Sorry in advance if this isn’t the right community, but I feel like I’ll get the best answers on lemmy here and I really don’t want to go back to reddit…
I currently have a 24/7 linux old-office-PC-turned-server for self-hosting, and a desktop for mostly programming and playing games (linux as a host plus a windows VM with a passed-through GPU). The server’s i5-3330 is usually at ~10-15% usage.
Here’s the actual idea: what if, instead of having a separate server and desktop, I had one beefy computer that’d run 24/7 acting as a server and just spun up a linux or windows VM when I needed a desktop? GPUs and USB stuff would be passed through, and I could buy a PCIe SATA or NVMe controller I could also passthrough to not have to worry about virtualized disk overhead.
I’m almost certain I could make this work, but I wonder if it’s even worth it - would it consume less power? What about damage to the components from staying powered 24/7? It’d certainly be faster accessing a NAS without the whole “Network-Attached” part, and powering on the desktop for remote access could just be a command over SSH instead of some convoluted remote WoL that I haven’t bothered setting up yet.
I’d love to hear your thoughts on this.
People try it, and usually it ends up being more trouble than it’s worth.
But you might set up a beefy computer and just use the whole thing as both a desktop and a server, and never turn it off.