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Folding on laptop

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Speedmonkay

Member
Joined
May 6, 2006
Location
New Orleans, LA
Well my old Dell Latitude (p3 1200mhz) run all day at work and sits in the laptop bag all night. So I had the bright idea of how I could have it fold while Im at work and instead of sitting in the laptop bag at night I could have it sit out and fold. Ive had it running for like 22hours a day for a few days now (hour off for trip to work and hour back home)
Im kind of rethinking that idea now.
I just ran SpeedFan and it said a nice steady 71C.
So now I guess I decide: Turn it off more or let it keep going and risk toasting it and give myself an excuse to buy a new one :p
F@H the ultimate burn-in program !
 
I had a P3 1000 (coppermine core) Inspiron laptop I folded on for 2 1/2 years almost nonstop with no problems. And I've been folding on my Dothan laptop that I replaced the P3 with for almost 2 years now, folding the whole time with no problems too. I would be hesitant to do that with a P4 based machine though, since P4's use so much more power than Dothan or a P3 and tend to run hotter. BTW, your P3 proc is most probably spec'ed for 100 C, so you are still within it's operational envelope. Like Macaholic said, let it get some ventilation and fold on with it. :D

EDIT: EMIII shows that I've folded 95,000 points worth of wu's since I bought my Dothan laptop. And EMIII had trouble recording the p147x and p1481 work, so that figure is probably low.
 
yeah i always make sure it has good ventilation
I was just a little concerned because it used to run 60C Full load ... oh well
! Fold on !
 
On my Inspiron 8200 I have a portable fan that I have blowing air on the right hand side of it while it is lifted via a small chunck of rubber, I get a reduction of a good 10c. Mind you the fan is on high, but in my cellar where it is 60-65 all day, that thing folds at 100% cpu usage, and the thing doesnt get hotter than 50c.
 
Another thing you can do, especially if it's a few years old like yours, is go to Dell's website and download the breakdown sheets for your laptop. Then carefully take it down according to the sheets and remove and clean the heatpipe, then replace it using AS5. I did that with my Inspiron before I sold it and I was surprised at how much filth was on the heatpipe, even though I blew it out regularly with canned air. That is one thing I will hand Dell; the documentation they put at the consumer's fingertips readily available on their systems via download on their support site.
 
I am folding on my inspiron 4150 with a p4-m 1.8ghz. I use a program called i8fangui to control the fans. I also took it apart and replaced the stock thermal pad with as5. The cpu is running 65C while folding.
 
I do on my lappy, I replaced the stock thermal junk with AS Ceramic it droped my load temps by 7c, more then worth it. Just make sure you have lots of air that can move under. I set it on my desk and have it leaning against the wall with the HSF vent pointing up to alow the largest flow of naturaly lighter hot air.
 
I've been folding (previously running seti) on many laptop before. cpu shouldn't be a problem as long as you don't block the vents. if the cpu gets too hot, it will shut down itself, and it's a good indication that you'll have to look into it (better cooling/venting, clean up, or quit).

the biggest problem from my experience on laptop 24/7 number crunching is the HDD! heat is also #1 enermy to the HDD, not just cpu! I have 2 HDD died in my many years seti/folding. 1 on a toshiba, 1 on ibm, both got replaced under warranty, they were 1-less than 2 years old.

foldon.gif
 
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I fold on my laptop (XP-M 2400+ meant to run at 1.8GHz) at 1.26GHz and it seems to be fine. If I fold at 1.8GHz with the top down it usually results in my laptop overheating and shutting off. But hey, it's old.

I've had it run 55 days straight with no issues, when properly ventillated and at 1.26GHz.
 
I think Im going to take it apart tonight and clean the healpipes and reapply some good ol AS5 to it.
mmmmmm I get to take something apart :drool:
 
I was folding on my laptop for a while (P4 3.4ghz), but I ended up frying out my memory due to the heat. I had a fan on my desk running across the power brick and the laptop itself, which felt cool to the touch, but obviously it's fans were not drawing enough air to cool the memory, like it was for the processor.

Ended up being a fairly big pain when it happened since the corrupted memory ended up causing some bad data to be written to the registry before it altogether stopped working.

This may not be a common problem, my laptop runs hot anyways due to the desktop processor, but something to consider, especially if you use your laptop for work (as I do).
 
if you guys do worry, you might want to look at one of those notebook cooler thing that has a fan or two and the whole tray sit underneath the laptop.

I just bought one yesterday that included 4 USB ports. my laptop from warm to touch at the bottom to as cold as it was turned off!! and those 2 fans doens't add any noise at all, well, at least I'm still hearing the laptop cpu fan, not those cooler fans!!

HDD went down to only 32c, and CPU is 50c folding according to SpeedFan! I remember it was something like high 40s - low 50s on the HDD, and high 60c for the CPU before!!

the non USB hub version cost as little as $20 and it's a great investment for those who fold/seti 24/7 on their laptop and let it sit on the desk most of the day!
 
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