this post was submitted on 16 May 2024
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Server as heating device - how do I do this? (slrpnk.net)
submitted 5 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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So I have this silly idea/longterm project of wanting to run a server on renewables on my farm. And I would like to reuse the heat generated by the server, for example to heat a grow room, or simply my house. How much heat does a server produce, and where would you consider it best applied? Has anyone built such a thing?

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

As far as heating efficiency goes, servers aren't really that good. 100% efficiency as all the electricity they use ends up as heat. Compare with heat pumps that can get 300+% efficiency.

What I do is have my server in the same "room" as my water heater (share airspace), and use a heat pump electric water heater.

At least then all the heat my server makes is used for something good, instead of extra AC usage in summer (winter is a wash, as I need the heat in the house anyways)

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I wonder how to take on the efficiency question when considering waste heat. Would and older model generating more heat be the better choice? Has anybody started to dig into the complexities of calculating efficiency for circular systems?

[–] [email protected] 0 points 5 months ago

There's no real complexity. Computers are first and foremost electric space heaters, a negligible amount of energy is used to perform computation.

If you would be heating a room with resistive electric heating, a computer drawing the same wattage can do the same job while also, in theory, doing some useful work.

If you are just evaluating heating options, heat pumps use less energy to output the same heat.