PC or Laptop as a heater – is it a good idea? If you have cheap energy prices, then it might be a great way to heat up your room. I am currently traveling a lot and stay in Airbnb apartments most of the time. In the countries that I am visiting, the temperatures are dropping significantly in wintertime, so I started using my PC or laptop as a heater to keep warm at night. It’s been working quite well for me so far!
In most countries I travel to, there is no proper heating installed because in the summertime it is very warm outside and inside. But what about wintertime? You can now put your jacket on or use two or more blankets at night.
Then I thought a little bit more about it and could remember about my good old crypto mining days.
When your computer or laptop is mining cryptocurrency the CPU and GPU get really warm and the fans are spinning to exhaust the warm air. And if you are in a smaller room and keep the Laptop all night on and mine crypto, it can heat up the room.
It cant be the solution that you play games all day and night long to keep your computer and CPU and/or GPU at max… there must be a better way to keep your system busy than the system producing heat.
The easiest method to keep your laptop or PC at max is to let the system mine cryptocurrencies all night long. You can use your CPU or even better your GPU to mine crypto.
There are different programs that you can use to start mining crypto. I am using Minergate at the moment because it is really easy to use and you can start mining with just a few clicks. But there are also other great programs like Nicehash or Mining Rig Rentals that you can use to start mining different cryptocurrencies.
If you are living in a hotel, it is not a problem if your PC or laptop uses more energy because the hotel will pay for that. And if you are living in an Airbnb apartment, most of the time the energy price is included in the rent price.
Of course, it is not a good idea to use your PC or laptop as a heater if you have to pay a lot of money for the electricity. In this case, it would be better to buy an electric heater that uses less energy.
But if you have cheap energy prices or if you are living in a hotel or Airbnb, using a PC or laptop as a heater can be a great idea to save some money!
The best program I found is Minergate. It’s really simple to use and start mining. You only have to download the program to your PC or Laptop, create an account and click the start button.
The Minergate software automatically detects your system components and decides by itself which crypto to mine. If you only have a CPU in your laptop then Monero XMR is the way to go, because Monero is only minable via CPU.
If you have a strong GPU in your laptop or PC then you can of course mine other cryptos as well. Minergate automatically detects the best crypto algorithm for your system.
It all depends on your system and the components! If you have a really strong system, then you can make a few bucks a day… but in my case, I don’t care about the money I make with crypto mining on my laptop in the Airbnb apartment. I only care about the heat output that my laptop produce overnight 😉
In my opinion, it isn’t dangerous, because the CPU automatically throttles down if the temps are too high for the system. I had never any problems after mining. If you are not sure then stay away from crypto mining with a laptop for heating.
When you have an option to manually control the fans of your system, crank it all up, so the more warm air is getting pushed out.
Of course, I also assume no liability for my tips given here! Of course, if your laptop overheats, it can also be harmful to the system! So, do it all at your own risk!
Do you have any other tips on how to use a PC or laptop as a heater? Let me know in the comments below!