Folding Forum

I'm considering upgrading my laptop of over 7 years and I found Lenovo Ideapad 5 with AMD Ryzen 7 4800U (8C / 16T) to be good on the specs and what I thought was a good price ($1300 AUD/ $900 USD).

While my non-FAH usage will be general computer stuff (Youtube, browsing, studying etc.), I'm a bit concerned if continuous running of FAH will be too much for the 8C/ 16T. With FAH being CPU hungry, I suspect the Max Clock Boost of 4.2GHz cannot be sustained long term and if it is throttled to the base clock of 1.8GHz (https://www.amd.com/en/products/apu/amd-ryzen-7-4800u), it's not much useful for FAH.

I do not use the laptop for gaming, video editing etc. so graphics is not an area of great interest. The laptop will be used for FAH a majority of the time and I thought this would be the best place to get the most relevant suggestions. I have very little knowledge of computer hardware and laptops and would appreciate any advice in this regard.

Specs:
Processor : AMD Ryzen 7 4800U (8C / 16T, 1.8 / 4.2GHz, 4MB L2 / 8MB L3)
Memory : 16GB Soldered DDR4-3200

If the temps climb too high, say over 80C, you have options to throttle your F@H work.

Assuming Windows:

There are many ways to monitor temps but I like Speccy.
https://www.ccleaner.com/speccy

The simple way to throttle worked better when CPUs had 4 threads. There is a slider Bar that limits threads Light = 1/2 of total (8 in your case), Medium is threads minus -1 (12 in your case) and Full is all threads (15 in your case)

If you have a GPU (and you do) the number of threads is reduced by one to feed data to the GPU.

The more advanced way is to configure the exact number of threads (F@H calls them cpus) that prevents over heating.

In the taskbar to the lower right of the screen, you should see a F@H molecule icon, click it (you may need to click an Up Arrow to see it ^)

The second item in this menu is Advanced Control, click it

On this screen to the left is a Configure button, click it

Now you get a screen with a Slots tab, click it

On this white field should be a cpu item, click it and then click edit

By default F@H set the number of CPUs to -1 meaning let the software decide.
You can enter any number from 1 to the number of threads your CPU supports.

If you have GPUs, F@H reserves one CPU per GPU to feed it data across the PCIE bus.

F@H has difficulty with large primes and their multiples number of CPUs.
7 is always large, 5 is sometimes large, and 3 is never large. Try to choose a number that is a multiple of 2 and/or 3.
1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 9, 12, and 16 are good numbers of CPUs to choose. (_r2w_ben has advised me of more good numbers)
5. 10. and 15 may work most of the time. Other numbers will bite you
Type the number you want, and click save.

You may wish to consider a laptop cooler.

That laptop Lenovo Ideapad 5 should work fine for FAH as the CPU only has 25W TDP. That gets cooled easily and FAH can run at full speed.

The Ryzen 3000 and 4000 (renoir) chipsets are known to boost way past their rated TDPs.
Online reviews show this laptop gets very hot even under normal gaming.
I would not recommend folding on that laptop, unless you plan on taking it apart, and leave the motherboard suspended in the air.
The laptop shell isn't allowing sufficient cooling. I would not recommend to fold on any laptop whatsoever; unless it's one that you plan on throwing away.

You could either try CPU OR GPU folding, but for both together, you'll either fry your laptop, or have to disable PBO (the chip will run quite slow) to keep temps at bay...

I honestly have a hard time recommending a regular PC (the off the shelf 'walmart' or ''target' desktop mid-tower PCs) for folding. Even my open bench setup needs limiting power, because of high heat (granted even 1 of my GPUs are more powerful than the entire laptop).

Thank you all

I Fold on 6 laptops, none over heat, all run on full. I monitor temps, but none overheat. Admittedly, none have a GPU that can fold.

