Folding Forum

bruce wrote:

MeeLee wrote:Instead of increasing the fan curve, try limiting the power envelope.
Much more effective.

I though the objective was to build a space heater for a cold room. Limiting the power doesn't fulfill our objective.

Indeed. However, it'll allow you to run everything more efficient, and add another GPU, without blowing a fuse

Excellent plan!

MeeLee wrote:Instead of increasing the fan curve, try limiting the power envelope.
Much more effective.

I have an RTX 2080 super that I want to heat my room with by adjusting the power target. I am going to use an Arduino to measure the temperature and calculate the power target for the GPU. My problem is actually changing the power target through software. Do you know of any ways I can do this?

owenr930 wrote:

MeeLee wrote:Instead of increasing the fan curve, try limiting the power envelope.
Much more effective.

I have an RTX 2080 super that I want to heat my room with by adjusting the power target. I am going to use an Arduino to measure the temperature and calculate the power target for the GPU. My problem is actually changing the power target through software. Do you know of any ways I can do this?

If you're using an arduino, you'll need to write your own software with temperature sensor as input, and command line options as output.
The problem is that nvidia power profiles need sudo privileges, which requires you to type the superuser's password.
In short, i would set your target power consumption, and leave it there.

In fact, the heat generated by FAH is many times too small to actually heat a room. I find that several computers all running full-blast in my bedroom are barely enough to take the chill off the room. I don't think there's really a good justification for adding the function of a thermostat. (Of course you may have kits that dissipate much more power that mine do.)

bruce wrote:In fact, the heat generated by FAH is many times too small to actually heat a room. I find that several computers all running full-blast in my bedroom are barely enough to take the chill off the room. I don't think there's really a good justification for adding the function of a thermostat. (Of course you may have kits that dissipate much more power that mine do.)

LOL Bruce. I had 13 GPUs in my basement during the recent folding month competition and though it’s November in Ontario we had a couple of warm days which, as a result, I was working in my shorts and still sweating. Now that folding month is done and I’m back to folding only 10 GPUs for the 12 off-peak hours at 80% power limit that’s still around 1.4kW of heat just from the GPUs and I won’t mention the 100-200W per CPU here for BOINC.

Realistically 2 medium GPUs (2070+) (400W) and a CPU (100W) could keep most small rooms comfortable.

The basement is the warmest area in the house now even though I finally caved to the whining and turned on the Heat today

I think there will be a lot of people running RTX 2000 and 3000 series in the coming months or years.
The 3000 series start from around 200W t0 350W, (which may not be enough), but any system running 2 GPUs (600-700W) is a decent space heater, especially when ran 24/7.