dotitab398
New Member
Hi everyone,
I’m usually lurking here for advice on garden shed repairs or bike maintenance, but this weekend I ventured into some "digital DIY." With the colder weather inevitably coming back around, I’ve been trying to sort out the connectivity in the garage for my indoor training setup. The Wi-Fi extenders I had just weren't cutting it—way too much lag when trying to stream music or run training apps simultaneously.
I decided to finally run hardwired ethernet out there (drilling through double brick is always fun) and repurpose an old desktop tower I had gathering dust to act as a dedicated media player and localized firewall. It’s been a bit of a project getting the old hardware cleaned up and running efficiently.
The main snag I ran into was that the onboard ethernet port on the motherboard seems to be incredibly temperamental, possibly dead. I didn't want to scrap the whole machine just for that, so I started looking into internal upgrades. It seems adding a simple 1-port network interface card is the easiest fix. I honestly didn't realize how much difference a dedicated card makes compared to the onboard stuff until I started reading up on stability and offloading the CPU. It feels like a much cheaper way to save the PC than buying a new motherboard or a whole new system just for the garage.
My main worry is the physical fit. It’s a slightly older case, and things look tight near the existing slots. Has anyone else here retrofitted old office PCs for garage or workshop use? I’m curious if you found that adding a dedicated network card made a noticeable difference in connection stability over long cable runs, or if I’m over-engineering this just to avoid buffering on my playlist!
Cheers.
I’m usually lurking here for advice on garden shed repairs or bike maintenance, but this weekend I ventured into some "digital DIY." With the colder weather inevitably coming back around, I’ve been trying to sort out the connectivity in the garage for my indoor training setup. The Wi-Fi extenders I had just weren't cutting it—way too much lag when trying to stream music or run training apps simultaneously.
I decided to finally run hardwired ethernet out there (drilling through double brick is always fun) and repurpose an old desktop tower I had gathering dust to act as a dedicated media player and localized firewall. It’s been a bit of a project getting the old hardware cleaned up and running efficiently.
The main snag I ran into was that the onboard ethernet port on the motherboard seems to be incredibly temperamental, possibly dead. I didn't want to scrap the whole machine just for that, so I started looking into internal upgrades. It seems adding a simple 1-port network interface card is the easiest fix. I honestly didn't realize how much difference a dedicated card makes compared to the onboard stuff until I started reading up on stability and offloading the CPU. It feels like a much cheaper way to save the PC than buying a new motherboard or a whole new system just for the garage.
My main worry is the physical fit. It’s a slightly older case, and things look tight near the existing slots. Has anyone else here retrofitted old office PCs for garage or workshop use? I’m curious if you found that adding a dedicated network card made a noticeable difference in connection stability over long cable runs, or if I’m over-engineering this just to avoid buffering on my playlist!
Cheers.
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