this post was submitted on 15 Jan 2025
596 points (99.5% liked)

memes

10936 readers
3550 users here now

Community rules

1. Be civilNo trolling, bigotry or other insulting / annoying behaviour

2. No politicsThis is non-politics community. For political memes please go to [email protected]

3. No recent repostsCheck for reposts when posting a meme, you can only repost after 1 month

4. No botsNo bots without the express approval of the mods or the admins

5. No Spam/AdsNo advertisements or spam. This is an instance rule and the only way to live.

Sister communities

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
596
One of these days I'm gonna pipe these bad boys into my homes duct work LMAO (lemmy.world)
submitted 22 hours ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
75 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 
top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 minutes ago* (last edited 2 minutes ago)

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.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 7 hours ago (3 children)

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%.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago) (1 children)

Relevant xkcd:

[–] [email protected] 1 points 31 minutes ago

ALWAYS. A. RELEVANT. XKCD.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 hours ago (2 children)

Just open a few Chrome tabs. That'll ramp the resource usage back up again.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 hour ago

He didn't say he wanted to make another sun

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

Does ram really have that much thermal load/power draw? I don't even account for it when I'm picking a power supply.

Just start a scan with a second anti-virus, they'll fight it out and warm up your house quite nicely.

Or double dip and mine crypto when it's cold out.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 hours ago

Even for a large amount of RAM that you'd find in a big server, it's a few dozen watts at most. Here's some charts showing the jump from DDR3 to DDR4 on a 16GB stick:

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/ddr3l-vs-ddr4-power-consumption.2012014/

DDR5 dropped the voltage from 1.2V to 1.1V compared to DDR4, which tends to make it even more power efficient. Not quite as dramatic as DDR3 to 4, but in any case, it's better still.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 hours ago

Those bastards.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

I saw an interesting post that said

All electronics are 100% efficient in the winter

[–] [email protected] 17 points 9 hours ago (2 children)

Now that we have reverse cycle AC (heat pumps), 100% is a low bar.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 hours ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

Love my heat pump, although its not AC. In the UK if you get ground/air to water the government give you £7.5k towards it. Air to air you get nothing. I suppose it is quieter, but for the 2/3 days in summer where it goes over 30°c having AC would be nice.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

I've heard tell of mystery tech to make the water heat pumps make cold. I'm sure I'll be more tempted to investigate further when summer comes.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

I live in the UK, its always humid. You will end up with a condensation radiator.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 hours ago (2 children)

Yeah, that's the issue to be solved. Apparently there is some sort of contraption that includes fans to prevent the condensation, but whenever I asked the heat pump people they just shook their heads despndently and told me to let it go.

Hey, all my pipes are outside the walls. Maybe I can just build some sort of acrylic enclosure and put fish in there or something.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 54 minutes ago

You could probably gat away with it if you install a single mini split somewhere upstairs to remove moisture and cool the rest of the house with the big pump

[–] [email protected] 1 points 55 minutes ago

If you want a janky setup for it I have one for you and its probably slightly better than the fish tank condensation collector. Turn your heating to full power, then connect the heat pump to a tube that takes the cool air and directs it to you.

Optional: Watercool your sofa by putting a few PC rads next to the heat pump and they pump water round a hose pipe on your sofa. Turn off the radiator in the room you want cooling in.

I have been kinda thinking of the hosepipe watercooled sofa idea myself though without using the heat pump for it, just a bucket of water and a pump, put some ice cubes into the bucket. Or freeze a 2L bottle and put that in. Avoid thermoelectric, its inefficient. Passive cooling or perhaps make use of cooler underground temperature are also interesting thoughts. But in reality I doubt I will end up doing something like it and it just remains in the idea phase.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 14 hours ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 33 points 18 hours ago (2 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 18 hours ago (2 children)

my grow tent

One of these days I also need to get around to starting my grow operation myself lol

[–] [email protected] 5 points 14 hours ago

I'm just kinda hunkering down with carts and waiting for MN to get dispensaries cause I'm lazy.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 14 hours ago* (last edited 14 hours ago)

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

[–] [email protected] 5 points 16 hours ago

That's the dream right there.

[–] [email protected] 65 points 22 hours ago (2 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 4 points 14 hours ago

Shit with my gf and I both gaming, sometimes we have to open a window in the winter

[–] [email protected] 12 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

I turn off Folding@Home in the summer. Otherwise it's on 24x7.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

Wow f@h still kicking?

[–] [email protected] 14 points 18 hours ago

For everyone who isn't trying to mine crypto, yeah.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 16 hours ago (3 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 hours ago

Look into geothermal heat pumps. During the summer they pump heat from your house underground, and during the winter they pump it back in.

But the energy doesn't really stay there. The thermal mass and temperature of the ground just means that you can always efficiently take heat from it or effectively dump heat into it. Always predictably the same efficiency.
If the heat was actually stored, the start of summer and winner the pump would be super efficient, but by the end it'd be inefficient working hard to move the heat. So it seems kinda wasteful that the energy isn't being stored, but it's actually kinda better that it isn't.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 14 hours ago* (last edited 14 hours ago) (1 children)

You just described a water heater.

One that would potentially store heat at super dangerous pressures of steam granted.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 hours ago

Just have a safety vent. But I thought they cooled off within days, not months?

[–] [email protected] 20 points 22 hours ago (5 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 hours ago

Lookup Folding @ Home or boinc. It's basically the same thing.

load more comments (4 replies)
[–] [email protected] 19 points 21 hours ago (7 children)

Electricity generated heat from your servers is incredibly inefficient compared to a heat pump.

[–] [email protected] 49 points 21 hours ago* (last edited 21 hours ago)

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.

[–] [email protected] 36 points 21 hours ago (7 children)

Conversely it's exactly as efficient as a resistive heater, which lots of people still use.

load more comments (7 replies)
[–] [email protected] 6 points 16 hours ago

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.

load more comments (4 replies)
load more comments
view more: next ›