I set up an enterprise grade firewall on a computer I got from a deceased relative. It was probably already 8+ years old when I got it and had been replaced with something newer. I had it for a long damn time; during covid when everyone was home and a lot of people were having their home internet connection clogged up with multiple users doing zoom sessions and remote work, my crusty machine was doing a good job of balancing out and shaping our meager 100mbps connection for five people. I think the CPU maybe got to about 10% at peak, but usually ran closer to 4% most of the time. It used up all the memory, but that was how it was supposed to work. It had a traditional spinning hard drive in it.

I kept it until it was about 18 years old when I finally retired it. It never broke, never failed, hardware just quietly ran and ran. I never turned it off unless the power went out. I only retired it because it was too big (full desktop tower case) for the home I had moved into. I wiped the disk, loaded a minimalist linux on it and donated the whole thing, monitor, keyboard mouse all in perfect order.

Hardware lasts and you don’t even have to be nice to it.