Folding, SETI, etc.

Status
Not open for further replies.
What's the deal with working these CPU intensive programs in the background? I'm all for it but only to a point where it's not shortening the life of my equipment. I guess what I'm asking is how far should you push your system with these programs before you are doing damage to your CPU, Memory etc.? How hot should you be running an Athlon XP continuously before it's bad for the chip. and is there any effect to the chipset?
rfcoop
 
Temp isn't going to hurt you near as much as everyone thinks. Even if it was to shorten the life of your CPU 50% you are still talking 5+ years of life, even for people that don't upgrade very often 5 years is a long time. I ran it for around 3 years on an Athlon 1Ghz Thunderbird and the cpu was still working fine when I retired the system due to motherboard problems a couple months ago.

Several of us were using SETI, on the techspot team, a while back before they switched to the BIONC or whatever version. Then a bunch of us quit because BIONC sucks.

You don't really have a choice on how hard you push your cpu when you are running any of those projects, they use unused cpu cycles, so it uses everything the rest of your computer isn't.

If you are going to run it I recommend you run it all the time (except for maybe when you want to game, but even then it should be smart enough to let the game take the cycles) simply to avoid many heating and cooling cycles. A continous hot is better than cycling hot and cool.
 
Folding has a settings tab (advanced) where you can set CPU usage, You can check it in the Task Manager. Next Q? which I think I know the answer but seems to be argued a lot is weather you should leave your machine on all the time or only when you need it. I have always left mine on unless I'm going to be away for a few days. My HDs I change out every 2 - 3 years - Maxtors, they don't seem to be reliable beyond that and I don't know weather it's better to keep 'em always spun up or let them rest. They are so cheap now I guess it really doesn't matter. Better safe than sorry. And as far as the PSU is it better to just leave it running?
rfcoop
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back