and hope everything isn't broken. An SSD drive could be a workaround on this issue but old laptops usually don't support them.

[Noki]

Make sure you have regularly backup over USB or network, with just one 2.5" HDD (which most laptops has) he risk of a crash or a overheated system is huge, 2.5" drives aren't meant to be running 24/7. It might work a few months then you'll probably get disk errors and has to restart everything and hope everything isn't broken. An SSD drive could be a workaround on this issue but old laptops usually don't support them.

A lot of laptops are starting to support SSDs. Ever since 2011, they have started to become more and more popular. But in the case of raysmta, I doubt he will be able to use an SSD in his laptop, considering it is so outdated.

[Mr.ShariQ]

Umm, SSDs are best but expensive. 500GB Samsung SSD costs about 350$ and 500GB Hard drive costs about 120$. a huge difference and SSD for old laptop wont be a good option.

about overheating stuff. Use Thermal paste between "Processor & Heat sink" I personally used this paste and my laptop dont heatup. even fan don't need to cool down my laptop. my laptop is always noise free. when your laptop is cool down, your hard drive automatically will work good and wont cause any errors.

Best thermal paste that I recommend. Arctic-Silver 5 Thermal paste

[FlyingSpoon]

Thank you guys for the tip,

What I have done is took out the smashed screen, and I have just disconnected it from the Motherboard, to stop the laptop from over heating and stuff..

I have run the Laptop under a test for 7 full days non/stop, running antivirus, scanners and 1 MTA Server in the background.. It hasn't seemed to over heated and the CPU was running cool, and the surface I had placed it was quite cold, but everyday I would switch the laptop's places ( without turning it off ) to an colder surface.. Only the disk had heated a little throughout them 7 days, but overall it was running quite nicely and smoothly without any problems!

Thanks for the tips guys!

[Bilal135]

Tell us more about it. A few months have passed, so how was your experience?

[The_Walrus]

Tell us more about it. A few months have passed, so how was your experience?

All MTA servers listed on this page are in fact currently hosted on old laptop hardware, (modified however for practical reasons mentioned by previous posters in this topic). Considering how stupid the idea may sound before being tested in reality, I got mostly positive experience.

Although it's outsourced I can ensure that the up-time and performance are in class with any host offering dedicated servers. In some cases it's actually better than using a home or small business server as laptops has a battery which works as UPS in case of shorter power failures.

At the end it's pretty much only a question about how much money you are ready to pay for a reliable host with nearly 100% up-time. BTW, your own server "SAN" is on the list I linked to earlier. As you asked about this project I assume you didn't notice any major difference either.

[FlyingSpoon]

My experience was great!

I bought a battery for my laptop, disconnected all wires related to the LCD Screen and casing.

And reinstalled the OS to Ubuntu ( via using my PC ).

So, once my current PC finishes updating, then I will create a small storage home server and maybe run a private MTA Server for scripting purposes on my Laptop.

[neal777]

Debian is better than Ubuntu. It consumes less ram as far as I know. Usually 3mb without GUI

Edited September 3, 2015 by Guest

[FlyingSpoon]

Debian*

[neal777]

Yeah right, typo fixed ^^

[The_Walrus]

Debian is better than Ubuntu. It consumes less ram as far as I know. Usually 3mb without GUI

3MB sounds a little too optimistic, it's rather 30-40MB and up to 50MB after you installed all the libraries (32bit compatibility) and stuff needed to run your MTA server. But it's definitely better than Ubuntu in cases where a few hundred MB of RAM matters.

[FlyingSpoon]

Topic still going

[MrPluffyFluffy]

Question

1.Port Speed?

2.How Many Player?

Suggestion

1.Just Use Torrent Instead Of Port Forwarding

2.Increase RAM (Or Set Up A VRAM) To Increase Performance

Thats All

[Olle Risk]

How would you use torrent to replace portforwarding? you do know portforwarning means that you open a port in your routers firewall to allow people from the outside to connect to your server while torrent does the opposite, i.e allow you to connect to clients outside your network. Most ISP's also block or reduce priority for torrent traffic as it's mostly used for illegal file sharing, that would make your server very laggy.

Secondly, yeah vram (or swap space as the real name is) is a way to let your HDD take over when you run out of RAM, this is a good idea on VPS'ses running on SSD drives on modern hardware with RAID1 activeated, most shared hosting companies also use this to keep their prices low. But on an old laptop with an old HDD it's just insane, what if the disk crash or get's overheated? You'll loose everything.

You'll have to pay for extra bandwidth up to 10mbit/s plus power to keep the laptop running and if someone decide to launch a ddos attach or even a small dos attack you're fucked. If you want a cheap solution without overselling just go for an ovh VPS or a 99stack shared plan. That would save you a lot of headache.

[FlyingSpoon]

No point now ,

I threw it away. It was useless. Worked for a good 4 months then motherboard stop responding.

[MrPluffyFluffy]

1.I Know Torrent Make It Laggy But It Was Just A Temp Solution (and You Right I was Little Clumsy While Making Server.About Illegal Sharing You Right Many Gamer That Doesnt Have Money Download Pirated Game Through Torrent)

And There Was Torrent Alternative:VPN Or Simply Hamachi-Like Program

2.Not Using HDD As Vram But Using Flashdisk Instead

[FlyingSpoon]

I am using the HDD as an internal HDD for my PC, so I have 2 HDD's now.