[noahthewindowsguy]

Most of of probably have an old pc in their home. And if it still works and has decent hardware there are still few uses that i could think of. 
1. Media Center -Using Kodi you can turn your telly into smart one. Kodi does not have high system requirements and has lot of useful plugins such as YouTube, Vimeo, Facebook and more. (You can use OpenELEC with has more apps and can be installed directly).
2. Emulation machine- using RetroArch or standalone emulators you can use your PC to run retro games.
3. File Server- If your pc has large hard disk, using it as a file server is a good option. With software such as FreeNAS or FileZilla server you can turn you old machine into file server in few minutes.
4. Game Server -You can turn your machine into a Minecraft or any other game server for private or public playing.
5. Web Server- With Linux HTTP server or IIS you can host your own website with even your own domain.
6. WiFi Router - using Pfsense you can have your very own custom WiFi router with more security.

I hope somebody finds this useful

[Khadeer143]

its kinds useful i agree with what you said since for turning to game server is it okay to turn pc for game servers since i tested to do it for mta sa its totally over heated pc because have to make it open for 24 hours daily since i tested it for 1 day then i stop doing it and switch to vps !

[chanalku91]

Old computers easily heat up and wasteful of power if for the Server, you better auction it off!
And buy Rapsberry PI!

And if you still intend to save your old PC, use it to save your backup data!

[Littlemaster]

If it is old desktop then just useless, the monitor is a big waste, I use the cpu for other desktops. It can be dumped in show case or we can make a museum of old computers. Will be valuable after some years. May be we can sell it to some historians who are interested to make a collection.
If monitor is working well we may can turn it to a TV Screen.

[rudra]

i think the best use case would be to use it without monitor as a gateway. it will have pfsense or something similar and keep the home network safe from intruders and also may be run some ai based pattern analysis that will find anomalous automated transmission and reception from systems active on the home network.

for that purpose we will need to compile a list of ips our os and other softwares contact automatically in the background for valid reasons and block other unnecessary connections...like telemetry ips for windows.

[Rehan]

Thank you for such a great information. All of those are awesome and useful. I have two old PC. One of them i use for my younger brother.He play GTA VC and Tekken 3 on it. The second one i use as a Television. Before this topic i am using it by a USB flash drive. I download and move new songs and movies to it. Now i will try using Kodi on it.

[noahthewindowsguy]

Kodi runs on top of Windows. and OpenELEC (a fork of kodi) run directly from the hard disk. I recommend you to buy a usb remote.

[tryp4vps]

I suppose the best use of an old computer ought to be donating the computer to someone else who needs it more.

For example, giving it away to poor student should be a good idea.

It would be more useful than finding ways to set up something that you may rarely use it.

[ikk157]

There’s really no proper “best” use case for an old computer. It really depends on your case.

How?

Well, let’s say you already have a media center (such as an apple tv, android tv, etc...), then there’s really no point in turning your old computer into a media center as you already have one.

Similarly, using at as a NAS might be pointless to many people. I personally prefer cloud storage over something local, so running a NAS on my local network would be a complete waste of time and resources in my case (and I’m sure im not the only one). I have an iCloud storage plan which works perfectly and is hella fast and reliable... not to mention that it’s accessible from everywhere.

So on so fourth.... it really depends on what you actually lack/need which the computer might be able to provide.

If you can’t think of something out of the top of your head to turn your old computer into, then you more than likely dont need anything that the old computer can provide. So don’t bother wasting your time on something you’ll never use in that case.

In that case, you’re better off just setting it aside and admiring all the great times you two had together... then move on.

I also like the idea of donating it to those who are less fortunate... they will for sure make much better use of it than you would! Great idea @tryp4vps

[deanhills]

I would use an old computer for experimentation like you would use a VPS. Try out new programs and experiment with different OS. If you're not an expert yet with Linux, use the old computer for hands on experience. Perhaps you could also try out different Linux Desktop configurations in preparation for a future where hopefully Windows will start to disappear.