Grandpa's Ashes is a system I threw together to have a dual-boot Linux/Windows workstation available at the desk in my server room.

I have a huge homelab and having a workstation right next to my rack is helpful in a lot of situations where I want to work on a desktop system but juggle hardware in and out of rackmount servers or work on configuring a switch while it's in the rack. I really don't like laptops very much, and prefer to have a fully featured desktop experience when I can. This system spends 90% of its lifetime in Linux, where I use PopOS as the general management interface for my homelab and any "work" I'm doing. The 1TB SSD and Windows 10 exist for "guest gaming" duties, when the need arises.

And I had the hardware around, so why not. The base of this system does not change but the GPU changes wildly depending on what I'm doing. I constantly buy and sell extra hardware so the GPU in this system is generally whatever I have around that doesn't suck too bad but I don't want to keep bad enough to put in an HTPC.

Does that make sense?

Good enough to get use, but easy enough to remove that I can pull it in 5 minutes when I inevitably trade it off for something else.

Starting Config:
Intel 3960X @ 4.2
Asus X79-Deluxe
8x4GB(32GB) Kingston HyperX Blue DDR3-1600
Samsung 850 Pro 1TB SSD (Windows 10)
Samsung 850 Evo 240GB SSD (PopOS)
Corsair Carbide 270R
5x Corsair SP120, 1x Corsair SP140 Fans
Noctua NH-U12S