Purpose of a 2nd computer?

[refinedskillz]

It's all in the title. Im just curious.

[Lurick]

Tons of reasons, you could have one for work and another for gaming. One for you and a second for kids to use is another reason. Some people have their main computer and a second more compact computer for LAN events.

[RyanMacRocks]

Sometimes I build second computers and sell them to friends who want gaming PC's. The "second PC" in my sig is actually not mine, its one I just sold to a friend. I am also going to sell my scrapyard PC to a friend once its complete. Mostly just because building PC's is fun. I would probably keep them around for BOINC and Folding@Home if I had the money, however I don't, so I usually build a PC, sell it, then get just enough to build another and keep repeating it.

[EskilHR]

1. To have a server on a diffrent computer.

2. Use it to stream games to like twitch/YT gaming.

3. Have a super low powred machine that you could use to stream games to the living room.

[refinedskillz]

1 minute ago, RyanMacRocks said:

Sometimes I build second computers and sell them to friends who want gaming PC's. The "second PC" in my sig is actually not mine, its one I just sold to a friend. I am also going to sell my scrapyard PC to a friend once its complete. Mostly just because building PC's is fun. I would probably keep them around for BOINC and Folding@Home if I had the money, however I don't, so I usually build a PC, sell it, then get just enough to build another and keep repeating it.

Do you earn money that way?

[daniielrp]

I have it as a always on server 

[manikyath]

well, as someone with more "own" computers than most families...

 

- main rig, doing the do

- main laptop for office stuff

- "nightly" laptop, because everything except the display sucks about it (the other laptop's display sucks, but good enough for a text editor, and DAT 10 hour battery life)

- my home server thats a frankensteined prebuilt

- old rig for add-in card testing under windows, soon-ish gonna be my "workbench" pc, when i'm bothered fixing it up.

- old rig specificly for hard drive maintenance, which i do under linux, and on a distro that requires minimal maintenance because it *honestly* only fires up once every month.

- my "PiModore" running as my media center. (raspberry pi based "computer" built into a wooden box with a keyboard on top)

 

EDIT: oh, and i'm gonna be experimenting with using my home server as an encoding workhorse for livestreaming.

[Guest]

Overclocking

Gaming

Server

F@H

When friends come over

Rendering machine

Editing Machine

there are tons of things you can do,.

5 minutes ago, refinedskillz said:

Do you earn money that way?

You can sign up at EVGA's F@H team and earn some 10 EVGA bucks/year

[RyanMacRocks]

4 minutes ago, refinedskillz said:

Do you earn money that way?

Not really, sometimes I actually lose money..my friends usually want to pay less than the computer is worth and I don't really want to argue with them too much..if they weren't my friends I might try to haggle with them a bit to make a profit, but most people usually just buy from Alienware or CyberPowerPC if they don't want to build one themselves (even though its a terrible deal they still feel more comfortable buying from a large(ish) company).

 

I still enjoy building computers enough to take the $20-$50 or so loss and to help a friend out. 

[refinedskillz]

I have the pc "Maelstrom" in my sig, theres no HDD inside but I might want to repurpose it, I just dont know what for... Its also alot bigger than my current case, so yeah.

[handymanshandle]

I've considered building a NUC alongside my upcoming build so that I can have a hackintosh and have something a little more different than a laptop to use if my desktop is ever occupied by something else. Or if I wanted to stream and my desktop wasn't fast enough. (Not sure how well an i5 6600K would be for streaming if that's what I wanted to do).

[handymanshandle]

I guess I would also consider doing a second build for a NAS/File Server.

[RyanMacRocks]

1 minute ago, refinedskillz said:

I have the pc "Maelstrom" in my sig, theres no HDD inside but I might want to repurpose it, I just dont know what for... Its also alot bigger than my current case, so yeah.

I would get a $15 HDD off eBay and use it for either Folding@Home or an extra PC for playing with a friend.

[RyanMacRocks]

3 minutes ago, wcreek said:

I've considered building a NUC alongside my upcoming build so that I can have a hackintosh and have something a little more different than a laptop to use if my desktop is ever occupied by something else. Or if I wanted to stream and my desktop wasn't fast enough. (Not sure how well an i5 6600K would be for streaming if that's what I wanted to do).

