"New" Laptop as a server?

[Floofy]

Hey,

I have an Omen 15-dc0301ng it's only 1 year old and I wanted to ask if its stupid to use it as a server.

I manly use if I'm on the go or not at home for games and work. But when I'm at home I'm using it as a Game-Server that is on 24/7.

And I just wanted to know is it bad for the components or am I overeacting?

[SpookyCitrus]

Laptop batteries will degrade overtime if left plugged in 24/7. Laptops aren't necessarily made for 24/7 server use, they generally get hotter than desktops and have nowhere near the cooling capabilities of them or a server rack. I'd be worried about the battery as well as components getting too hot, if you're constantly running it under load 24/7 it more than likely will start to have thermal issues due to the thermal compound drying out, which is very common in laptops especially workstation or gaming variants.

[RAS_3885]

15 minutes ago, Floofy said:

Hey,

I have an Omen 15-dc0301ng it's only 1 year old and I wanted to ask if its stupid to use it as a server.

I manly use if I'm on the go or not at home for games and work. But when I'm at home I'm using it as a Game-Server that is on 24/7.

And I just wanted to know is it bad for the components or am I overeacting?

As long as whatever you're doing isn't causing excessively high temps (laptop thermals are typically worse than desktop thermals for the same workload) then it's not inherently bad for the components.

 

Battery degradation may be an issue though...

[Viper9]

Any PC can be a server, so it's alright. But of course the laptop components aren't server grade so the machine may die sooner (hard drive fail most likely). So it depends how important is your server, if you don't really care it's alright, but if don't want any downtime this isn't the best solution. 

[wisex]

Personally I think that a lot of people here are overreacting some, do laptops have worse cooling than desktops? Well duh yea, but even then your gaming oriented laptop is gonna have significantly better cooling than a traditional thin and light. I'm also going to assume that you're no longer going to use this laptop as a primary driver considering that you plan on running it 24/7, so battery degredation, although it may happen, shouldn't be that big of a concern. Lastly the laptop will run hot if its at max capacity, but I doubt that it'll actually damage your laptop because even laptops still have the means of keeping themselves safe while they're running hot, its not like it'll just run until it catches on fire.

[SpookyCitrus]

39 minutes ago, wisex said:

Personally I think that a lot of people here are overreacting some, do laptops have worse cooling than desktops? Well duh yea, but even then your gaming oriented laptop is gonna have significantly better cooling than a traditional thin and light. I'm also going to assume that you're no longer going to use this laptop as a primary driver considering that you plan on running it 24/7, so battery degredation, although it may happen, shouldn't be that big of a concern. Lastly the laptop will run hot if its at max capacity, but I doubt that it'll actually damage your laptop because even laptops still have the means of keeping themselves safe while they're running hot, its not like it'll just run until it catches on fire.

When you work on multiple gaming laptops a month you start to notice things. The top three issues I run into are 1. The thermal compound on both the CPU and GPU is dried or drying out. 2. The battery degrading or dying because it is plugged in 24/7. 3. The DC Jack is busted. The Battery and DC Jack issues are common with every kind of laptop gaming or otherwise but the thermal compound issue is mainly a gaming/workstation laptop issue and is the most common issue I see with them. If the computer is getting too hot the computer will shut itself down to keep it safe, yes they do have that as a fail safe, however if you're using a laptop to run a server that needs to be going 24/7 and your laptop is constantly overheating and turning off, that's less than ideal. And if the battery dies and just the charger is powering it, it should work as intended but two things can also happen, the bios or software in the computer can tell the battery is having issues and limit the performance of the laptop(even with it plugged in), or it could just shutdown and not work all together until it is removed or replaced(very rare but it does happen). Personally I wouldn't use a laptop for a 24/7 game server, I'd be much more comfortable using a desktop or an actual server. OP can do it if they like, I just think they should know the risks.

[Kisai]

7 hours ago, Floofy said:

Hey,

I have an Omen 15-dc0301ng it's only 1 year old and I wanted to ask if its stupid to use it as a server.

I manly use if I'm on the go or not at home for games and work. But when I'm at home I'm using it as a Game-Server that is on 24/7.

And I just wanted to know is it bad for the components or am I overeacting?

Yes, it's stupid to use a laptop as a server , or at least as one that runs full tilt. eg, don't use it as a crypto coin miner.

 

If the fans run full tilt, then it will certainly kill the laptop one day. That's just science of how much dust will get into the laptop fan before it gums up and then the cooling failure melts the cpu/gpu. The smaller the laptop, the shorter that time is. Like a 17" laptop that is 2" thick is probably going to last a while, where as an ultrabook that is 1/4" thick will probably melt within a few months.

 

More to the point, HP and Dell laptops tend to come with some of the vPro systems management stuff, so you can treat it like a server (eg remote wake, pxe boot, etc) but you'll probably not get much mileage out of it.