Could a computer heat one house hold radiator

[Jadarite]

After a sad conversation with some friends and family about the cost of the gas bill and computer builds. The topic of can a computer heat one radiator in a room yes that's right the one on the wall or is this just water cooling to the extreme. Just wondering if this would really work and how good would the temp's be

any comments serious or humous welcome

 

[ruthless_villain]

fx-8150 with a outrageous overclock

quad sli gtx 480s also overclocked

= heat your whole house

 

[SEBAR]

Ha Ha, my folding has been heating the entire upstairs of my house. There is a dramatic difference between the upstairs and downstairs.

 

[Lauralarry]

Get a Pentium D 960 and run it open case, and it'll heat your room doesn't matter what gpu lmao

 

[jamesriley94]

...not really

In theory it could be done. The temperature of the cpu would raise the temperature of the coolant, which would go round to the radiator and be dispersed...yes. But, conventional radiators dont really lose their heat, hence why when you touch a watercooling radiator it's still relatively cool, whereas a proper radiator conducts the heat from the water into the metal and so stays warm. Because the heat from a watercooling radiator is dispersed quickly into the air due to the fans, the heat quickly dissipates into the air and so will bring the temperature up slightly, but the heat from the radiator would also be cooled by the low room temperature...

In an air tight room, it would work, although no where near as fast as a proper radiator. But, with windows, and cracks in doors and everything in a room, clean air gets in, and so you arent actually heating a room, any hot air you give is quickly dispersed through your whole house, and to outside, and I think we can all agree a radiator cant heat the planet

The central flaw to this is that 1) household radiators arent actually radiators they are convectors, and 2) the purpose of a household radiator is to heat up a room, whereas the purpose of a watercooling radiator is to cool something down...

a household radiator must keep the heat within itself, and get hotter and hotter, up to about 80 degrees C to heat up a room, and the only way to get a watercooling radiator up to that temperature would be to 1, run it without fans, and 2, encase the rad with metal so heat is conducted to the metal and dispersed from there. As this would be good for heating a room, as you can guess it wouldnt be for the processor underneath, which would need to be running at around 110/120 degrees to sustain the high temperature of the radiator. Also, household radiators are a lot bigger and so can convect heat into a room quicker, whereas watercooling radiators have less surface area and so will struggle to do this. So, you could get a massive watercooling radiator yes...but then it's gunna be even harder to get that up to 80 degrees to heat the room.

Also, it's not exactly gunna be cheaper to run a computer like that all day in the winter than just paying for gas bills anyway...

 

[I Hunta x]

fx-8150 with a outrageous overclock

quad sli gtx 480s also overclocked

= heat your whole house

480's were only as hot as they were cause of the bad cooler design, 580's are about as hot but the vapor chamber on them is a ton more efficient

,

As for heating a room from a PC its more than doable, getting the components hot isnt the key, the key is to get them COOL while they SHOULD be running hot, big CPU coolers and 3rd party gpu coolers work a charm for this as its dumping more of the heat that the parts create into the air in the room.

When it was fairly cold/rainy the other week and down to like 5-6c at the max in the day my 970 + 580 at stock were keeping my room at a nice warm 24-26c.

In the warm weather the past few days where it has been 25c outside it has been heating my room to atleast 32c and probably higher as the heating in my snake tank has been turning off (set to heat to 31-32c) while the door and window to the room have been wide open with a reasonable breeze running through.

 

[Master&Puppet]

My ex AMD twin 5850 did heat my room. In the winter, when I'd left it on, the room was noticably hotter than anywhere else lol. My gf loved it for that.

 

[potatis]

I live in a 38 m^2 apartment with my girlfriend, our computers turns the heat up like shit.

Though when i lived in a cellar a couple of years back, i didnt have a key so the window was open all the time

In the winter the computer did'nt do shit

at the mornings it was so cold the phone was so could i couldnt touch it xD

 

[Bullmecha]

I know my 4870x2 heats my room just fine til I put it on water, run a game for a couple hours with it cranked up = warm and toasty.

 

[yassarikhan786]

Ambient temps in my home office/gaming room is above 30 C at a guess as it's noticeably warmer than any other room in the house and it's 25 C+ outside.

 

[jamesriley94]

I think the idea here is in the winter, could a pc heat a house...of course you lot all having your high spec gaming rigs, as well as 1 or more heat producing LEDs - excluding lights as i take it you all live in caves

plus, the fact that you're in that room will of course bring up the temperature a few degrees. In the winter though, when there's no heat already on is a different matter...

 

[chris8224]

We have a full 8 foot cabnet of web, mail, storage and, backup servers in our garage. In the winter when it can be below 0 degrees out side and abouve 22 ish degrees in our house, if you walk into the garage you can feel the diffrence in temprature, it is alot warmer than even the rooms with the heating on in our house (We often just open the door between the garage and the house to save on heating bills). Also when it snows the snow dosnt settle on the roof of the garage at all.

So the awncer to the question "can you heat a room/house with computers?" is yes of course if you have enough of them despursing enough heat.

Chris

 

[Rastalovich]

Well, the computer rooms I've always had, the heating is off all year round, and windows open alot.

So if you have a server, stick it in one room, this is possibly on all the time. Stick the media one in the front room, then again if you got really new kit this isn't going to work. Office - stick one in there.

Hmmm, nah can't see it working for more than a room or two.

 

[Gilbert93]

theoretically speaking, would i be right in thinking that if you wanted a redneck water cooled pc, you could potentially nick the rad out of your car and use that? Just something i thought about at the bus stop

 

[Big WigglyStyle]

While I doubt it would heat a whole house it could probably heat a room I'm assuming you're talking about one of these http://cdn.mothering.com/9/97/97965de3_add_radiator_steam.jpeg (image is too big too lazy to resize) I know my computer defiantly heats my room when I've got gaming going on. I have one the style radiators in my room right behind my desk I wondered if I could disconnect it from the main line and run water through it from my pc to just work as a massive passive radiator but when you think of it those are meant to contain the heat not disperse it to be more efficient so I'm thinking your components would run pretty hot but I'm not sure given the large size of them it could work.