What should my CPU temperature be when running Folding@Home?

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DiamondLight
Posts: 4
Joined: Mon Dec 21, 2015 4:40 pm

What should my CPU temperature be when running Folding@Home?

Post by DiamondLight »

Hello,

I'm just wondering what a healthy temperature my CPU should be running while using Folding@Home. At the moment I'm using my Alienware 17 laptop and as I type this, the program is running in the background. Currently my CPU's temperatures are averaging 75'C/167'F with a maximum temperature before performance loss, is 80'C/176'F.

The current load on my CPU's are about 55% with a maximum of about 90%.

When my computer is idle, it's at about 40'C/104'F.

Under my laptop when I feel if it's hot or not, it's barely even warm. Although my fan is running obviously louder than it would be if it were idle (in which case the fan wouldn't even go on at all), it's pushing out cold air so I'm assuming that everything is running just fine. I just want to double check here to see if everything is working properly and if that's an ok temperature for my CPU's to be while running the Folding@Home program.

Thanks for your help! :)

Edit: Furthermore, while the program does it's magic, I'm able to watch streams or surf the internet and even play a game like Fallout 4 on Ultra settings at 30FPS with Folding@Home running in the background. :)
Joe_H
Site Admin
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Re: What should my CPU temperature be when running Folding@H

Post by Joe_H »

The temperature sounds reasonable if you installed the client and left it at the default settings. By default the FAH client uses half the available CPU cores when installed on a laptop, that shows as setting of Light. Also by default, the client is set to run at the lowest priority. So other programs requiring CPU resources will get CPU time first.
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foldy
Posts: 2040
Joined: Sat Dec 01, 2012 3:43 pm
Hardware configuration: Folding@Home Client 7.6.13 (1 GPU slots)
Windows 7 64bit
Intel Core i5 2500k@4Ghz
Nvidia gtx 1080ti driver 441

Re: What should my CPU temperature be when running Folding@H

Post by foldy »

@DiamondLight: It looks like folding is not using your GPU.
If you want use your GPU you could get much more folding points.
But then you have to pause the client when you play games and disable internet browser video hw acceleration.
DiamondLight
Posts: 4
Joined: Mon Dec 21, 2015 4:40 pm

Re: What should my CPU temperature be when running Folding@H

Post by DiamondLight »

foldy wrote:@DiamondLight: It looks like folding is not using your GPU.
If you want use your GPU you could get much more folding points.
But then you have to pause the client when you play games and disable internet browser video hw acceleration.
Yeah I have my settings set to light just so while I'm doing other tasks on my computer, it's still performing well.

As for my GPU and folding points, while I'm not entirely interested in getting the points to climb the leaderboard, it's more of just helping out whenever my computer is on. :) I plan on building a 4K gaming rig with a couple of 980ti's with one of those 980ti's dedicated to folding. I'll probably leave that rig on since it'll have a ton of fans and be liquid cooled so I won't have to worry about any overheating. :)
DiamondLight
Posts: 4
Joined: Mon Dec 21, 2015 4:40 pm

Re: What should my CPU temperature be when running Folding@H

Post by DiamondLight »

Joe_H wrote:The temperature sounds reasonable if you installed the client and left it at the default settings. By default the FAH client uses half the available CPU cores when installed on a laptop, that shows as setting of Light. Also by default, the client is set to run at the lowest priority. So other programs requiring CPU resources will get CPU time first.
Thanks for the information! :)
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