Planning a rig for home heating

[eddyc]

In a few months I'm going to move into a new flat which has no gas supply. All the heating is done with electric radiators on the walls.

In my view it is a shame to use electricity to produce heat without first using it to do something useful - like F@H.

I already use my desktop to heat my room in the winter (got no radiators in that room) but I'm thinking that in this new flat I should go all out and aim to heat the entire place during the winter only on folding.

Ideally I think I'd have maybe 1 or 2 rigs which would run 24/7 and could be accessed remotely to start/stop the folding. Even better would be to hook them up to a thermostat somehow and have them work harder as it gets colder.

Anyone else tried to do anything like this? I wonder if 2nd hand PS3s might be the cheapest way to do it. I'm not too keen on splashing loads and loads of money on the hardware at the outset.

 

[ozaudio]

just buy a cheapish card or 2 that wont cost loads to run like a NVidia gtx660/660ti or even lower like 560 or 570. I use to have 2 gtx470s that kept the house nice in winter while folding , your flat will stay a steady temp and should be able to heat a flat easy enough

ps3 no longer run folding at home

 

[Stan_Lite]

I use to have 2 gtx470s that kept the house nice in winter while folding

Do you live in a doll's house?

I'm currently running GPUGRID & Rosetta on 2 690s and 2 Xeons in my gaming rig in the dining room and 2 670s in another rig in the living room. This is keeping my flat at a comfy 23C in this relatively mild weather. At the moment, I'm keeping all my internal doors open so the heat is keeping the whole flat warm. When the weather gets cold, I'll have to close the internal doors so that the heat stays in the living room and dining room where I spend most of my time. If it gets really cold, I may have to switch the central heating on low.

It's a terribly inefficient way to heat your home but, if it's something you would be doing anyway, at least the heat generated helps offset the cost a bit and helps justify it.

 

[ozaudio]

I guess by house I ment living room haha , don't underestimate the power ( I mean heat ) of a gtx470

 

[andy_mk3]

My rig keeps my bedroom warm, as in 26°c with the door closed It wouldn't touch the whole house though!

 

[joeyjojo]

As above, a geforce 650 Ti or better, or AMD 6850 or better (68x0, 78x0, 79x0) would make sense. Everything older is too inefficient to be worth crunching on IMO. Although as you say, you'd be consuming the electricity anyway so anything helps.

The (newest) really heat-producing cards are actually the most efficient (in FLOPS/W), but e.g. the 7990 is too expensive up front.

Have a look at for high TDP and high FLOPS/W.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_AMD_graphics_processing_units
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Nvidia_graphics_processing_units

 

[233]

Bit/litecoin mining pays for the leccy usage and gives you free heating

 

[Avalon]

Bit/litecoin mining pays for the leccy usage and gives you free heating

This. It's the basis of my crypto mining as it should generate heat and a profit vs running night stores.

 

[eddyc]

That's probably a really good idea. Thanks I have no idea how to get started though. Is there a guide somewhere?

And how do you turn the bitcoins into actual money?

 

[Subliminal Aura]

Even better would be to hook them up to a thermostat somehow and have them work harder as it gets colder.

If you have granular control over the amount of cpu/gpu load for bitcoining or folding then that might work but I thought it was either full load or nothing.

Regardless seems easy to code

 

[Biffa]

You do have granular control over both. Mining has an intensity setting and Folding has "Folding Power"

You could also control how hard your cards work by controlling the overclocking.

 

[Subliminal Aura]

You do have granular control over both. Mining has an intensity setting and Folding has "Folding Power"

You could also control how hard your cards work by controlling the overclocking.

Yes but is the control directly correlated to the power consumption ie heat dissipated.

Would be cool if it was but for some reason I feel running a GPU at 70% is less efficient than running it at the full 100%

 

[Biffa]

It would be more efficient running it at 70% than running it like a normal central heating system where it turns the boiler on and off all the time depending on the thermostat levels.

 

[Subliminal Aura]

It would be more efficient running it at 70% than running it like a normal central heating system where it turns the boiler on and off all the time depending on the thermostat levels.

Maybe.... (yes to the ch argument) .... but

I'm not trolling mate but seriously take a watt meter to the wall plug and do some measurements. It's not a linear correlation.

 

[Biffa]

Oh I know I'm just saying its possible, the efficiency of the system would be up to you, esp seeing as how I'm not going to be doing it. Just pointing out that it is possible to control the power output by the system.