You could upgrade, but if you actually want to learn tech I would recommend getting a server. Grab an old HP or similar machine and chuck a few HDDs into it and install proxmox. Keep all the VMs off your main system and then you can shut down without impacting them. If you mess up badly you will still have your main system to help recover from the mistake.
this post was submitted on 12 Jun 2025
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PC Master Race
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In terms of learning tech, I'm not looking to learn in the traditional "home lab" sense. I work in cyber, and the vms I'd be running are likely different from a regular home lab. I'd be learning how to make a windows domain and how to attack/defend/configure. Realising now I should have said that in the post.
I do like the idea of having a server rack but I don't have any storage space for that so it's a future idea at the moment. Hence upgrading the tower to effectively be a server but also gaming.
You don't have to get a rackmount server or even purpose built server at all. My lab at the moment consists of a stack of old HP desktops that I stuffed a bunch of memory and drives in. Regardless my recommendation would be to get a separate box to run things on as it makes things easier to deal with in the long run I find.
Main things you'll want from the box is memory and storage. CPU is not as important in a single user environment.
Home lab racks are tiny these days but I hear ya.
I have a HP EliteDesk 800 G3 as a server at home. It is small enough to fit on my printer stand, it has two 4Tb HDDs for data in raid 1 and one 256Gb SSH for the OS and VMs to run from. It has 32GB of RAM and works really well. I have a few VMs for managing media, one for my personal jabber server (Open fire), another for calendar and contact sync, and Syncthing. I also have another 16GB of RAM unallocated so far which makes me itch for another VM to spin up, but so far I haven't had something come to mind service wise. Because it is all off my main system I can do updates, change my HDD, take my machine with me, and I always know my server is OK. The same goes in reverse, I won't bork my main system when doing server stuff. It is very handy and I find it useful to segregate things, but your situation obviously could demand a different approach. That said, I would recommend it instead of upgrading just because of the stability and segregation of risk.
Hey I really appreciate you taking the time. That's super well reasoned and I see the benefit of the approach. I'll have a think!
I'm still getting used to people shortening "cybersecurity" to "cyber."
It just seems like you're saying you work a sex chat line for a living. No disrespect if you do, but I assume that's not what you meant.
Lol what part about that said sex worker/chat line? Well, you got me: For only $99.90 per hour I'll talk to you about zero trust best practice that'll get you rock hard. You'll be begging me for a vulnerable endpoint to appear in my network sooooo bad. And I might even let you phish one of my users but I'll make you my bitch first.
I'm really not sure of that's what sex chat lines are like but I think it'd do something for half of lemmy...
"Cyber" is short for cybersex.
That's like people calling Tech "the industry" I suppose.
I personally wouldn't upgrade on a dead socket.
5900XT and 64 gb of ram
is about $700
That sounds a lot to me for that. Maybe a used 5900X could be a cheaper alternative.
I definitely will look into used parts. Great idea
You could buy a second hand SFF machine. These are cheap (100€/$) and can run a lot of containers.
My first question is storage, how much do they come with and how easy is that to upgrade? Cos my pc is a tower I can easily upgrade by adding bigger drives and I've got like 3 full size drive bays plus some smaller ssd holder things. Point is I'm a little space conscious and while I'm happy to investigate, I've got space in my pc for any extra storage requirements.
So, uhm. Computer? With bigger specs? It go brrrrr.
More brrr more better? Huh. More brrr more better.
Used 5950X CPUs are like $270 on average, absolutely nothing wrong with used ones provided they're purchased on a reputable platform that allows returns, and saves a ton of money vs new.
That lets you also build another little PC if you want later, get a cheap b450 AM4 board to stick your old 2600 and RAM, then add a PSU and bam you've got a real server.
I like this idea, keep the old parts and reuse for something. I've always wanted a HTPC so maybe this gives me that in the future.
Try a mini PC, like a beelink, some have very good eGPU, they are a marvel of engineering, a small PC 5"x4" more powerful than full ATX tower
Might be a dumb question but how would these go for storage? Can you plug a lot of drives into them?
yes, external thunderbolt/usb-c
Don't, just get a refurb mini PC. I got one with space for a m.2 drive and a sata SSD 2’5 inch. If you need bigger storage use an external drive for storage and the m.2 for the VM's.
I bought this one, upgraded storage to m.2 2TB and ram to 32GB and was done for almost 300€. Runs pihole, home assistant, music assistant, docker, jellyfin and other stuff without a problem. It is file serving sample library's for my home studio too.
I'm about to build proxmox on a workstation from 2019. You should be fine, unless you attempt to run all your virtual machines at peak at once.
If you JUST WANT TO UPGRADE, do what you want. I have upgraded twice in the past ten years with the same reasoning. The last upgrade was chasing Windows requirements, and I abandoned that about 3 years ago.
I had a very similar system, but with an old R9 380, and upgraded to a 5700x and 64GB RAM. I picked up an RTX 3060 too. Now, I agree with your doubts - the upgrades didn't make much difference for day to day usage, and did feel like a waste sometimes. However, I like to take photos, and was using Photoshop with the AI features (before I realised how shit they are), and the upgrades made a huge difference.
My older games were mostly running smoothly with everything set on the highest graphics settings anyway, but now run perfectly even with half a dozen Firefox windows full of family tree research tabs open. I've played games while Firefox is using 32GB without issue. Minecraft can run at around 1,000 fps, which means that I can turn the settings up or have lots of mods installed.
I bought another motherboard and built the old parts into a computer for my kid, which is more powerful than my media server. The media server has about a dozen different Docker containers running things like the Arr suite, Immich, Navidrome, and a few others. I've got two small Minecraft servers and a magic mirror running on it too. I'm using these to learn more about Linux and networking, and generally improve my knowledge.
You'll enjoy the upgrades, and will have to do them eventually anyway, so you might as well enjoy them now 😁
I did a stint of YouTube gaming and coding tutorials at one point, I've sometimes considered getting back into it. I doubt I would because I'm a little too privacy conscious these days but it's a consideration.
Plus running Minecraft and other older games at 1k fps sounds hilarious. I think I'm realising I can find use cases for the upgrades
A lot of virtual machines for what?
I'm a nerd with a thing for punishing myself so setting up a small fake corporate environment that I can hack or configure would be fun. There's a tool called velociraptor that you can use to hunt over multiple devices which I want to learn.
Also just learning how to configure a domain, group policy, etc. I'd do like an 8 computer network if I had a machine that could run it. Setting up something like network segmentation, then "hacking" in and configuring attacker infrastructure sounds fun if not, again, totally overkill for what I want to do. I'd be phishing myself at the end of the day but it'd be fun to try.