put my laptop folding?

[Intrepid]

I know laptops arent meant for heavy use, btu mine is quiet even under load. and i have used it to replace my main rig for about a month before and it stood up to thet test. it's a Dell inspiron 8200 P4 1.8M with 40GB drive R9000M and 512MB of PC2100. should I set it folding?

of is this jsut a stupid question to which I should already know the answer?

 

[Ben721]

Make that baby fold.

 

[Intrepid]

alllright. tho I might want to get one of those cold pads for it, it does get dangerously hot.

 

[Legend911]

LOL

I have my Sony Vaio 700mhz laptop folding 24/7 now for 3 weeks with no problems. I don't think I will have any problems with it either. It doesn't get too hot really. At least mine doesn't.

 

[scoobiedoo]

folding with a lappy is ok....i just advise you to take these precautions.

1.) airflow - make sure that thing is propped up somehow

2.) monitor carefully - make sure it is where you can monitor on a most of the time basis.

3.) room temp - try to put it into a room where the ambient room temp is nice and cold

having done all of this i would say your pretty safe to fold with the lappy.

fold on my folding brethern

scoobiedoo

 

[axlecrusher]

I have wondered about this and I have come to the conclusion that folding on a laptop is not a great idea. Laptops tend to get warm/hot under normal use, so I don't think it is a good idea to keep it under full load for extended amounts of time. But I don't rally know because I don't have a laptop yet. Let us know how it goes!

Axle

 

[Intrepid]

hmm, well the only way to find out is to try, and i will only know if it not a god idea when it dies on me or something...

 

[scoobiedoo]

I have folded with my laptop on 24/7 for about a year now.

I have not had any problems with it at all.

scoobiedoo

 

[axlecrusher]

I wouldn't think a laptop would stand up to the stress. But I guess they do! Coolness.

Axle

 

[kaltag]

My Toshiba 2.4 PIV has been running 24/7 for 6 months and no problems here either although that may be due to the PIV throttling to keep itself alive

 

[nikhsub1]

Laptops can fold no problem. You see, Laptops that use mobile CPU's will throttle IF they get too hot. My laptop uses a desktop P4 3.06 with HT, and if IT gets too hot, it will throttle as well. I have never witnessed it throttle but it would. I would not worry about it, just make sure the lappy has good ventilation... mine has 2 fans on the bottom to draw air in over the HSF so I can't really lay the think on a bed or the fans would get blocked.

 

[Zerileous]

ya, but just make sure it will throttle, i know someone who has a verry instable lappy because they were too lazy to turn it off when they were done. But its an old 400MHzer.

 

[marklar]

I agree with what's been said.

I have 3 laptops folding in the office as most of the time they're just sitting idle.

First thing I noticed is they're damn fast, I don't know why but they are. They are all PIII 1Ghz (I haven't looked at the other H/W) doing 5.5 points (not Gromacs) in an 9 hour day (I can't leave them on 24/7).

The fan was on constantly and they were getting a bit warm so I dropped the CPU percentage to 80% which has made them much better. I've also put little pads under the feet to improve airflow.

Something that happened before I started folding is that a laptop got the blue screen of death and went un-noticed for a few hours. When I found it it had practically melted, I guess the heat control had stopped. If you're going to leave a laptop unattended, make sure it's running a nice stable OS.

If anyone's interested, the laptops are on a network in the office and I didn't want them to fold when they were out of the office ie, on battery power and without internet connection. So I installed EMIII running in invisible mode which runs the console across the network at startup. If the laptop is out of the office it just fails to load.

I thought about putting 1 in the fridge out of curiosity but decided against it as they're not mine. That reminds me, you can get little 12V fridges for your car, has anyone tried to mod one for their rig?

 

[portorock]

I've had my 600 Celery folding for over a year with no probs. But like you said, it does get awfully hot if you have it on your lap

 

[athayer187]

For a dell laptop - you might want to look into ik8fangui, which is a fan control/temp monitoring app. Also, you might want to take it apart and swap that thermal interface pad for some arctic silver. That alone dropped temps about 3 degrees celcius for me. I have had my laptop folding, and the fans will be on low constantly, but it holds about a 57-60 degree constant temp.

 

[Intrepid]

open it up?!? no way myp arents would flip if they caught me. not that they would have a choice but I really get nervous opening up such highly propriatairy systems that I know so little about, were it a desktop i would have modded the carp out of it but.... not laptops i leave em wel lenough alone. i see your lappy is about the same as mine, slightly lesser vid card and more ram, tho i hear winXP takes a preformance hit when the mem gets that high and i only use up to 250MB of my 512 at a time.

as for temp monitoring, i have tried but i cant get any programs to read the stuff in my laptop...

perhaps i can just limit it to only use 50% of space clock cycles... that should keep it down a bit at a safe level.

 

[grv]

I've been folding for several months almost 24/7 on my compaq n610 with no real problems. Seems a bit of a slug at times, but I'm not sure that's due to the folding or the fact that it's loaded to the gills with crap I don't need.

I got one of these to get more air flow going. It fits in the bag no problem, so it's easy to drag around with the laptop.

http://www.targus.com/product_details.asp?sku=PA239U

I suppose propping it up on whatever's handy would do the same thing...

I say go for it

 

[scoobiedoo]

hehe
and without further ado here's my lappy

the metal rack underneath it is just a cake cooling rack

scoobiedoo

 

[Intrepid]

hehe, your screen is about as dirty as mine. jsut how do you keep those things slean? of well thats off topic.

what do you guys think of my running it folding at 50-75 % CPU usage mounted ontop of some extra fans i have lying around, i'll hock the fans to my 90watt testing PSU so that air flows under it for good ventelation?

 

[scoobiedoo]

Okay, I don't know what kind of ambient temps you are getting but you can run the thing at full throttle if you want for a few days...just keep and eye on it, if you see anything that's could be caused by heat just throttle it then.

as always...ask away and question you want

scoobiedoo