7 ms·

Hah that's amazing. I remember when I did bitcoin mining (only 1 GPU) and thinking it was getting noticeably warmer upstairs in our house, and how actually the

by davedx 7y ago

Hah that's amazing. I remember when I did bitcoin mining (only 1 GPU) and thinking it was getting noticeably warmer upstairs in our house, and how actually the bigger miners could use the heat to heat buildings. Great to hear this is being put into action. Computing -> heat.

rypskar 7y ago
This is one of the reasons why I only run BOINC on CPUs during summer and on GPUs and CPUs the rest of the year. My 10 year old i7 have been running 100% mostly 24/7 for 10 years with no problem, while 2-3 graphics cards have given because of the heat
bduerst 7y ago
That's reportedly how someone gave themselves permanent brain damage by mining bitcoins in their bedroom: https://www.zdnet.com/article/a-minor-bitcoin-miner-injury/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/a-minor-bitcoin-miner-injury/
ineedasername 7y ago
I remember being able to mine on a single Nvidia GPU on my laptop, significantly less efficient than an AMD one (at least at the time) and giving it up as pointless when it only generated a single bitcoin in a week. And then a year or so later being thrilled when I read an article that the price skyrocketed to $200 and I remembered that one coin, and sold it. Oh well!
- stordoff 7y ago
  I looked up a few days ago that I had about 23 mined BTC, and sold them for about $1-2. Not going to lie, it stings a little (each one is now worth more than a year's income).
bigbaguette 7y ago
Following this logic, I often thought electric heaters are a waste of energy since they perform no computation. But a French company is having a go at this: https://www.qarnot.com/computing-heater_qh-1/ https://www.qarnot.com/computing-heater_qh-1/
- mehrdadn 7y ago
  Confused, could you explain? A heater that puts its energy into something other than heating is just being inefficient at heating, right? Shouldn't you want it to put 100% of its energy into heating?
  - greiskul 7y ago
    Well, not really, let's say we want to heat a room to 25 degrees Celsius. If we are converting 100% of the electricity used to heat, it will take X energy. If we use the energy for computing instead, and use the waste heat to heat the room, it will take maybe a little more energy. But the thing is, the computing is valuable, and with the money we can gain by "renting" the computing, we can buy more electricity, so we come out on top. Now, like someone else commented, if you really want to heat an environment, the traditional resistance heating is not the best solution. With a heat pump, you can cheat, and get an efficiency of over 100% (because instead of using the energy to heat the room, you are using the energy to take heat from somewhere else and also put it in the room).
    - mehrdadn 7y ago
      Are you trying to be energy-efficient or are you trying to be cost-efficient? I thought the former but it seems you mean the latter.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
  - Sharlin 7y ago
    To very good approximation, 100% of the energy used by a contemporary computer is turned to heat. The amount of negentropy generated by the computations is utterly dwarfed by the increase in entropy in the computer's surroundings. Computers are space heaters that happen to do some calculations as a side effect.
    - rightbyte 7y ago
ryanmercer 7y ago
>Hah that's amazing. I remember when I did bitcoin mining (only 1 GPU) and thinking it was getting noticeably warmer upstairs in our house, and how actually the bigger miners could use the heat to heat buildings. I switched to a Chromebox as my daily driver 2 years and change ago because my bedroom would be about 1F higher than the other rooms at idle and I saw it 11F hotter one time after several hours of one of the BattleField titles running dual GPUs. The added benefit is, even with the PC running at idle 24/7 the Chromebox would have paid for itself right around the 2 year mark in energy savings at a full load.

by davedx 7y ago

rypskar 7y ago

This is one of the reasons why I only run BOINC on CPUs during summer and on GPUs and CPUs the rest of the year. My 10 year old i7 have been running 100% mostly 24/7 for 10 years with no problem, while 2-3 graphics cards have given because of the heat

bduerst 7y ago

That's reportedly how someone gave themselves permanent brain damage by mining bitcoins in their bedroom: https://www.zdnet.com/article/a-minor-bitcoin-miner-injury/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/a-minor-bitcoin-miner-injury/

ineedasername 7y ago

I remember being able to mine on a single Nvidia GPU on my laptop, significantly less efficient than an AMD one (at least at the time) and giving it up as pointless when it only generated a single bitcoin in a week. And then a year or so later being thrilled when I read an article that the price skyrocketed to $200 and I remembered that one coin, and sold it. Oh well!

stordoff 7y ago
I looked up a few days ago that I had about 23 mined BTC, and sold them for about $1-2. Not going to lie, it stings a little (each one is now worth more than a year's income).

bigbaguette 7y ago

Following this logic, I often thought electric heaters are a waste of energy since they perform no computation. But a French company is having a go at this: https://www.qarnot.com/computing-heater_qh-1/ https://www.qarnot.com/computing-heater_qh-1/

mehrdadn 7y ago
Confused, could you explain? A heater that puts its energy into something other than heating is just being inefficient at heating, right? Shouldn't you want it to put 100% of its energy into heating?
- greiskul 7y ago
  Well, not really, let's say we want to heat a room to 25 degrees Celsius. If we are converting 100% of the electricity used to heat, it will take X energy. If we use the energy for computing instead, and use the waste heat to heat the room, it will take maybe a little more energy. But the thing is, the computing is valuable, and with the money we can gain by "renting" the computing, we can buy more electricity, so we come out on top. Now, like someone else commented, if you really want to heat an environment, the traditional resistance heating is not the best solution. With a heat pump, you can cheat, and get an efficiency of over 100% (because instead of using the energy to heat the room, you are using the energy to take heat from somewhere else and also put it in the room).
  - mehrdadn 7y ago
    Are you trying to be energy-efficient or are you trying to be cost-efficient? I thought the former but it seems you mean the latter.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
- Sharlin 7y ago
  To very good approximation, 100% of the energy used by a contemporary computer is turned to heat. The amount of negentropy generated by the computations is utterly dwarfed by the increase in entropy in the computer's surroundings. Computers are space heaters that happen to do some calculations as a side effect.
  - rightbyte 7y ago

ryanmercer 7y ago

>Hah that's amazing. I remember when I did bitcoin mining (only 1 GPU) and thinking it was getting noticeably warmer upstairs in our house, and how actually the bigger miners could use the heat to heat buildings. I switched to a Chromebox as my daily driver 2 years and change ago because my bedroom would be about 1F higher than the other rooms at idle and I saw it 11F hotter one time after several hours of one of the BattleField titles running dual GPUs. The added benefit is, even with the PC running at idle 24/7 the Chromebox would have paid for itself right around the 2 year mark in energy savings at a full load.