Post by @SpatchyIsOnline@lemmy.world

2026-10-03 01:45 UTC

Old laptop with non-funtional display... What do I turn it into So being the tech guy in my family, I just “inherited” my brother’s old laptop. It’s internals are reasonably modern, it has a Ryzen 5800HS and a RTX 3050Ti inside, the only issue is the display somehow died (I’ve opened the laptop up and I can’t tell how, but it definitely seems to be a hardware issue as far as I can tell - the laptop simply no longer detects the display is connected at all). I’ve been able to confirm that full video output still works over HDMI (including access to the BIOS and boot menu, which I’ve heard isn’t a given with laptops) and that it can still boot with the battery removed as long as the stock 20v power supply is used (it won’t boot with only usb-c power) So my question is, what would you do with this thing? A bit of background on my current setup: I already have 2 mini PCs which I use for Docker containers (*arr stack, Jellyfin, Navidrome, Nextcloud and some other web services. All these run fine and storage is my bottleneck rather than power currently) and the other I use to run Home Assistant OS with a couple of relevant addons (or “apps” as they insist on calling them now) I’d hate to have that 3050Ti sitting around unused, but I don’t really feel like I want or need a local AI server so I’d welcome any suggestions with interesting use cases for that GPU :)

Replies (4)

@Australis13@fedia.io 2026-10-03 02:18

I would tend to agree with the other comments - media center device hooked up to the TV if you can't fix the internal display.

Open ##4972209
@fuckwit_mcbumcrumble@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2026-10-03 05:28

Double check the CPU is still running at full speed. Without a battery most mopdern laptops will throttle CPU (and maybe GPU) performance. Also there’s no reason to remove the battery if you can cap it’s charging. 80% is better than 100%, but if it’s plugged in 24/7 cap it as low as it will let you. But 60% is even better than 80% for health. And any cap below 100% severely reduces the chance its battery will expand.

Open ##4973535
@ahmedezat_katteb@lemmy.world 2026-10-03 06:18

If you end up running it headless (game streaming host, Jellyfin/Immich worker, whatever), two small things save a lot of hassle: Get an HDMI dummy plug (a “display emulator”, a few euros). With no internal panel detected and nothing on HDMI, the GPU often has no proper display to render to, and Sunshine/Steam streaming in particular wants a “real” display to capture at the resolution you pick. Check the BIOS for a “power on after AC loss” / “auto power on” option. Plenty of laptops don’t have it, but if yours does, it comes back on its own after an outage like a proper server. Otherwise Wake-on-LAN from one of your mini PCs is the fallback. And since storage is your bottleneck right now, open it up and see if there’s a second M.2 slot. Some of these chassis have one, and then it could hold some data while also taking the Immich/Paperless ML jobs on the 3050Ti.

Open ##4974580
@toddestan@lemmy.world 2026-10-03 06:29

You could make it a small server with a built-in UPS. Or hook it up to an external display, keyboard, and mouse if someone wants to use it as a desktop computer and possibly for some gaming. Or just use it to play around with different Linux distributions, or something like that. One of the problems though with running a laptop as a server running 24/7 is the hardware really isn’t built for that, especially gaming laptops that tend to already run a bit on the warm side. Given it’s also AMD and I’ve not found their mobile stuff to be particularly good, honestly I’d be tempted to pull the RAM and storage, assuming it’s not soldered in place, and junk the rest of it.

Open ##4975325