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Comment by VTimofeenko | Hacker News Reader

If it's just the mainboard and no screen, OP could put it in a dedicated case like the CoolerMaster one:

https://www.coolermaster.com/en-global/products/framework/

Those are pretty cool. I meant to highlight more, that the laptop has done super well. I can't even tell it's on as I hear no fan / no heat. I guess laptops are pretty good for this as they are great at sipping power when there is a low load.

Back in 2012 or so, I reused an old netbook (an Asus Eee PC) with an Atom CPU & 1GB of RAM, installed Ubuntu Server, and used it as a home server. It handled the printer, DNS-VPN proxying for streaming, and a few other things admirably for years. (And ironically was resilient to Spectre because its Atom CPU was before Intel added speculative execution)

Eventually, the thing that kicked the bucket was actually the keyboard (and later the fan started making "my car won't start" noises occasionally). Even the horribly-slow HDD (that handled Ubuntu Server surprisingly well) hadn't died yet.

One question, are you keeping it plugged in continuously, or disconnect it, sometimes? Because keeping it 100% will slowly degrade the battery, and during power loss it might fail.

In my country it's possible to have power loss occasionally, so having the battery on good health is important. I'm planning to setup two unused laptops, and a mobile for servers (different purposes) and power management, battery health has been an issue.

The Framework bios (at least recent ones, but not original, so maybe OP hasn't updated) allow for a setting that, if the power is plugged in continuously, it won't fully charge the battery, even if your normal power limit is 100%.

Here is a knowledgebase article that goes into the details:

https://knowledgebase.frame.work/en_us/framework-laptop-13-b...

You can also control this from userspace. On Linux, use something like:

    echo 80 | doas tee /sys/class/power_supply/BAT0/charge_stop_threshold

Most likely called charge_control_end_threshold (only mention of the identifier you used is in thinkpad_acpi.c), and not available on nearly all hardware.

https://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/ABI/testing/sysfs-c...

You can manually specify a fixed maximum, which was available from 3.04 (which was the BIOS I had back in late 2022 when I got mine).

One interesting note in the new functionality is that charging will let the battery drain by some percent before recharging.

A battery may turn into a spicy pillow. Please do consider a UPS.

UPS is a mandatory for my desktop already, but all of them goes bad in a year or two, unfortunately. Which is why I am considering Laptops for server.

2 years seems pretty quick. Do batteries die or something else?

Laptops generally don't have the best thermals, so there's a limit to how much chooch you can get from them.

Yes, that quick. It is probably leaded batteries do no like to get drained fully. I have two UPS now that dies as soon as electricity goes.

I am thinking of writing a script that will trigger the desktop to shut down as soon as the LAN goes down. My desktop is 1kw PSU, so, I am really not looking forward to replacing the 1.2kw UPS every few years.

These Laptops will be only doing backups, and small personal services

one for photo backups, replacing OneDrive

Another for sync, calendar service etc.

None requires heavy processing, in my knowledge. So thermals are not going to be an issue, hopefully.

Secondary issues are cats. And I don't have any idea how to stop them from stepping on the keyboards whenever they think like it, or jump on the router and cut the Internet :|

There's nut-server project to take care of the shutdowns. Compatible UPS can be read from using SNMP or USB and nut-server can distribute the status to the clients. Clients may elect to shut down.

Does your desktop actually drain 1kw during normal operation? If so, yeah, it would probably benefit from a separate UPS. You might not need to replace the whole thing though, just the batteries -- admittedly they are the bulk of the cost.

WRT cats -- I got myself a network cabinet for precisely that reason. Also minimizes the amount of fur getting trapped in vents.

For your next UPS purchase, specifically look for LiFePO4 batteries.

I have the original mainboard (i5, 11th gen) the laptop came with in that coolermaster case. Generally really quiet, but fans have kicked in a few times and it was pretty noticeable. Since it's VESA mountable, I might just move it into the rack at some point and let the rack fans take care of everything.

Here's a link to the case on the Framework marketplace:

https://frame.work/ca/en/products/cooler-master-mainboard-ca...

I put my original mainboard in one of these when I upgraded. It's fantastic. I had it VESA-mounted to the back of a monitor for a while which made a great desktop PC. Now I use it as an HTPC.

Or a 10” mini rack!! https://deskpi.com/products/deskpi-rackmate-t0-plus-rackmoun...

I always thought this could be what the Framework Desktop is. They could have made them stackable, so you could have one of these, with a GPU "hat" stacked on, connected via USB4/PCIe/whatever.

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