custom cooling Heating up a terrarium with computer heat exaust

[TheCount15]

After watching several LTT videos, such as the Lower your heating bill... with GAMING (heating a room with your PC),  I am curious to know if there was a way I could direct the heat my computer outputs to the bottom of my Geko's terrarium. I have a leopard geko who has a current heat mat that produces around 95~100 Fahrenheit it is stuck right underneath the right side of his enclosure. My home gaming server and my girlfriends gaming PC both output around 95~98 Fahrenheit when measuring surface temps on or around the exhaust fans. I was wondering if maybe there would be a way to direct, with custom fan setup or computer cooling solution, the heat output of my computers towards or directly on the same area under the terrarium. Currently we are getting a setup where we will have two desks along a wall and will be placing a shelf/rack in the middle of our desks that would house the computers. There would be enough room on a shelf or the top shelf to place our terrarium. I would be interested in saving on electricity by heating the bottom of the terrarium using our computers (gaming/work server is on 24/7). Are there any suggestions or ideas? Thank you.

[jaslion]

Bad idea. This is a variable temp and that is not a good idea to put your pet under the amount of rapid changes and thus stress.

 

If you get a pet you have to be accept that you will have to take proper care for it and that that will cost you.

 

This concept has been suggested and even tried before with:

 

Fish tank heating

Room heating

Snake terrarium heating

Bearded dragon terrarium heating

 

Basically what it all came down with: failure as temps were not consistent and for those that didn't have a backup heating element or a cooling element they ended up with sick pets and someones bearded dragon ended up dying due to repeatedly low temps when they went away for a weekend and the pc was just idling. It got sick and died.

 

So yeah don't.

[RobinXe]

You could do it, but not simply. As jaslion points out, you'd have to have a dedicated heat source to pick up the slack if the computer-provided heat was insufficient to maintain a constant temperature, which would need to be thermostatically controlled to always augment the computer heat the correct amount. It would need to be able to ramp up and down sufficiently quickly to overcome variations in output, which could be large if using air, but somewhat moderated if using watercooling. You'd also need to consider situations where the computers might provide too much heat.

 

If you were to do this, you'd probably want a water cooling loop, with an additional radiator under your terrarium, which is thermostatically limited to the desired temperature, with a thermostatically controlled electric heating mat to augment it if the temperature falls below the setpoint.

[jaslion]

27 minutes ago, RobinXe said:

You could do it, but not simply. As jaslion points out, you'd have to have a dedicated heat source to pick up the slack if the computer-provided heat was insufficient to maintain a constant temperature, which would need to be thermostatically controlled to always augment the computer heat the correct amount. It would need to be able to ramp up and down sufficiently quickly to overcome variations in output, which could be large if using air, but somewhat moderated if using watercooling. You'd also need to consider situations where the computers might provide too much heat.

 

If you were to do this, you'd probably want a water cooling loop, with an additional radiator under your terrarium, which is thermostatically limited to the desired temperature, with a thermostatically controlled electric heating mat to augment it if the temperature falls below the setpoint.

The amount of setup, stuff needed and well simply money to be spent on making this work is gonna be so expensive you'd be able to run the heating for many years.

[RobinXe]

indeed! But projects!!

[TheCount15]

Yea totally understandable. I will keep the heatpad and my setup as is your right, variation in temps can be dangerous. Thank you for the information.