I love my gaming PC and 3d printer in the winter. Keeps my room toasty without me needing to run the heat much at all.
I hate those same things in the summer when I gotta have fans or AC just so I don't melt lol
this post was submitted on 15 Jan 2025
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I turn off Folding@Home in the summer. Otherwise it's on 24x7.
Wow f@h still kicking?
For everyone who isn't trying to mine crypto, yeah.
Shit with my gf and I both gaming, sometimes we have to open a window in the winter
My server rack (in the cold garage) is now enclosed and the air filtered and piped into my grow tent which then regulates with cold air from the garage.
my grow tent
One of these days I also need to get around to starting my grow operation myself lol
I'm just kinda hunkering down with carts and waiting for MN to get dispensaries cause I'm lazy.
I was given some white widow clones and unfortunately could only keep them outdoors most of the time. Meant some generally early harvesting. I'm ready this year lol
That's the dream right there.
I saw an interesting post that said
All electronics are 100% efficient in the winter
Now that we have reverse cycle AC (heat pumps), 100% is a low bar.
I know, but I didn't wanna pollute my comment with a bunch of pedantry, despite my name. Also people living in apartments often don't have access to heat pumps.
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Back in high school, my buddy used to VNC into his Athlon 3200+ WinXP machine from school and start SuperPi calculating a million digits. Took 40minutes and got his room proper toasty by time he got home.
Here me out: a global computing cooperative –
Collectively owned servers and gaming PCs are run at max power wherever it's winter at the time, streaming the data to where it is needed.
There, you're out.
That's a lot of bandwidth, but it sounds like a good idea.
Depends on your workload, pi digits calculation for example require a lot of compute, but the bandwidth required to communicate the result is trivial. Not saying every workload is the same, but compute to bandwidth relationship is not linear
I mean data center excess heat is already used for district heating and that's a shared resource. Not free or communal computing resource though.
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So it sends data to/from a remote place? A place that's probably far away, kinda like those fluffy-looking things in the sky? May I suggest that you name your idea "cloud computing"?
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Electricity generated heat from your servers is incredibly inefficient compared to a heat pump.
Yes, but im already using the computer for other things and it would be more inefficient to double up on heating sources. I can confirm from personal expirence a PC in a small room can sufficently act as climate control.
Conversely it's exactly as efficient as a resistive heater, which lots of people still use.
Interesting thought experiment - is a pc exactly as efficient as a resistive space heater? In a pc some tiny amount of electricity is converted to light and sound and kinetic energy instead of heat. But then again, don't those other forms of energy just eventually just turn back into heat again? Hmmm...
Yes, it all eventually becomes heat, though not all in the room. Some sound escapes, and some light goes through the window or whatever. Those losses are incredibly minor though.
What makes a big difference between a PC and something purpose built as a heater is generally how the air circulates the room. A space heater is going to project it out into the room, baseboard heaters will create a wide convection current. A PC on a desk in the corner will typically just blast hot air at one localised spot on the wall which isn't really ideal for dispersing it throughout the room.
What if I reverse the direction of my fans (in from the backside and out from the front) and point it to face the middle of the room?
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I would think actually more efficient because heat is the waste product not the expected product like a stand alone heater. Unless you are specifically running your PC at max just to create heat then just using your PC as intended and gaining "free" heat is a bonus.
You will certainly lose a couple of milliwatts if you have a WiFi antenna on your PC.
The rest will be turned into heat in your room, probably.
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No one is comparing efficiency of a PC as a heating device to a Heat Pump.
So I'm not sure why you felt the need to post this.
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This is true, but it's shocking how few people have heat pumps, especially in colder climates.
Still, it's also far less efficient than using a gas furnace (to the point that most people would actually burn more fossil fuels per Joule of heat from a resistive heater than from just burning the gas directly in a furnace).
Of course, if you're doing something useful with that energy, using the waste heat is an extra benefit. Like using waste heat from a power plant for district heating.
Not sure who's down voting you. You're right. There's Heat pumps that can move 5x more heat than the energy they use. While a PC only gives you max 1:1
I interpreted the sentiment from OP that it was just reframing the reality in either case: the server is going to run, and it's going to generate heat.
You can either frame that reality as "waste heat is being generated" or "my furnace doesn't have to work as hard"
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My home server was serving a dual purpose of keeping my closet full of 3d printer filament dry, but then the most recent TrueNAS Scale updates killed it by dropping my average CPU load from 10 to 4%.
Relevant xkcd:
ALWAYS. A. RELEVANT. XKCD.
Just open a few Chrome tabs. That'll ramp the resource usage back up again.
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my gaming PC literally is a primary heat source in my cold office.
Yeah, I've been saying we should make crypto mining space heaters. I don't think there's much of a market for it, but it's an interesting thought. Worst case, it would be an amazing gag gift.
Or, if you believe all crypto is immoral (arguably fair), then make a space heater that runs something like folding at home.
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Is there any way to store surplus waste heat for redistribution months later? The only thing I can think of is just a really large, high heat capacity mass surrounded by incredible insulation material, with a heat pump system built in to it. Which would be incredibly impractical.
You just described a water heater.
One that would potentially store heat at super dangerous pressures of steam granted.
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I have actually gotten up to run benchmarks on my PC on particularly cold nights.
For the heat and electricity, it's stunning how much compute I get from my somewhat modern gear vs. my 40U rack of 10-years ago.
Gaming PCs are about to top out at 1500W, which is a very solid space heater. Honestly, it complements a heat pump just fine. If you can set up a fan pushing air out of your gaming den and/or home server room you're at least starting to justify your stupidly wasteful setup.
I have to be honest, all the PC master race bros are deep into the awkward monkey puppet meme hoping all the AI haters don't realize they're using hardware that can easily run very competent genAI at competitive speeds to play CounterStrike. If you want to make and post that one you have my blessing.
Do you expect me to teabag you in 1080p at 120 Hz like some medieval peasant? My nutsack textures require at least 4K at 240 Hz or else you can't make out the individual hairs as they brush your nose.
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Sadly, for a few years now I've had TDP as one of the main criteria when buying parts for my machines, so there really isn't enough waste heat from my machines to even just keep a room warm in Winter by playing heavy 3D games (the worst machine tops at around 180W with 3D and CPU heavy games - so basically the same heating as a really bright incandescent light bulb - whilst my home server uses about 20W at 100%)
On the other hand what I save in power consumption on my machines can be used on a dedicated heating solution that's ON only when I need it rather than the whole year.
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