What skills should be developed to earn income? Which projects or systems should be created?
What skills should be developed to earn income? Which projects or systems should be created?
I’m planning to construct another gaming setup, my initial workstation, and possibly a server, but I’m unsure if it’s worth the effort given my limited experience and uncertainty about where to start. Also, please don’t come here just to act negatively—there are many people here who behave that way. Although I hold an AS in Computer Information Systems, my knowledge is still quite limited when it comes to the vast amount of technology and its constant evolution.
I’m prepared to invest thousands into this hobby, but I’d like to recoup some of that investment and learn quickly by doing real work. If I can turn a profit, it would help keep me motivated rather than just being driven by money. It’s similar to how I approached construction—basically working out the grind.
Now, focusing on what to consider: AI is likely the biggest trend right now, but I’m not sure where to start. I want to improve my skills in all tech-related areas, aiming for maximum value and efficiency. I’m looking for options that offer good returns or learning opportunities.
If I focus on getting practical experience rather than just building for resumes, I’d like to know more about servers. What are the advantages of choosing a single desktop server over a large one you see in movies? Sure, big servers have more capacity, but what’s the difference?
And at what cost should I consider building:
- A workstation?
- A desktop server?
- A large server?
- A room full of servers?
I already own a 5090 founder’s edition and a 4070 super. Any advice, links, or constructive feedback would be really helpful. Thanks.
Server is kind of a meaningless description until you have a purpose for said server. Home file and print server can be quite simple, these days people do that with a raspberry pi. NAS usually means a bespoke system or a re-purposed desktop. Other common homebrew would be software firewall and routing.
Whether you build with consumer parts, or get traditional rack server components is mostly down to scale. If you are planning to serve 10 people, 100 people or a million people. What are these people's processing, storage, and memory needs? Bandwidth? I don't think anyone can provide even loose figures without something specific in mind. I would say the simplistic answer would be when the total cost of ownership and operation is exceeded by the income potential before the hardware becomes obsolete.
Generally for a proper server solution you need a static IP address, can't just be relying on the typical home internet. And you want redundancy. Sometimes it is difficult to get that in a residential setting. Certainly most home ISPs will not run you two lines without a business/commercial account. Though sometimes you can get away with multiple ISPs (which would be a case for a custom router solution, you need to aggregate or set up failover).
I would say the days of a simple home-brew solution being used to make a profit are limited. Web hosting as a private enterprise was a thing in the past, these days you can just rent a cloud server as an individual and get all the benefits of off site hosting without needing a true middleman. And for everyone else there are website hosts that are basically limited development platforms. People used to host private e-mail servers, still a thing, but again, so many online/secure businesses out there already doing it. Not profitable at the small scale.
Only thing I can see a purpose for would be your 5090. There are peer to peer distributed rendering applications. You can basically make your card available for other people's processing needs. But your electricity costs may make that less desirable.