Bitcoin Forum

Hey!

It's all in the title, I'd like to know if you think it's possible to heat up, for instance a room during winter, with mining hardware.
If it sounds possible, which material would actually be best suited for this, you reckon ?

Miners really ARE heaters.  Consider that >99.9% of the energy going into a miner will turn into heat being pumped out the backend via loud fans.  The trick, if you want to use all the sensible heat (yes sensible in the technical sense), is to make it such that all the noise of the miners is masked.  Unless you're running R4's, noise is an issue with all current generation miners.  Search the threads for philipma1957 mods whereby you get some insulated duct and using that make a shroud that both directs the air in and out of the miner and also dampens the noise considerably.
For my setup at home, my R4B2 is my little room heater in the bedroom during the winter.  It's so quite it's actually quieter than the similar wattage space heater my wife uses in her craft room, and I can easily sleep with it running, and I'm a very light sleeper.  Frankly it's a little room heater all year, but during the winter the heat it puts out is appreciated, instead of tolerated and fanned out.

VROBB is right, depending on your climate and type of furnace you can set these up to provide the majority of your homes heat. I'm setting up a few in my basement, and using that for the majority if my electric furnaces air intake.
Don't go overboard without a plan for exhaust, as in any space you can put in to much heat. Mind you to much equipment isn't a problem I have at the moment.

Go get AntHeater D3...

Haha so it does have the potential to be used to heat a room ?
What kind of hardware would provide the best experience in terms of noise and durability of the material ?

The S3 is really the only reliable and quiet SHA256 miner available at the moment that can be used for a heater. Everything else is loud or unreliable and sold out (R4, don't buy it). They're built like tanks, super reliable and can be fit pretty much anywhere (under a desk, in the garage, etc). Plus you can swap out fans for even quieter operation if needed since the S3 didn't utilize particularly loud and powerful fans for operation.

A big consideration with picking up a miner to double as a heater, is will it Roi for you. You still need to buy the miner and the power supply depending on the unit.
 So you need to balance the savings on your heating bill (really more of an offset) versus what the machine will earn you.
If it can't last long enough, with enough hashing power to earn back your investment it's a loss overall.
What is your situation? With more info you will probably get a few good options.

Titans can work well for heat, they still make a profit on electricity, and if you get the ones with the second generation fans they are very quiet (the cost is they run hotter, so you have to slow them down). Keep the chip temps below 45C and the power supplies below 70C and they will run well.

Avalons also aren't as noisy as they could be, and even S7's can be underclocked somewhat to slow down the fans.

For reference - my miners have generated enough heat for the last 3 winters PLUS as much of the current winter as we've had that I've never turned on an actual heater or a furnace in that timeframe, and have had to keep at least 2 windows open with fans running to avoid OVERheating.
The first 2 of those 3 winters were in Iowa - and ONE of those winters was near-record-setting cold most of the winter.

 Yes, miners DO work just fine as heaters - they do a quite efficient job of turning electricity into heat.

 This applies equally to GPU-based mining - it's all about how many watts you are using at a little over 3 BTU per watt.

There are devices like a container perhaps that is built wherein antminers can be placed inside it and containers are stackable and the hit that is being released by the machined are gathered and released on a tube to heat the room for winter. and this also reduce the noise.