Qarnot Unveils a Cryptocurrency Heater For Your Home (techcrunch.com)

Qarnot, the French startup known for using Ryzen Pro processors to heat homes and offices for free, is unveiling a new computing heater specifically made for cryptocurrency mining. "The QC1 is a heater for your home that features a passive computer inside," reports TechCrunch. "And this computer is optimized for mining." From the report: The QC1 features two AMD GPUs (Sapphire Nitro+ Radeon RX580 with 8GB of VRAM) and is designed to mine Ethers by default. You can set it up in a few minutes by plugging an Ethernet cable and putting your Ethereum wallet address in the mobile app. You'll then gradually receive ethers on this address -- Qarnot doesn't receive any coin, you keep 100 percent of your cryptocurrencies. If you believe Litecoin or another cryptocurrency is the future, you can also access the computer and mine another cryptocurrency. It's a Linux server and you can access it directly. If your home is cold and you desperately need to turn on the heaters, the QC1 is going to turn on the two GPUs and mine at a 60 MH/s speed. There are also traditional heating conductors in case those two GPUs are not enough. Qarnot heaters don't have any hard drive and rely on passive heating. You won't hear any fan buzzing in the background. You can order the QC1 for $3,600 starting today -- you can also pay in bitcoins. The company hopes to sell hundreds of QC1 in the next year.

Comments

What about Summer?

[hAckz0r]

There is no longer any cool-hard-cash to roll around in to take the summer heat away...

Well maybe you could use the GPU heat to drive a Sterling Engine, to turn a compressor, for some of that old fashion AC?

Re:What about Summer?

[RhettLivingston]

Propane is used to power refrigerators and A/Cs in RVs using absorption refrigeration techniques (the old ammonia cycle concept but with safer fluids today). Since any heat source would work, I would think these systems could be adapted to utilize heat from GPUs. The fluid could be circulated straight through the heat sink.

Efficient

[burtosis]

For the minority of people who use electricity to warm thier houses in cold climates it may make sense as it's just run through a fancy resistor. Than again any mining rig would do the same, so I'm not sure what the real benefit is other than maybe aesthetics.

Re:Efficient

[ZorinLynx]

Only relatively warm climates use electricity for heating because the cost is just too high once you have to run the heat more than a few weeks out of the year.

That said, if you're going to mine anyway, might as well do it in the winter as the heat produced will be useful instead of wasted. It's definitely not "free heat" if you normally use gas or oil to heat your home, though.

Re:Efficient

[Hentes]

For that price it's cheaper to set up a heat pump.

Re:Efficient

[burtosis]

Untrue. An example is winnipeg. They are a cold climate with abundant hydroelectric power, so much so electricity is refered to as "hydro". Due to the way they strictly plan city limits, and due to many older houses, many have no natural gas. They have been using electricity for heating since forever. Source - sold a house in Winnipeg with electric heat last December.

What's the power consumption

[guruevi]

To know whether "$3600 + electric bill + BitCoin-conversion" (assuming this is only good for the winter months of 1, maybe 2 years) is better than just heating your house with gas or a heat pump we need to know what the consumption and bitcoin generation speeds.

My heating costs are about 3c/kWh and BTC is not worth my investment of time and money, but I know most people use gas or electric at much higher rates. Unless this optimized the rate of production, not sure if it's worth.

Passive?

[zmooc]

I don't see how a passive computer could heat your house. I'd suggest using an active computer.

LOL

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

Is it April 1st already?

Re:You Qarnot be serious.

[Mr0bvious]

I'm not fat.

Talk about presumptuous!

Re: Trifecta!

[Wycliffe]

The point of something like this is that if you need to heat your house anyways then the electricity is basically free and you can reach break even much sooner.