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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.
I have actually gotten up to run benchmarks on my PC on particularly cold nights.
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.
That's the dream right there.
my grow tent
One of these days I also need to get around to starting my grow operation myself lol
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
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.
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.
Electricity generated heat from your servers is incredibly inefficient compared to a heat pump.
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"
Conversely it's exactly as efficient as a resistive heater, which lots of people still use.
Thank you, this thought had occurred to me recently, and I was wondering if it was accurate.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
“Incredibly inefficient” is a bit of an exaggeration, heat pumps typically run at an efficiency of about 2, occasionally 3. It’s better but not by orders of magnitude. Not gonna make much of a difference at 500 watts.
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.
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"?
There, you're out.
That's a lot of bandwidth, but it sounds like a good idea.
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.
Been done years ago and failed miserably: Nerdalize
Maybe a failure at a commercial level, but ~~people~~ tech nerds are still heating their homes in the winter with crypto miners
My server only draws like 300watts max, not a very good heater
Put a 4090 in there and pump those numbers up!
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.
That's why I like my mini PC with a laptop GPU. Its not the most powerful, but it can play most stuff at 1080p Very High settings and get 60 FPS all while using 300ish watts. Good enough for me. I really don't want to deal with noise, size and power consumption of a kitted out gaming rig anymore.
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.
my gaming PC literally is a primary heat source in my cold office.
My homelab is in the same space as my furnace so the ambient heat in that space is preheating my ducts. In the summer when the AC runs the cold air leaking into the space helps cool my homelab. In my garage office my desktop with 9 spinning drives and 3070 really keeps the space comfortable.
I have thought of this exact thing and thought I was the only one.
I got a laptop for work, using it at home and I want to use my computer because if I just use my laptop its cold. When my pc runs the rooms is nice and toasty.
Electric heaters literally cost 25 bucks
psychosomatic. Heaters are expensive to run, but if I'm just running my pc, I "Have to" be running that so it doesn't feel more expensive. I have heaters I just keep not turning them on until its too cold.
Just like me playing City Skylines 2 on a cold morning
