So I have this silly idea/longterm project of wanting to run a server on renewables on my farm. And I would like to reuse the heat generated by the server, for example to heat a grow room, or simply my house. How much heat does a server produce, and where would you consider it best applied? Has anyone built such a thing?
Servers are 100% efficient at heating, but heat pumps are 300% efficient. Get the most energy efficient devices you can, and heat your house with a proper heat pump.
You can even dump the cold air from the heat pumps into the server room and pull the hot air back into the heat pump again to gain even better efficiency
Well, that was my plan when I set things up with an air-to-hot-water heatpump in the same room as my homelab. But the reality is that when it is hot outside, I don’t need to run the heatpump (mainly because the solar-thermal water heater is so much more effective). And otherwise the there is no need for cooling in that room.
You can always dump the hot water in an outside radiator if you HAVE to cool the server room to keep the temps down. A simple fan duckt would probably doo fine too. However with the heat pump you can also heat a little hot tub to use outside in summer
I think OP’s point is he’s going to be running the server regardless, so why not recoup the heat.
Sure, but if you’re running the server anyway, it’s basically “free” heat.