Using a folding farm for heating

[user123]

Is anybody using the heat from the computers of a folding farm for something useful? Like warming the house or apartment during winter?

I heard of some people participating in distributed computing projects with MANY computers, which release plenty of heat.

[beer]

Since I have started folding on my gaming mashine my heating is gone from low (only winter heating) to non existing. My apartment is also small (around 70 m^2) and I think my room temperatur so I got some of that heat.
During the rest of the year I have "problem" with getting my apartment around 18 degree C. Btw I am living in Denmark.

Next weeks weather for denmark (english): http://www.dmi.dk/eng/index/forecasts.htm
next weeks weather for my town(danish): http://www.dmi.dk/dmi/index/danmark/byv ... tm?by=8800

[Joe_H]

My son has his machine folding for me in his bedroom, he likes the small amount of extra heat in the winter. He has even mentioned starting up his older machine, it put out more heat than his current one.

[jimerickson]

i heat my apartment 8 gtx480's. they do a nice job of it.

[Nathan_P]

Last winter I had my folding machine downstairs so all the heat was distributed around the house (and was near the heating thermostat) so the whole house was warm. Now they are in teh back bedroom and that is the only warm room unless i put the heating on

[AtwaterFS]

Yes, just the one, I have electric heat so I figure might as well do something with the energy before releasing as heat

[Ravage7779]

Yup, my main folding rig is in my bedroom, keeps it warm without running the heat, or at least running the heat a lot less on the really cold days. I need to upgrade my gpu's to never run the heat

[user123]

Folding and room heating at the same time. It's like hitting two birds with one stone.

But am I right to say that a computer that is folding is more noisy than an electric heater?

[Ravage7779]

Depends on how you have things set up...One big fan turning low rpm's can net more cfm and be hard to hear, than 30 1" fans turning 15,000rpms and making your ears bleed.

[nibbs]

I use a not heated room in my apartment for my computery needs. With the i7-920 @ 4 GHz + a stock GTX580 both watercooled, I have a nice warm room while it's cold outside. Unfortunately the room gets too warm in summer to keep folding (35 °C+).

[cordis]

Yeah, my farm provides pretty much all the heat I need, I haven't had the heat on for more than a year now. The AC can be a problem, though. I'd love to open some windows and get some more cooling at my place, but I have allergies. I recently stuck some furnace filters in my windows to get some cool air in, seems to be helping a little, but I need more airflow. Have to find a fan to stick in front of the window, see if I can pull in some cool air. Winter is nice, though, I can crank up the gpus and not worry about ppd/watt so much for a while. Come summer, have to rethink some things.

[robwadeson]

folding is probably the least efficient way to heat up your room :p most of that power went into work/points/folding unit getting done

[Jesse_V]

folding is probably the least efficient way to heat up your room :p most of that power went into work/points/folding unit getting done

I see nothing wrong with that.
If you need more heat, buy more computers.

[Nathan_P]

folding is probably the least efficient way to heat up your room :p most of that power went into work/points/folding unit getting done

Depends on how much you are folding with, I had a phenom x6 and 4 gpu's on the go, it was using about 600w - most of which comes out the various processors as heat. My little corner downstairs was very warm

[SPACEMAN7]

Hi folks, I just now re-joined the forums, lost my info from several years ago, but started around 2002 I think (1st record 2004 with my current team). But on topic, I run an old AMD dual core with 2x GTX470s in my bedroom, where I spend most of my time, as I'm disabled. I have another box with a Q6600 and GTX260, but had to put it in the basement, since it made my room TOO warm with both rigs, LOL. Plus an old laptop in the basement, which probably doesn't make me many points, but a little. But yeah, I usually keep the thermostat around 68F in the winter, which isn't too bad for Seattle. BTW, I'm an old geezer to some of you, turned 50 in December, so don't laugh at my crappy old hardware, LOL.