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I get a sort of perverse pleasure as I watch my algorithm use up 24 out of 32 of my CPU cores at 100%... this is what it was all for. No more running the heater for me!
@freemo Your computer is going to be a terribly inefficient heater, though. You should get more heat with the same power with hardware that's actually designed for heating, instead of hardware that has heating as a mere unwelcome side-effect.
@ccc Actually thats not true, all heaters are 100% efficient, though some may come from more expensive energy sources that would be better used doing something other than heating. But a computer will be just as efficient at heating a home as an electric heater would be.
@freemo Some of the electrical energy going into a computer is emittedd as light from the screen, though. This cuts into the electricity->heat conversion efficiency.
@ccc Yes but that light gets absorbed by the room and also converted into heat, so still ultimately heat in the end.
The only argument you could make (and I've made this before) is loss due to 1) light escaping through your windows, 2) RF emissions from the computer that escape into the far field and do not get reabsorbed within my home.
Keep in mind both of these are extremely minimal in terms of total power output, you are talking less than 0.1% easily. Also keep in mind the argument about light applies to all heaters. heat escapes as light in the infrared which windows are transparent to. So from point #1 a computer is no more inefficient than an electric heater. For point #2 a computer is probably a bit less efficient than an electric heater on point #2 but it is also so minimal as to be insignificant.
@freemo I'd go even further. A lot of the energy sent into the computer is emitted as motions of the air, propelled into motion be the internal fan. While this is intended to spread the heat out a bit, it does not in itself degenerate to heat *inside* the room - rather, it increases motion (and thus temperature exchange) between the inside and outside of the room. This, that portion of the power might actually *cool* the room.
@ccc Well sure, but we arent discussing a room that is open to the outside world, or a fan pointing outside a window. We are discussing a closed room with a computer in it.
@freemo Oh, if it's a *closed* room, that's different. Sorry, I somehow thought we were discussing rooms in a general sense; the average room needs ventilation, and is therefore not completely closed.
@ccc when i say a closed room i dont mean perfectly sealed.. context is everything. I am talking about exactly the real world situation I started this off with as an OP.. that is a home, with ventilation, a rooms with doors open or shut, and a computer in it acting in place of an electric space heater.
When I say it will heat the room I really should have said "the house" but if you have the door open with a space heater this effect would be no different than with a computer.
the point here is not "does a computer make the room warmer".. it is "is a computer as efficient at warming a space as a space heater" and the answer is, effectively, yes.
@freemo Air motion generates heat, yeah. But point a desk fan at an open window, and that heat isn't going to warm up the room it's in.