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Computer Heated Water

Warm your water by folding protein.
  (+3, -2)
(+3, -2)
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Because energy cannot cease to exist, and the chips in our computers do little to no work physics wise, our computers are essentially expensive, low wattage fan heaters. I propose that we occasionally utilize the heat instead of simply "blowing it off". For example, you could have several motherboard, processor, ram, and solid state hard disk combos of the highest wattage per dollar running a distributed computing project heat your water. Or perhaps you could buy a ton of cheap dell towers and use them as a forced air heater. Sure it's not cost effective, but imagine all the protein you could fold...
Tankgunk, Jan 08 2008

Baked? http://www.bbc.co.u...s/magazine-32816775
"Nerdalize's solution is, effectively, to spread their data centre across domestic homes linked by fibre-optic cable. The excess heat can then be used instead of going to waste." [Wrongfellow, May 21 2015]

Absorption refrigerator http://en.wikipedia...rption_refrigerator
Cooling from heat source. Properly baked. [bhumphrys, Jun 07 2015]

Example on BBC news today https://www.bbc.co....technology-64939558
Tiny data centre used to heat public swimming pool [Loris, Mar 14 2023]


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Annotation:







       Water cooling for computers is baked, and so it should be possible to daisychain a number of such items and use it to preheat the hot water system. Good thinking [+].
vincevincevince, Jan 08 2008
  

       Possible. [+]
webfishrune, Jan 08 2008
  

       mmm...protein
Spacecoyote, Jan 08 2008
  

       The linked computer furnace thing has been criticized on the basis that you don't always want to heat your house—for example, in the summer. Also, every computer already heats its environment, just at a very low level compared to a dedicated heater. If you use the computer for heating your domestic hot water, though, that's probably better, because you probably still want that in the summer.
notexactly, Jun 07 2015
  

       "Fancy a cuppa? I'll put the factorisation algorithm on."
MaxwellBuchanan, Jun 07 2015
  

       .....criticized on the basis that you don't always want to heat your house....   

       Solved in principle. See link regarding absorption refrigerator.
bhumphrys, Jun 07 2015
  


 

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