I'm just curious to know if anyone's PC or laptop has broken down because of 24/7 crunching.

The photo below shows what happened to someone's P4 motherboard after 2 weeks of continued crunching. It's probably one of those boards built with problematic capacitors.

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I began to crunch ~9 months ago. It was in Folding. I mainly crunch with GPUs and two GTX280 have already died (they have been crunching ~4 months each one before they died)

Ive never had a problem crunching 24/7. And ive done it that way for all most ten years now. Im wondering if a fan died or was he overclocked? Stock apps or Opt? Maybe even a power surge?

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Old James

THat looks really bad. I've been OCing and Crunching for Years and can honestly say I've never seen more than 1 or 2 capacitors swelling or leaking. It usually takes a could years before that happens. And I've only see it happen on a low end ECS board and a really old Gigabyte.

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In a rich man's house there is no place to spit but his face.
Diogenes Of Sinope

Except when I'm on vacation my machines run 24/7 and none has ever fried, but my laptops are usually on cooling fan stands.

I toasted my first home built PC because of bad capacitors. I only used to crunch part time then, and the board would have failed anyway over time. It used to reset itself every few minutes in the end, and ruined my XP3200+ with it.

I built a new machine over 18 months ago, first with a 6000+ X2, and then upgraded to a phenom 9850 which crunches 24/7, and the only problem that I have is resetting it when updates are installed and keeping it clean and free of dust. Otherwise, it never gets turned off.

@Mahoujin:- You can definitely see from your photo that the capacitors have failed. That board would have failed anyway, the crunching has just accelerated it's death.

As for laptops, I've never owned one myself, let alone used it to crunch for seti.

regards, Gizbar.

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A proud GPU User Server Donor!

I've been crunching with an older Toshiba Satellite (1805-family) with a Mobile Celeron 1.8 Northwood for...almost a year.. hostid=4341139. Of course it's not a crunching beast, but the CPU has been at 60C for that entire time. No problems from that at all.

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Linux laptop:
record uptime: 1511d 20h 19m (ended due to the power brick giving-up)

I have a laptop running at 75C...too hot for 24/7 operation?

I don't want to come across like an old fuddy-duddy, but I think that this picture is a perfect illustration of the result of the lower specifications used in todays design.

When I started in electronics (some 40 years ago) capacitors used were generally rated at 50%+ over the expected voltage they would be subjected to. Over the years I've noticed how much tighter the specs have gotten. Now, you often see capacitors used that are rated at less than 25% over the applied voltage. Similar tight specs applies to all other electronic components in use.

The overall quality of components being produced has increased but at the same time the safety margins built into designs has greatly decreased. Manufacturers are scratching to save that extra 1/10 of cent on every component they can.

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Boinc V7.2.42
Win7 i5 3.33G 4GB, GTX470

I have a laptop running at 75C...too hot for 24/7 operation?

I have 2 laptops. Newer one is C2D, ran at 65-75 degrees C depending on ambient. Older one is Pentium M, ran in mid to high 80's. A while ago I came across the following article and undervolted the two machines. C2D now runs mid 50s to low 60s > 10 degrees C cooler), Pentium M now runs mid 50's (around 30 degrees C cooler). On the C2D the fan got noisy and eventually failed so had to get it replaced (no collateral damage however).

The "Undervolting" Guide

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My MacBook Pro has been crunching 24 hours a day for almost a year with no problems. It is set on a wooden table top with about ten percent openings between slats. Much of the time I keep a pencil under the hinges to give a bit of extra circulation space.

Right now it is on my lap and base is slightly warm to the touch. Keyboard surface is about skin temperature and the metal is slightly warmer.

It has dual processor with both running on SETI data. It keeps link open to internet as well.

duke

I'm just curious to know if anyone's PC or laptop has broken down because of 24/7 crunching.

I had a clear case of leaking capacitors on the motherboard of my long-term daily driver.



The sticky part is assessing blame. I ran an overvolted, overclocked Gallatin on this board after a mid-life swap-out, carrying a full BOINC load, plus my Internet browsing, my audio editing and CD production hobby, and some other things.

As the board came out pre-Gallatin, one could argue that in running the Gallatin overclocked and over-volted, I was asking these capacitors to do rather more than their designer may well have contemplated. It is also possible that my provision of cooling for the box was less than would have been ideal, though it was enough to make the fans noisier than I liked.

