Creating a heater application

Question

This might seem weird, but I'm interesting in creating an electric heater out of my computer, that is program an application, that heats up my PC, and I need some help.

I currently made an application, that runs infinite loops on the GPU (using a little shader), and on the CPU cores, however I'm interesting in getting the ram going too, as well as the several output ports, so.. About the ram heating, just allocate, and start randomly accessing and writing using all 8 cores?

And what about triggering CD-ROM, floppy etc, how do I do this?

You're trying to write a virus that does this to its host systems, aren't you? — Jonathan Grynspan, Oct 18 '10 at 15:19
I have a much more effective implementation for this, based on a canister of Kerosene and a box of matches — Pekka, Oct 18 '10 at 15:19
I'll go with Pekka's idea, it'll also be OS-independent, portable and still be able to work on power failures. — Select0r, Oct 18 '10 at 15:21
@Pekka: Unfortunately, that is a run-once implementation :( If your apartment is cold two nights in a row, you're out of luck on the second night. — FrustratedWithFormsDesigner, Oct 18 '10 at 15:22
@controlfreak123: See a [weirder one](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2168783/a-program-to-repel-mosquitoes) then. — GSerg, Oct 18 '10 at 15:23
I don't know that CD and floppy will generate much heat (unless you have media in the drives - then you just read the same file from it over and over maybe?), but if you could get the hard drive spinning, that might warm it up a bit. — FrustratedWithFormsDesigner, Oct 18 '10 at 15:23
@controlfreak123: actually, I have used my laptop for heating during several lectures where the lecturer seems to love setting the air conditioner to a killing chills. — Lie Ryan, Oct 18 '10 at 15:36

score 6 · Answer 1 · answered Oct 18 '10 at 15:24

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How about heater with a purpose? Just run World Community Grid, create tons of heat while making your computer do valuable computations for science. It runs the processors wide open, is stable, and isn't just wasting cycles.

answered Oct 18 '10 at 15:24

bpeterson76

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I would want to +2 if I could – Dennis Haarbrink Oct 18 '10 at 15:26
wasting cycles == saving electricity, iow the planet! – leppie Oct 18 '10 at 15:31
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@leppie-- if he's just running an app to uselessly spin and create heat, then that --IS-- wasting electricity. If you're going to do it, might as well have a purpose. You're right though, best not to run the computer at all to save the environment. On the plus side, WCG is doing calculations for solar and water filtering projects right now. – bpeterson76 Oct 18 '10 at 15:47
is heating wasting electricity? – Emil Madsen Oct 18 '10 at 17:01
but +1 for the idea :), and I'll surely join it – Emil Madsen Oct 18 '10 at 17:02

leppie · Answer 2 · 2010-10-18T15:27:14.297

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Use Furmark together with LinX/Prime95. Max out your settings. Make sure you have a strong enough PSU.

edited Oct 18 '10 at 15:27

answered Oct 18 '10 at 15:20

leppie

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score 2 · Answer 3 · answered Oct 18 '10 at 15:20

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Have a look at How to stress test a computer If your interested in making your own try searching for open source stress test software that you could modify to your liking.

answered Oct 18 '10 at 15:20

Matt Phillips

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score 1 · Answer 4 · answered Oct 18 '10 at 15:27

There`s a torture test option for CPU & RAM in Prime95 that looks like what you want. As for the GPU, there is Furmark which achieves the same kind of stress.

The heat from the other components will likely be not relevant (unless you have something really specific like a physx card) if you stress enough your cpu and gpu imho.

Creating a heater application

4 Answers4