6 ms·

If you're plugged in all the time, lower TDP is nice but not critical. And if you live in a cold country, you have to heat up the house six months per year, TDP

If you're plugged in all the time, lower TDP is nice but not critical. And if you live in a cold country, you have to heat up the house six months per year, TDP is just heating with a computing side effect.

new_realist 5y ago
A hot laptop can have significant impacts on fertility in men. And in the summer you have to dissipate that heat. A heat pump is more efficient for heating, to boot.
- uuddlrlr 5y ago
  It's a temporary infertility, at least.
TYPE_FASTER 5y ago
This winter I'm going to experiment with having a Raspberry Pi act as a thermostat that starts/stops containers running on a server in our basement. That, combined with the laptop we just got for gaming that has a 3070 in it, should do nicely to supplement our heating system.
- Uehreka 5y ago
  Watts go in, Watts come out. So basically, find a space heater with the TDP of your server, and that’s the upper bound on what you can expect heating-wise. I know that’s a bummer for people who want to heat their house with their computer, but Thermodynamics is always a bummer, I don’t make the Laws.
  - buildbot 5y ago
    That's why I heat my house with a dell C4140! The _lowest_ power throttle it has is 1.4KW.
  - matheusmoreira 5y ago
    > So basically, find a space heater with the TDP of your server, and that’s the upper bound on what you can expect heating-wise. I wonder how many CPUs I need to build a cryptocurrency miner water heater... That would be so much better than just wasting energy heating up dumb elements.
- bparrish0 5y ago
  Modern heat pumps provide a lot more than 100% efficiency. I'd stick to the heating system unless those containers are doing something profitable (mining?)
  - chris37879 5y ago
    Literally nothing provides 100% efficiency. You're conflating coefficient of performance with efficiency. They're not even close to the same thing, modern heat pumps reach their CoP because they don't actually generate heat, they simply move it around, which provides more heat indoors than if you had converted an equivalent amount of electricity directly into 100% heat. Thermodynamics would not take kindly to you having a >99.999...% efficient anything.
    - Dylan16807 5y ago
      Nobody said "thermodynamic efficiency". You're butting in for no good reason. Coefficient of performance is a type of efficiency. > modern heat pumps reach their CoP because they don't actually generate heat, they simply move it around That's not even true! What a mess of a pedantic correction.
    - NathanielK 5y ago
      > because they don't actually generate heat Heatpumps still do use electricity(or other power), and all that electricity also ends up as heat. It's why heatpumps have higher CoP than the same system as a refrigeration cycle. > Thermodynamics would not take kindly to you having a >99.999...% efficient anything Well the cogen gas powerplants here can produce 50kWh of electricity from burning 100kWh of natural gas. I can use 50kWh of electricity to put 200kWh of heat into my house with a heatpump. Seems like a good deal to me, and I think carnot would be fine with that.
girvo 5y ago
As someone who lives in south-east Queensland, Australia, lower TDPs and thermal output is always welcome, at least for me. I adore my Ryzen 5600X/3060 Ti mini-ITX desktop, but mining on it makes my room annoyingly warm, and it's not even summer yet. Was semi-useful in winter though, all 6 weeks of it...
coldtea 5y ago
>If you're plugged in all the time, lower TDP is nice but not critical. "If you're plugged in all the time" then try the Mac Pro version when it comes out. This is about performance in laptop models, where it IS critical.
yxhuvud 5y ago
> And if you live in a cold country, you have to heat up the house six months per year, TDP is just heating with a computing side effect. Except it is still direct electrical heating which is atrociously inefficient.
- ClumsyPilot 5y ago
  It's 100 efficient, and the amount of houses with a heat pump is <1%
  - yxhuvud 5y ago
    Here in Sweden, roughly 50% of all small houses (ie one household) have a heat pump. Direct electricity heating is just somewhere around 15%. In bigger houses direct electricity just isn't a thing, most have some sort of central heating, and lots have either some combustion or heat pump solution. The latter is gaining.
- authorityofnil 5y ago
  >Except it is still direct electrical heating which is atrociously inefficient. Electric heating converts practically all energy into heat, making it ~100% efficient. You can make statements about cost-effectiveness compared to burning things, but not all houses can. CHP configurations are more common in colder climates with district heating, so their "waste" heat during generation often isn't wasted at all.
  - new_realist 5y ago
    But a heat pump is more than 100% efficient.
    - vmladenov 5y ago
      Until the temperature drops below 4 C
      - 5y ago

new_realist 5y ago

A hot laptop can have significant impacts on fertility in men. And in the summer you have to dissipate that heat. A heat pump is more efficient for heating, to boot.

uuddlrlr 5y ago
It's a temporary infertility, at least.

