When you think about cryptomining, the general objective is to earn money, a lot of it, usually thanks to relatively cheaper electricity and cutting-edge hardware. However, one particular individual in Australia is using his old graphics cards to heat up his house during the chilly season, all the while generating enough to pay off his electricity bill and then some.
Four Radeon R9 390 graphics cards were used for the setup, each with a hash rate of 30 MH/s and a combined power draw of 900W. Back when he tested this, Ethereum was above $900, resulting in a profit of $3.8 per day, accounting for roughly half of the power bill, and this is without using the heat generated. At the moment, Ether is trading over $2,500, so it’d be safe to say that it’d more than cover the electricity bill.
The four GPUs were installed in a server-class chassis (above), and the front of the case was connected to the central heatpumps’ inlet, warming up the entire house. Overall, this works out to his benefit. The cold, dry outside air is used to cool the graphics cards, recycling the warm air they produce in the process and feeding it to the heat pump. On sunny days, the miner and heatpump both run on electricity generated by solar panels, further boosting the overall profits as there’s no electricity bill to pay.
