Question What are some good things to learn if you want to make money? And what should you build?

[UKTone]

I want to build another gaming computer, my first workstation, and my first server, but idk if they are worth it since i know so little and do not know where to begin. Also, don't come here to be a Negative Nancy, tons of people on here tend to act like one on these forums, I do have an AS in Computer Information Systems, so i know a lot, but when it comes to the sheer amount of tech and that it's everchanging, my amount of knowledge is near void in comparison.

I am willing to spend thousands on this hobby, but i would like to make some of the money back at least and learn as fast as possibly through actually doing stuff and if i am making money from it, think that'd help with keeping me motivated, rather than a "i'm doing it for the money mindset" more so i'm doing it to expand my options and knowledge, and getting paid is a bonus. Same way i felt when i did construction, basically paid to workout.

Now with that out of the way, what are some things to look into? Sure AI is probably the main thing right now, but i don't where to begin with it. I want to get better with the everything tech related. I'm trying to get into almost literally everything related to tech (yes everything, ik tech is in basically everything, i am talking about that everything lol) essentially looking for all the things that would either give me the most bang for my buck and/or knowledge (efficiency). Edit: Bang for my buck here, i mean it could be easy/quick to learn and you could make money from it quickly, or it could take a long time to learn, but you'd make tons of money. Both i see as very efficient. Also, i want to learn multiple things at once (remember don't be a negative nancy or say you can't do that/you should focus on one thing and it make it like that's the only way to do things).

I'm not trying to increase my resume, this is mostly for me, maybe just extra money to maybe an entrepreneurship or full on business.

As far as the build stuff, i'll probably ask more details in the systems section, but i do want an idea for servers since i know so little about them, what are the benefits of going with 1 desktop server to a large server you see in movies? Sure the big/multiple have more space, but what else?

And is a workstation or server worth building at this time?

At what budget should you think about building a:

Workstation?
A desktop server?
A large server?
A room full of servers?

I do have a 5090 founder's edition, along with a 4070 super.

Any links, advice, and/or constructive criticism would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you.

 

[Eximo]

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.