Can radiators also be used for mining? Qarnot launches a home heater with a built-in passive computer

French startup Qarnot has launched a new "radiator" specifically for mining. Yes, you read that right, the QC1 is a home heater with a built-in passive computer designed specifically for mining.

While most people use laptops now, back in the golden age of computer cases, you could heat a room with a few desktops. Today, heat is still one of the biggest challenges when building a data center. You have to cool thousands of computers running 24/7.

Qarnot began thinking about edge computing in data centers as early as 2010. The company has developed three generations of heaters with multiple CPUs and sold them to construction companies that need heating equipment.

At the same time, companies such as BNP Paribas, Societe Generale, Air Liquide and Blender rent these servers to meet their needs. In other words, Qarnot has established a decentralized data center.

“The computing power we provide has a very strict constraint, which is heating the building,” said Miroslav Sviezeny, co-founder and COO, in a press release. “That’s why Qarnot can offload some of the computation to traditional data centers, which is quite useful in the summer.”

From CPU to GPU

Currently, Qarnot is selling its first batch of devices directly to end users. The company believes this is a perfect use case for mining. The QC1 has two AMD GPUs (Sapphire Nitro + Radeon RX580 8GB) and is used to mine Ethereum by default.

You can do this by plugging in an Ethernet cable and adding your Ethereum wallet address into the app, which usually takes a few minutes. Then you can happily mine at this address, and Qarnot will not take any commission.

If you think ZCash or other cryptocurrencies have a bright future, you can also access the computer and mine another cryptocurrency. QC1 uses Linux system, so you can access it directly.

When you feel the room is cold and keep turning on the radiator, the two GPUs of QC1 will start working at 60 MH/s. If these two GPUs are not powerful enough, QC1 is also equipped with traditional heating conductors.

Qarnot's heater doesn't have any hard drives, but relies solely on passive heating, so you won't hear any fans humming in the background. Currently, the product costs $3,600 and supports Bitcoin payments. Qarnot hopes to sell hundreds of QC1s over the next year.

Based on Ethereum’s current price, you can mine about $120 worth of Ethereum per month, not including your electricity bill.

This is what makes Qarnot QC1 stand out, it may be the excellent miner we have been waiting for. Mining has become more and more difficult, and you have to pay high electricity bills for it regardless of whether you can mine or not. Think about it, in the cold winter, life is given by heating. So why not mine while enjoying the warmth?