Folding@home Crashed My Machine

[spinon]

Hi Folks,

I installed Folding@home a couple of days ago and, when running for the very first time, caused the CPU temperature to rapidly rise to 65C! At this point, the utility Core Temp kicked in and shut my PC down. I didn't get a chance to adjust any settings for F@h to prevent this happening. This threw me into a state of panic but I eventually managed to recover from this. I have now uninstalled F@h until I know how to prevent this recurring. I have previously contributed to the World Community Grid and never had problems like this.

The CPU is an Intel Core i3 4150.

Please advise how to proceed.

spinon

[puuteknikko]

You probably need a bit better cooling solution, or reduce the number of threads to use to reduce workload.
72C is the maximum specified for your CPU so 65C is still on the safe side.

[bruce]

You'll need to verify that your cooling hardware is working as designed. Have the bearings on the fan worn out? Has dust clogged the airflow passeges? Has the thermal grease between the CPU and the heatsink degraded? etc.

Any well-designed computer can dissipate the heat generated by a CPU running at 100% compute loads -- though some computers can't tolerate that processing load due to a degraded cooling subsystem or a poor initial design ... or even by upgrades that didn't consider thermal design rules.

[foldy]

Can you configure Tool Core Temp to shutdown when CPU temp reaches 85°C that makes more sense.

[jonault]

Folding@Home is going to work your CPU pretty hard (Your GPU too if you do GPU folding). I have a i5 CPU that I'm folding on. Using the stock CPU cooling fan temps were running in the mid-upper 80's; with a 240mm water cooler, temps are down to the 45-50 degree range.

The only other option for reducing your CPU temps would be to reduce the number of CPU cores you're using for folding, but I don't know if that would keep your temperature monitor happy - it might be looking at individual core temps rather than the overall temp.

[Jorgeminator]

You probably need a bit better cooling solution, or reduce the number of threads to use to reduce workload.
72C is the maximum specified for your CPU so 65C is still on the safe side.

Tcase (temperature of the heatspreader) is 72°C. At that temperature the cores could be at 90°C or more, depending on the heat transfer capabilities between the die and the heatspreader.
If Core Temp is actually monitoring the core temps then a shutdown at 65°C is completely unnecessary, it's completely safe like you said. CPUs can take 80°C temperatures 24/7 without degradation, above that I'd start looking for a better cooling solution.

[spinon]

Hi Folks,

Thanks for the replies. It looks as if Core Temp actually measures the core temperatures, as the name of this utility would imply. Not the case temperature. Maximum junction temperature, Tjmax is 100C. But I sense that F@h is not going to be successful on my PC. What I don't understand is why F@h started before I'd had a chance to look at its settings. At least, that's how it appeared to me.

spinon

[peterjammo]

F@H is a background service that by default runs automatically. It will run regardless of whether you have the local control or web control aps running. During setup, I seem to recall that you could specify the power setting between light,medium and full,with the default being medium. On my old laptops I have successfully folded on Full,but have reduced all to light without any serious change in performance.

I think, as above,the problem you have is with the settings on Core Temp which seem to be set far too low. Ihaven't used Core Temp since going Linux a couple of years ago,but I seem to remember setting the limits is simple. Try changing them to say 80 and see how that goes?

All the above advice on cleaning/heatsink grease etc is also spot on.

[Joe_H]

You can also set the client to not start automatically after a restart. Add the option pause-on-start with the value true as an Extra Client Option under the Expert tab of Configure in FAHControl.

[JacobSmith]

65 C is not hot so you need to fix your pc.