Bitcoin Forum

I have a 1500w oil heater I use to keep a spare room warm in the winter.  I was wondering if it would make sense to just replace it altogether with an equivalent wattage mining rig?  I'm not sure how much heat a rig of that scope would put out, but I'd be interested to know if anyone has any data if it's comparable?  If it's somewhat in the neighborhood then a bit of the money spent on electricity could be earned back instead of just letting it go to waste with a oil heater.  Thoughts?

All power usage of all computer hardware is entropic.

To have an equivalent of a 1500W heater, you would need a mining rig that uses 1500W (or two that use 750W each).

You can mine Ethereum or other coins with a mining rig using 6-8 GPUs. But that will be noisy. It is only good for winter.

I Have 3 GAW Furies running in a windowed room over night. They are running with 3 other computers which are all on idle.
Upon entering the room in the morning i would say its around 4-5 degrees hotter than the other rooms.
Using a miner with a bigger power requirement would increase the temperature of your room much like a heater.
I would recommend an Antminer s7
EDIT (s7)

There never was an Antminer S6.

 While the heat output of a miner isn't equal to the electric input, it's close enough it MIGHT AS WELL be the same for practical purposes.

 3 Antminer S5 would be a bit more than your 1500 watts, but if you downclock them a bit....


 This is one way to achieve "effectively" free electricity, as long as you need the heat.

So you're saying the heat output would be equivalent as far as keeping a room warm goes?


I assumed as much, thank you for the confirmation and feedback everyone.  Looks like a swap to a miner instead of generic electric heater isn't such a bad idea.

 Pretty much. You might lose a watt, but more likely milliwatts, in usefull work done communication with your ISP that doesn't turn into heat in your home somewhere.

 You'll never notice the difference.

 (excessively picky mode disabled)

When you have the miner to generate heat in winter, will you turn off the miner in summer? It might not ROI.

As said above, so much of the rig's power use ends up in heat that you can consider a 100% transformation. I had one of my rigs in my bedroom for a while and it heated it fine.
The main issues to consider are the noise and light. Poorly built GPUs can make a lot of noise when running at full speed (I won't even talk about ASICs!). A blinking ethernet light can also be really annoying.

Yeah I plan to turn it off in the summer, but it's not that big of a deal.  We have fairly long winters here.  As long as nothing explodes on the rig it should be worthwhile money wise if it runs for a few years.  I'm kind of just thinking about doing it for the fun of it, not really expecting to become rich or anything.


I've subdued many a blinking light with black electrical tape over the years. lol

You can cover the LED if you wish. I think the noise problem is a big one. It is not feasible to mine in summer.