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Comment on Ask HN: Why aren't all heaters computers?

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The most efficient heater is a heat pump, and its not even close to heat generators.

Sure, but if you're gonna have a space heater (and people do) there won't be any difference in efficiency between any possibility, including computers

Sure, but you should only be using space heaters and not heat pumps (or non-electric sources of heat) if you're using them infrequently, at which point the cost of silicon over resistive wire is not worth it.

Exactly. Heat pumps work by concentrating and moving heat, which is cheaper than generating it in the first place. There's still heat in 0°F weather if you concentrate it.

I believe this was from a XKCD What If? question, it was asking how much would sticking a toaster into a freezer effect it? The answer was not much because the toaster heats up to 500F, so from a toasters perspective everywhere is cold and it wouldn't notice much difference from being in 70F or 0F. I remember this when talking about heat pumps since to refrigerant most places would be hot.

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