Is it inefficient? Some of the energy will be converted to light, but all the rest should be converted to heat? If you need constant heating and use electricity for heating, wouldn't a mainframe be as efficient as any other heating?
It would. Unless you could replace the electric heating with a heatpump though - then you would get more heat out of each kW you put in.
But replacing an old-fashioned electric wall heater with a 1700 W mainframe would be totally equivalent. So no, a 1700 W computer isn't more 'inefficient' than a wall heater of the same wattage. The light is neglible and it too ends up as heat anyway.
Heh, exactly. Even the light will quickly be turned into heat once it hits something. Sure some might escape through a window, but that's going to be vanishingly small amount of the total energy.
