Could ASICs Double as AC Units?

This idea isn’t totally out there, right? I mean, ACs heat up gas then condense it, right? So, the compressor just makes the gas hot without actual fire. Am I missing something here? It feels like this should have been figured out already.

Theoretically, yeah it could work. There are ACs that run on propane/natural gas instead of electric compressors. They burn gas for cooling, so ASICs could do something similar. But honestly, high power electronics don’t like constant on/off cycling it stresses the solder connections.

That's comparing apples to oranges. There's a huge difference between an ASIC's waste heat and heat at high temps. I really doubt it’d work, since low-temp waste heat hasn’t produced much in terms of power. Stirling engines have struggled for ages with this concept.

Interesting point. I’m actually trying out something similar routing ASIC coolant through membrane distillation to produce distilled water while cooling. With the right approach, an ASIC could cool and generate water too.

Picture having 10 ASICs running at 10 TH/sec. Seasonal room temp balancing is key. Maybe 4 heating ASICs in summer, 6 in winter? Might be a stretch, but I'm getting better at this lol.

Let’s not beat this dead horse again. Short answer: not happening. Even a perfect engine can’t beat Carnot efficiency. Gas ACs work with high temperatures. Using ASIC waste heat is a whole different story.

Well, if you boil water using ASICs and then pressurize it, you could theoretically run a turbine. But getting the water hot enough means you’d need chips that can handle way more than the typical 80°C.

Water isn’t practical for thermal transfer due to its boiling point. Something with a lower boiling point would be better like PFPE fluids that are used for submersion cooling. They’re not conductive and work for moving heat but don’t really help generate power.

If you could design a working model, you wouldn’t hit 100% efficiency. I bet you could pull off maybe 10 to 15% with a steam turbine setup. Get 10 submerged miners heating something to run a solid AC.

These ideas seem a bit off. ASICs aren’t compressors. If you want to use it like an AC, you’d need to add a refrigerant and a proper compressor otherwise, it's a no-go. Honestly, the best an ASIC does is warm a room in winter, lol.

Any device has to meet market demand, or it’s not gonna make profits. Bitcoin mining is industrial now, so resources are focused there. Household mining has noise and power limits that make it less efficient.

Lol, just try to beat physics and thermodynamics. Steam engines won’t work either; gradients are too low. In summer, miners can struggle with heat management already, so adding another gradient for cooling is risky.

You could maybe recycle some heat using a Peltier device to generate a bit of voltage. But don’t expect much maybe 2-5% efficiency, which is nothing great for a 3KW setup.

Let’s say we set up a thermoelectric generator between the ASIC chip and heatsink. To even make it work, we’d need a decent temp difference, but honestly, it might just raise power consumption more than it’s worth.

No one said it’d be easy.

It’s actually simple. Just trust the laws of physics. Instead of trying all these wild cooling setups, improve the cooling for ASICs and you can save energy by reducing waste heat.

Thinking about it... maybe a geothermal cooling setup could work? Use miner heat to pull in cold air? Though it’d probably be pricey and not super efficient.

Geothermal cooling is feasible, but really, adding ASIC miners to that concept isn’t needed. Plus, there probably isn’t a huge cooling need near geothermal plants.

In the end, it’s just not gonna happen. ASICs generate heat, not cool it. They can work as heaters, but that’s about it.