Hi Guys, thanks for the responses!
 

RushXTC
wut

Yep... I mentioned it is not an easy thing to understand.  My small team and I are trying to stretch the status quo a bit and look at different operating and business models for computing.  I really haven't found an easy, elegant way of explaining it - yet.
 

nateman_doo
I dont get it.  I do everything i can to keep computers from being hot...and you desire to run everything hot just to heat your boiler?  
 
My PC cranking keeps my office nice and warm during the winter (and painful during the summer).  I have thought about venting my forge into my forced hot air duct work to re-capture some of the wasted heat... so I always dig recycling energy.

nateman_doo,
 
Not just to heat a boiler but, yes, we are working out solutions to run computers significantly hotter and harder to specifically create heat with computation.  That heat can be used for more than just running a boiler, we can power air conditioning and refrigeration as well.  Consider this: right now when you run your computer you likely run you air conditioner to keep it (and you) cool in the summer as well as running your heater in the winter to supply heat for the rest of the house.  Our hot water heaters run all the time and are the most stable thermal load in a typical house.  When we run these devices we are using the energy for one purpose - making heat/cold.
 
Computers are just about 100% efficient at turning electricity into heat. Other than the benefits you take out, (gaming/work) which are very hard to assign an energy value, and the energy embodied in the communications you send back to the internet it all turns into heat.  Think about it; the processors/memory/chips make heat, mechanical components like fans move air causing the molecules to collide creating friction (heat), lights emit heat and photons which then make heat when they collide with the case, the wall or some other object.  The same applies to any sound the computer makes... all converts to heat at some point.
 
Since the biggest loads in our houses currently run on heat (space and domestic hot water) or could be converted to run on heat (air conditioning and refrigeration) with existing technology, we could be getting two (or more) benefits out of the same energy that we are using to just run our heaters or computers today.  One or the other could happen for free, from an energy perspective, if we used computers to make the heat that runs our homes/businesses/economy.  Interestingly, the majority of our economy actually runs on heat, not electricity... but that is a far more confusing topic.
 
So, your gaming rig/laptop aren't going to make enough heat to have an impact so we aren't talking about converting your current computer to a super computer/heater that runs your house.  We are building high temperature, modular 2-4kW computing appliances that sit in the space your hot water heater sits today and performs computation that datacenters are currently doing to heat your house.  You would also have access to this high powered computer to do whatever you do with it or share/sell the compute power with your community.
 
 

EVGATech_DaveB

aka_STEVE_b
Very cool -  Always love Popular Mechanics & popular Science

I think you mean Warm/hot?
 
Very interesting idea (almost typed cool myself....)  While I am with Nateman on staying cool, especially if you are not clocking it isn't that bad to let it warm up some.  However in general cool electronics are happy electronics.  Long term aren't you concerned with reducing the the lifespan of the parts you have in the system?

 
Dave,
 
In general you are absolutely correct, cool computers are happy computers and heat can dramatically reduce the lifespan of a computer if not managed correctly.  It took us some time to figure out the major culprits in heat related failure, the biggest killer is electromigration.  Heat and high current loads actually pick up and carry the conductor in chips, diminishing the conductor's capacity to carry electricity. There are several ways around this problem, the expensive solution is to move to a tungsten based conductor on an SoI chip.  We're working with the Fraunhoffer Institute to attract some research funding to look into the macro economics of high temperature computing with SoI.  They already have a series of ASIC that run at 300c - we can make high temperature steam with 300c.
 
The less expensive fix will extend the life of the chip and is what we have been doing on the first prototypes.  Modulating the clock speeds and voltage based on temperature seems to work like a charm. Lower voltage at higher temperatures reduces electromigration issues and allows things to live longer.  More importantly, we're designing these things with a 2 year lifespan in mind.  The economics  given the reduced electricity cost by distributing the compute to places with an existing heat load look pretty good.  Two years is a little shorter than the average server replacement schedule but it is not far off.  We're hoping to run them hard enough that, after their service life, the wheels are falling off and they'll have little resale value.  If you stack up the ancillary benefits you can probably point to ROI on the systems that are well under two years.