I've folded on several latops -- like Jimbo, using all CPU threads and no GPUs. I only had one that was significantly closer to "hot" than I liked and it was the oldest of them. I think people who build modern laptops have used CPUs with improved ability to manage their own temperature.

I have folded on a laptop using the CPU and GPU (Intel Core i7-3840QM & Nvidia GTX 675M) for many years. When it would stop due to overheating, I re-applied thermal paste and it continued to fold with an addition of a laptop cooler. I had to stop once the laptop refused to boot-up... 7 years of service isn't too bad but that was before the AVX and FahCore_21 times so heat output would be less when compared to present conditions.

IME, I got a laptop that had separate cooling systems for the GPU and CPU which weren't connected in any way. I also ensured that I can have easy access to the fans for cleaning and swapping out parts (RAM, SSD, HDD, etc.) as I preferred flexibility and functionality over style. It was a brick laptop that I used and was satisfied with its performance over the years.

Though I don't have a laptop or any of the newer APU's, folding on GPU with my 2400G is very power efficient and doesn't generate much heat at all.

Even with my fan curves set towards fairly quiet until over 65C, my current temp is only 44-45C while GPU folding. Bumping clocks does bump temp up, but not much on the GPU side. I don't know the details of how they bumped the Vega 8 up to those higher frequencies and how it impacts temps, but I doubt they would set a path towards high temps on mobile APUs.

For combined folding, my system also has no trouble with temps, but I have a mid sized case, but it does have minimal cooling. One single 120mm fan, stock CPU cooler. But I also have less cores and threads as well.

Due to architecture, the combined CPU and GPU folding on these APUs makes them both take a performance hit in folding, so it's more efficient to fold using one or the other regardless. I generally fold more on GPU due to it being more power efficient and quiet, but now and then let the GPU finish and do some CPU folding.



I'm curious to see some numbers on these newer APUs. With the clock rates they have they should better my Vega 11. And if you get the right WU's they can be fairly quick considering the hardware. Mine has been rock solid stable at both stock and higher GPU and memeory clocks, and I've yet to have a failed WU. Power consumption and efficiency on GPU folding is great, and I've found that in terms of PPD/watts it hovers right near the 1650/1660 series cards. My average PPD is only in the 75-80K range probably, but lately it's probably bumped up some due to small atom count WU's. It seems to love those, and I've had PPD up to the 165K+ range here and there.

I'm have an HP OMEN 15en, Ryzen 4800H CPU and 1660ti GPU. I use a laptop cooler, and it stays around 90-95c when folding on both... A little warm, but it's been running, nonstop, for several weeks. Now, I only run BIONC Rosetta, and it hovers around 85-90c. This thing is a beast!

https://boinc.bakerlab.org/rosetta/show ... id=5135038

bruce wrote:I've folded on several latops -- like Jimbo, using all CPU threads and no GPUs. I only had one that was significantly closer to "hot" than I liked and it was the oldest of them. I think people who build modern laptops have used CPUs with improved ability to manage their own temperature.

While that's true, most thermal solutions are not sufficient to cool CPU + GPU at the same time.
Not even CPUs with IGPs.
I have a motherboard with desktop CPU mounted, and while it is rated for 65W TDP, a 65W CPU with IGP running at 100% still runs at 95C, 80W (and that's with an additional case fan providing extra airflow). Laptops suffer from this even the more!

While CPUs are significantly more efficient, they're also ran at significantly higher core frequencies, significantly more amount of cores, as well as turbo frequencies that are taking the CPU beyond it's rated TDP.
Renoir CPUs run from 4 to 16 threads, on a laptop...
Intel CPUs are following suit, with their 10th gens, up to 16 threads on a laptop CPU.

Folding on CPU or GPU only should be ok, since in most scenarios that means only using 50% of the laptop's maximum heat output.
But both at the same time? Not many have sufficient cooling for that.
And that counts for Netbooks with Atom CPUs, to modern gaming and workstation laptops.