have just recently downloaded most recent version from BOINC am running SUSE 10 on a Pentium IV. when the computer is doing nothing but Seti@home it will overheat in a couple hours and do a safe auto shutdown. if I am around and suspend activities for 15 minutes ever 1 or two will allow the cooling fans to keep up. I have cleaned the interior of the box, blown/sucked all the dust out, both fans working fine.

I shut down all open processes before leaving the computer

is there any way to set the computer to suspend for 15 minutes ever hour or so...???

thanks
Bob

It seems to me that there is a serious issue with the cooling arrangments on your computer which needs to be resolved. I would not choose to run BOINC on a system if I knew the thing would overheat. It's just asking for trouble...

Regards
Robert

It seems to me that there is a serious issue with the cooling arrangments on your computer which needs to be resolved. I would not choose to run BOINC on a system if I knew the thing would overheat. It's just asking for trouble...

Regards
Robert

have suspended operations, have cleaned entire insides and all fans are running normally. am not sure the problem but when BOINC isn't running the machine stays cool...????

Bob

have suspended operations, have cleaned entire insides and all fans are running normally. am not sure the problem but when BOINC isn't running the machine stays cool...????

Bob

BOINC uses all of your spare cpu cycles. In other words, your cpu is running at 100% capacity while you crunch your SETI work unit. Taking my computer as an example (the machine I'm typing on), normal cpu load, with no SETI, runs in the 0% to 8% range. If I then launch BOINC, cpu load rises to 100% exactly as it's supposed to.

Simply:

More work done = more power used = more heat generated.


You said in your initial post, that you've checked both fans. Do you really only have two of them?

Looking inside my own computer, I count five fans. Two built into the power supply + one case mounted extractor fan + cpu fan + graphics card fan.

My other pc (a small form factor) has three.

There is no doubt in my mind of an issue with the cooling arrangments on your computer. It's just showing for BOINC because BOINC works the system hard enough to show the weakness.

Regards
Robert

I was running seti@home on my notebook PC, which is on and connected to the internet 24/7. The notebook is an HP ze5185. Very soon after I bought the PC and started running seti@home, one of the two cooling fans demonstrated intermittent failures. It had sucked up a lot of dust and cat fur. The Pentium IV would overheat and apparently go into a forced slow down mode where it limited its own heat generation to avoid cooking itself. I blew out the notebook PC. It coughed up a furball and a lot of dust came out, and it was better for a little while, but shortly resorted to the same problem even though I banned the cat from my office. The fan would make a squeaking rumbling bad bearing sound and it'd quit altogether. I stopped running seti@home and with the light usage the notebook PC normally sees the fan stays on low and there is no problem.

I like seti@home and I really want to contribute, but there are a couple of issues that are not mentioned in the "it only uses clock cycles you aren't using" marketing. There will be additional thermal cycling, which is the most stringent torture test done to verify reliability of new PC designs. Heating and cooling a processor can open chip cases, although they should be able to stand the thermal strain. Thermal stress can also open soldered connections in that vicinity of the printed circuit board. Small PC fans are probably not rated for 100% duty cycle and are designed to manage short duration computing peaks, so they fail much sooner. And of course, there is the matter of adding another 70 watts to your PC's power consumption. 24/7, that costs a national average of $55 per year for the electricity, and that doesn't include the additional air conditioning costs to remove that waste heat from your office during the warmer months, nor does it count the added CO2 emissions from the power company that causes global warming.

I'm not saying seti@home isn't worth it, but I would like people to make an informed decision.

Maybe a better idea would be to use a lot more PCs and load them a lot more lightly. There is a base load that would still provide useful data crunching without increasing electrical consumption much beyond the idle state and wouldn't result in a worst case thermal stress test on PCs running seti@home. I think seti@home is not a good idea on a notebook PC, and that's all I use.
:^(

I have considered the coolness factor of designing a seti@home farm with a lot of mini mother boards stripped to the bare essentials, running Linux of course! Use water cooling or some sort of enhanced natural convection and a large aluminum heat sink on each processor. Power it by using cheap renewable power, perhaps from a water wheel on a local river. Like I need another project.

You should not forgett, that the design of the PCs often keep cheap, also the cooling.
But you could use Thread Master on Windows or CPU Limiter on Linux to limit the SETI app to a fixed percentage of CPU usage.
The new BOINC client would include this features, too. But it will need some time till it will be released.

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But you could use Thread Master on Windows or CPU Limiter on Linux to limit the SETI app to a fixed percentage of CPU usage.

I need to use CPU Limiter to allow my notebook PC to process some SETI data without catching on fire. I may even get clever and increase the CPU utilization percentage during the winter when the PC would be less likely to overheat and the heat it produced would be used to heat my office instead of adding to the heat that air conditioning must remove. Oh yeah, I'm a nerd.

I need to use CPU Limiter to allow my notebook PC to process some SETI data without catching on fire.

Well, the situation is pretty much as Dotsch says - sometimes manufacturers cut so many corners to stuff a PC into a tiny sleek case that if it gets used for anything much beyond word processing the whole system just cooks.
Unfortunately it's often a case of system build cost or aesthetics triumphing over system design requirements, with the inevitable result of reduced reliability.

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To err is human; to moo, bovine.