What do you mean by streaming? Are you talking about like Steam in-home streaming?

[Bananasplit_00]

here is what i have:

Main rig: everything that i can do when im at my desk, and what i take to LAN parties

Main laptop: a shitty little laptop i use for school work, tho im getting rid of it after summer because im getting an awesome one from the Highschool im going to atend  (970 and an i7  )

awesome old burnt out buggy pice of shit laptop: used for when people come to my house without a PC and want to 1v1 me or something in CS:GO or other similar stuff, also happens to be magical and wont start without a battery in it(tho the battery is destroyed lol, it was on for 2 years without ever beeing turned off and i played a lot of games on it)

and then there is the experiment pile of hardware on my floor that i try to make something out of almost every week but fail because im missing something that i cant afford, ie processor, gpu, other shit.

 

and then there was the planed LAN pc that went down the shit can the second i saw the MSRP of the 1070, now im getting one of those instead lol

[handymanshandle]

7 hours ago, RyanMacRocks said:

What do you mean by streaming? Are you talking about like Steam in-home streaming?

Live streaming to like Youtube or Twitch.

 

Though that kind of streaming is an option too if you build a second PC.

[RyanMacRocks]

Just now, wcreek said:

Live streaming to like Youtube or Twitch.

Oh, ok, I feel stupid now XD. What (games) are you planning on streaming? A 6600K should be more than enough for streaming with a capture card while gaming, as for streaming without a capture card it would probably work fine for just streaming something like the WAN show but I'm not sure about gaming without a capture card.

[handymanshandle]

1 minute ago, RyanMacRocks said:

Oh, ok, I feel stupid now XD. What (games) are you planning on streaming? A 6600K should be more than enough for streaming with a capture card while gaming, as for streaming without a capture card it would probably work fine for just streaming something like the WAN show but I'm not sure about gaming without a capture card.

Well no, you weren't completely wrong. I'm not sure I actually would livestream games/gameplay. Just saying that if I did technically a second build might come in handy.

[LynxThe1st]

your main computer for gaming/work

 

and one with 2 titan x's for 6 dimensional turtlehub.com to wank off too

[Donut417]

I have a desktop which I use most of the time and my Laptop which I use for school mostly. Or when Im going to be away for extended periods. 

 

[WkdPaul]

I have 5 PCs, they are all used one way or another... why would you stick to 1 PC? Just curious

[Ben Potter]

Turn it into a NAS:

 

https://mycloset.tech/2016/04/19/turning-a-pc-into-a-nas-with-nas4free/

 

http://www.pcworld.com/article/2243748/turn-old-pc-hardware-into-a-killer-home-server-with-freenas.html

 

Turn it into a Plex streaming server:

 

http://lifehacker.com/5919558/turn-an-old-computer-into-a-networked-backup-streaming-or-torrenting-machine-with-ubuntu

 

Render server (machine just meant for exporting videos)

 

Twitch streaming.

 

Or, install ChromiumOS on it and just use it for homework!

 

http://www.computerworld.com/article/3036161/cloud-computing/cloudready-convert-old-computer-into-chromebook.html

[WkdPaul]

1 minute ago, Jon1764 said:

I personally do not see the point of having multiple desktop PC's. I have 1 desktop for gaming and work (main rig). I have a laptop (MBP) for working on the go (secondary machine, only for work), and I have a Mini PC (Z-BOX) as a small server for torrents (so I don't need to have my power hungry rig running 24/7 to seed torrents).

OP never said "desktop", he said "PC", a laptop, a NAS, a HTPC and even a Windows tablet can be considered PCs. That's why I said I have 5 PCs (desktop, laptop, NAS, HTPC and a Win8 tablet)

[Tedster]

I have my secondary PC as part of a standing desk setup, and then my Chromebook for...word processing mainly.

[trag1c]

I have 3 with another 2 coming soon. Laptop for work/pleasure on the go. Rig sig for work/play soon to be only play. Server for work. Within the next couple months I will be purchasing a work 5960x/titanX (might be dual xeon still working out the details) build as well as a onsite backup server.