Really interesting idea, and I can see where you are going with it.  In places like so cal, where we don't have winter and we barely have spring and fall, i'd almost suggest mounting this outside of the house so the sun helps to maintain the heat. 
So at a  home level how would you use the stored heat to fuel say, my AC?  Also, have you considered the scaling rates of power in some areas, I would imagine ti would be cost prohibitive.  That plus some solid solar and I think you could stay cool and be running on very little power.  Now, how much computer to I need to create the heat needed to run my AC low enough to turn my home, or at very least my bedroom and computer area down to the temp of the walk in beer fridge at Albertson's?

Interesting.  Figure computers are here to stay, so if you make parts that dont degrade under the heat and succumb to electron migration, you can use the heat for various thermodynamic properties, and play the video games your going to play anyway. 
 
I normally turn the computer off in the summer (even the 10K btu AC to keep it cold in a single room), and leave it on all winter.  Makes my office nice an comfortable.  Im talking T-shirt and shorts even with a foot of snow outside.
 
Dave,  A friend of mine and I built a cooler (similar to a chiller) that involved mounting a radiator outside the house so instead of using a chiller (and the associated electricity costs) we used the cold northern NJ winter to keep the fluid cold.  But this was years ago.

 
For a long time I've entertained the idea of building a rig inside a mini-fridge. Your machine is a total beast! A lot of work, very nice job.
 
 

EVGATech_DaveB
So at a  home level how would you use the stored heat to fuel say, my AC?  Also, have you considered the scaling rates of power in some areas, I would imagine ti would be cost prohibitive.  That plus some solid solar and I think you could stay cool and be running on very little power.  Now, how much computer to I need to create the heat needed to run my AC low enough to turn my home, or at very least my bedroom and computer area down to the temp of the walk in beer fridge at Albertson's?

There are a few thermally driven air conditioners that could be used.  Any propane or natural gas AC units and refrigerators (we're working on one now) that could be modified to run on the stored heat - as long as we can hit high enough temperatures!  
 
The Time of Use rates you have in SoCal are perfect for the compute/storage combo.  You would run your rig hard at night (in the summer) when the electricity is cheap and then use the thermally stored heat throughout the day to drive your AC.  When I lived in SD the rate split between on/part/off peak electricity was pretty substantial so you would have a pretty strong economic incentive to shift your AC+Storage load to the evenings.
 
You will likely need a 2-4kW (depends on your house) machine to run the AC in off peak hours only.  Smaller if you wanted to run it all the time and ignore the rate split.  We've modeled it... the economics actually look pretty good.

nateman_doo
Interesting.  Figure computers are here to stay, so if you make parts that don't degrade under the heat and succumb to electron migration, you can use the heat for various thermodynamic properties, and play the video games your going to play anyway. 
 
 
Dave,  A friend of mine and I built a cooler (similar to a chiller) that involved mounting a radiator outside the house so instead of using a chiller (and the associated electricity costs) we used the cold northern NJ winter to keep the fluid cold.  But this was years ago.

The parts will surely degrade, the heat will easily cut the capacitor life in half, the processors can be managed.  We're looking at ways to harden the electronics.  
 
The model is to run the machine hard, sell the compute and replace the unit every two years. Our initial models look like about a year payback on the machine (in ideal circumstance) so you would end up with an economic reason to continue replacing the rig... just like a bitcoin miner. At the end of two years the wheels will be falling off - we would cross ship a new one and rebuild yours to send to someone else.
 
Good idea with the radiator; when I was doing some initial testing in the summer, before the thermal storage system, we built a commode cooler to get rid of the heat.  See the pictures, it's pretty self explanatory.  ;-)
 
 

Oh, you might want to check out this FLIR image of Henry running through a heat cycle: HOT!

wow love the concept/ idea and work. thinking outside the box .... wait there's a box??

he77spawn
wow love the concept/ idea and work. thinking outside the box .... wait there's a box??

There is, indeed, no box...