Half a croissant, on a plate, with a sign in front of it saying '50c'
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BOINC heater

 Geek-chic space heater/BOINC client
  (+16)(+16)
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A geek-chic product that looks and operates like a normal space heater, but generates heat via a large array of parallel processors running distributed computing tasks for the BOINC network. Wireless uplink, natch.

This allows geeks who don't have space for a 19" rack full of gear to heat their most used room without feeling guilty for turning perfectly good electricity into heat.

Naturally as CPUs aren't quite as hot as tungsten coils, it would have to have a bit larger profile.

—skids, Apr 03 2006

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       Brilliant! I love it, sign me up
—Galbinus_Caeli, Apr 03 2006
   

       I've been doing this every winter for the past three years. Instead of turning on my bedroom space heater, I boot up a few extra old PCs and leave BOINC running (Or SETI@Home or Folding@home before BOINC took over for the stand-alone clients). My bedroom stays toasty warm, and my space heater is now more of a dust collector.   

       Of course, the down-side is that my room sounds like a server closet. The up-side is that it drowns out the newlyweds upstairs.
—Freefall, Apr 03 2006
   

       As a bonus, as you attach more and better cooling systems to it, you can overclock the processors more, not only increasing the amount of data you crunch, but increasing the heat output. Lower the overclocking rate in order to turn the heat down, raise it to turn the heat up.   

       I wonder how many processors you would need in order to get a decent amount of heat? Knowing that would help determine the price.
—Psudomorph, Oct 11 2007
   

       PlayStation 3's would be a good hardware candidate for this. The Cell processors provide great distributed computing power in a small form factor.
—ed, Oct 11 2007
   

       Combine it with a USB thermometer to act as a thermostat and try to keep the room at a constant temperature
—omegatron, Nov 22 2015
   

       I doubt a heater but maybe to pre-heat the water entering the hot water cylinder. More showers are good for the stereotypical uni students and geeks.
—wjt, Nov 23 2015
   
      
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