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Server as heating device - how do I do this? (self.diy)

submitted 6 months ago by schmorpel to c/diy

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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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[–] hperrin@lemmy.world 2 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

I run a quite powerful server rack for my business (two servers with 64 core Threadrippers, redundant power supplies, nice SSDs, etc) and it puts out some heat, but not even as much as my gaming PC. The CPUs are usually sitting near 2% utilization, so it’s barely drawing any wattage, and thus, barely putting out heat. So it really depends on how much the server is doing that will determine the heat it outputs. You can build a 1000 watt server, but if it’s only drawing 50 watts, it won’t be generating much heat.

That being said, if the alternative is an electric heater, then using a server for something productive like BOINC or Folding at Home is a better use of your electricity, and may produce the heat you’re looking for. And for your use case, an older (and thus cheaper) CPU would probably suit you, so win-win.