You mean the computer would work as an auxiliary heater? Is it reasonable to expect that to work? How much would the processor have to heat for that to be feasible, how fast would it go to the trash bin after that, and where should one even locate the pc for that to work?

When I let my current computer run Seti@Home unthrottled with the original hardware (overclocked 6 core i7, 64 GB RAM, 4x Geforce 690s), the temperature in my airconditioned home office would quickly rise from the 72 on the thermostat in the living room, to around 90 in my office. I had to throttle Seti@Home to about 25% max resources to avoid destroying my AC bill. This was in a relatively large 1 Bed + Den apartment.

As for longevity? Well, I don't run it at full capacity like that normally. The CPU is still going strong, 8 years in. I replaced the original 690s with a newer card because, better graphics, not that the cards went bad or anything. I have had issues with thermal shutdown due to bad liquid coolers, but no damage to the chips. But, replacing the cooler gets everything back and running again. I'm on my 3rd cooler.

Most of the heat isn't coming out of the CPU itself, but the power supply & the graphics card(s).

> Most of the heat isn't coming out of the CPU itself, but the power supply & the graphics card(s).

Wow, the power supply wastes that much electricity on its own? That seems very inefficient...

If your PC consumes 500 W, it's gonna heat the room it is in exactly as much as a 500 W space heater. That's what I alluded to with the "space heater" parenthetical.

There are people who reduce their overall bills by mining for both cryptocurrency and heating with the waste heat (instead of only one or the other). But it needs specific circumstances for that to be worth it, and I'm very sure Symantec is not advertising this concept in the first place.

And if you spent that same 500 W on running a heat pump, you would get the equivalent of about 1000 to 2000 W of resistive heat.

Agreed with your point, but that requires significantly more setup than plugging something into a wall (and significantly more effort than installing a software update). And heat pumps work worst when you need them the most.

None of this justifies making tech-illiterate people mine bitcoin for your own gain, of course.

If you live in a cold country with cheap electricity they have you covered. But I think you're right - that can't be good for a computer

The electric heater that earns you money https://heatbit.com/

You’re talking about a standard PC but my roommate and many others who mined crypto with crates of gpus literally used them instead of heaters. My roommate had to setup fans to push hot air out and bring cold air in it was so hot.

That's two if's right there. I don't even know if I could switch to a provider that uses nuclear energy even if I wanted to.