TYPE_FASTER 5y ago

This winter I'm going to experiment with having a Raspberry Pi act as a thermostat that starts/stops containers running on a server in our basement. That, combined with the laptop we just got for gaming that has a 3070 in it, should do nicely to supplement our heating system.

Uehreka 5y ago
Watts go in, Watts come out. So basically, find a space heater with the TDP of your server, and that’s the upper bound on what you can expect heating-wise. I know that’s a bummer for people who want to heat their house with their computer, but Thermodynamics is always a bummer, I don’t make the Laws.
- buildbot 5y ago
  That's why I heat my house with a dell C4140! The _lowest_ power throttle it has is 1.4KW.
- matheusmoreira 5y ago
  > So basically, find a space heater with the TDP of your server, and that’s the upper bound on what you can expect heating-wise. I wonder how many CPUs I need to build a cryptocurrency miner water heater... That would be so much better than just wasting energy heating up dumb elements.
bparrish0 5y ago
Modern heat pumps provide a lot more than 100% efficiency. I'd stick to the heating system unless those containers are doing something profitable (mining?)
- chris37879 5y ago
  Literally nothing provides 100% efficiency. You're conflating coefficient of performance with efficiency. They're not even close to the same thing, modern heat pumps reach their CoP because they don't actually generate heat, they simply move it around, which provides more heat indoors than if you had converted an equivalent amount of electricity directly into 100% heat. Thermodynamics would not take kindly to you having a >99.999...% efficient anything.
  - Dylan16807 5y ago
    Nobody said "thermodynamic efficiency". You're butting in for no good reason. Coefficient of performance is a type of efficiency. > modern heat pumps reach their CoP because they don't actually generate heat, they simply move it around That's not even true! What a mess of a pedantic correction.
  - NathanielK 5y ago
    > because they don't actually generate heat Heatpumps still do use electricity(or other power), and all that electricity also ends up as heat. It's why heatpumps have higher CoP than the same system as a refrigeration cycle. > Thermodynamics would not take kindly to you having a >99.999...% efficient anything Well the cogen gas powerplants here can produce 50kWh of electricity from burning 100kWh of natural gas. I can use 50kWh of electricity to put 200kWh of heat into my house with a heatpump. Seems like a good deal to me, and I think carnot would be fine with that.

girvo 5y ago

As someone who lives in south-east Queensland, Australia, lower TDPs and thermal output is always welcome, at least for me. I adore my Ryzen 5600X/3060 Ti mini-ITX desktop, but mining on it makes my room annoyingly warm, and it's not even summer yet. Was semi-useful in winter though, all 6 weeks of it...

coldtea 5y ago

>If you're plugged in all the time, lower TDP is nice but not critical. "If you're plugged in all the time" then try the Mac Pro version when it comes out. This is about performance in laptop models, where it IS critical.

yxhuvud 5y ago

> And if you live in a cold country, you have to heat up the house six months per year, TDP is just heating with a computing side effect. Except it is still direct electrical heating which is atrociously inefficient.

ClumsyPilot 5y ago
It's 100 efficient, and the amount of houses with a heat pump is <1%
- yxhuvud 5y ago
  Here in Sweden, roughly 50% of all small houses (ie one household) have a heat pump. Direct electricity heating is just somewhere around 15%. In bigger houses direct electricity just isn't a thing, most have some sort of central heating, and lots have either some combustion or heat pump solution. The latter is gaining.
authorityofnil 5y ago
>Except it is still direct electrical heating which is atrociously inefficient. Electric heating converts practically all energy into heat, making it ~100% efficient. You can make statements about cost-effectiveness compared to burning things, but not all houses can. CHP configurations are more common in colder climates with district heating, so their "waste" heat during generation often isn't wasted at all.
- new_realist 5y ago
  But a heat pump is more than 100% efficient.
  - vmladenov 5y ago
    Until the temperature drops below 4 C
    - 5y ago