One could also argue that it did not fail. The board was still working when these pictures were taken. I was sufficiently alarmed that I sent the board off to a specialist to be reworked and repopulated with better capacitors. I'd guess that at the time these pictures were taken the leaked capacitors were providing a small fraction of their intended capacitance, and considerable excess leakage, but had not yet progressed near enough to an effective short to shut the board down.

I've also seen leaking capacitors in the power supply of a different PC which was a long-term BOINC cruncher. That one was not run out of spec, and that power supply actually did fail.

So was crunching at fault? I'd say at least it gets an assist. This type of capacitor problem is generally agreed to be worsened by elevated temperature, and probably also by elevated cyclic current. Both were clearly increased over whatever they otherwise would have been by the added task of BOINC crunching.

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Solid caps ( the best are Japanese ) are the only way to go...

Most newer, higher quality boards use them and they really are a must for 27/7 crunching.

Most newer, higher quality boards use them and they really are a must for 27/7 crunching.

27/7 crunching? I've heard of overclocking, but this is ridiculous! ;)

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"Life is a tragedy for those who feel, and a comedy for those who think."

"I never get into an argument that I cannot win."

27/7

Has someone finally figured out how to add extra hours to our day?

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I'm a Prefectionist ;)

Solid caps ( the best are Japanese ) are the only way to go...

I made sure that both the motherboards and the power supplies for my subsequent builds had "solid" caps. For motherboards it is getting downright common. When I was shopping, it was not yet routine for power supplies. There is a lot of junk out there in the power supply market. I only run about four PCs, and I have had two die--one in a puff of smoke, and the other gradually enough as to puzzle me with the resulting odd behavior of the PC. My last three buys were Seasonic. Maybe overkill, but I sleep better.

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Ditto to power supplies! Smoked no less than four and gremlins in a machine because insuficient power; since I started cuda'ing.

No more <$100 PS for me. No matter how much wattage they claim. Even gone to dual 1000s in the big GPU rig. A good 850+ seems fine in single gpu quad or dualies.
However, GTX is running in the wifes dell pentD with stock 450. Waiting for that one to go, but under full load everything reports good voltage wise.

edit:
Sorry, to answer the OP:
Been crunching for near ten years on about every kind of puter that runs seti. Never had a CPU issue. Have gone through maybe 3 MBs but I feel they were normal failures or due to running in secondhand enclosures overvolted/clocked crunching 24/7. Generally my hardware has been pretty rock solid when not dealing with OE (operator error. Have a couple laptops (Toshiba) that have been crunching for nearly 6 years 365.

I think it all depends on the machine. I bought a sweet HP laptop last christmas (07). The thing was sweet with a 2.4 turino (sp). Well all was well till I ran boinc for a few months and fried the video card. Called HP they told me it was a known design flaw with that line as they made the heatsink rest against GPU or blow hot air at it or something. Anyway offered to fix it but I declined as it will only happen again. Generally maybe run a lappy at say 80% load. Desktops if properly engineered and clean all fans working etc, should be fine.
my .02 Ameros

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"The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not Eureka! (I found it!) but rather, 'hmm... that's funny...'" -- Isaac Asimov

My Turion 64 X2 Laptop died. It had ~80,000 credit on Seti, ~20,000 credit on Climate prediction and ~10,000 Credit on Rosetta.

Apparently HP had a recall for the motherboards crapping out, but the recall warranty already expired. :(

Edit: Here is the link to the host: 4657813

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My MacBook Pro has been crunching 24 hours a day for almost a year with no problems. It is set on a wooden table top with about ten percent openings between slats. Much of the time I keep a pencil under the hinges to give a bit of extra circulation space.

Right now it is on my lap and base is slightly warm to the touch. Keyboard surface is about skin temperature and the metal is slightly warmer.

It has dual processor with both running on SETI data. It keeps link open to internet as well.

duke

+1
exactly the same for me

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I'm just curious to know if anyone's PC or laptop has broken down because of 24/7 crunching.

The photo below shows what happened to someone's P4 motherboard after 2 weeks of continued crunching. It's probably one of those boards built with problematic capacitors.

I see at least 3 bad caps on that board. The first and third to the left of the socket are easy to spot. As far as Notebooks, I have had 2 going for over 3 years 24/7 with no problem. I also have a farm of about 10 quads now. As long as they get the dust blown out regulary they have no problems. I did have one Asus MB give out on me, but it never ran right and never got to spend even 24 hours running. I think it ran for about 2 hr max. I spent more time being mailed to Asus service than running. After 3 tries, I finally just threw it away. I spent more on postage than on the board. Thanks for the warranty Asus.

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