Dangers of DC?

[jbubrisk]

Soooo... Is there any danger to my system on having it run DC allllll day long? It looks like it doesn't access the hard drive much, but are there any "wear and tear" issues that spring up down the road? Thanks in advance,

jbubrisk

 

[Fullmetal Chocobo]

It if concerns you, just run the DC programs when you have the machine on--any little bit helps. A lot of people keep their machine on 24/7, so the only difference for them would be the higher CPU usage (ie the machine working vice being idle).

 

[Extelleron]

The biggest problem is probably power usage if you fold 24/7. Computer components (except for the HDD, perhaps) are not going to have a problem running constantly.

 

[BlackMountainCow]

Been doing DC for years now and all that ever failed on me was on HD and maybe 3 case fans. And I don't even know if they hadn't failed anyway.

 

[jbubrisk]

I'm renting a room, and I don't pay for utilities I just replaced my case fans too

 

[GLeeM]

I had a fan go. They are on more or running faster when the CPU is used more.

DC people usually clean out the heatsink/fans, and the rest of the box, more often.

Folding@Home default setting is to make a checkpoint every 15 minutes so the HD will be activated at least that often.

Oh and welcome to the TeAm!

 

[TAandy]

Addiction, addiction

Courtesy, Visage, quoted from Visage, Visage, Tar

 

[BadThad]

Fans and power supplies, they are the only things I can attribute to wearing out with DC.

 

[Orange Kid]

The addiction to stats is the only concern here......deep pockets are necessary to feed the monster

 

[BlackMountainCow]

Originally posted by: Orange Kid
... deep pockets are necessary ...

Oh yes, I forgot to mention that! :evil:

 

[petrusbroder]

I have computers which have run 24/7/365 since 1999 (those 3 are the oldest ones) without any trouble ...

I have had disk failures, but those disks were more than 8 - 10 years old (usually 10 GBytes).
I have hade power-supply-units (PSU)-failures, but those were either very new or extremly old (more than 10 years)

The costs are mostly electrical power and your time. It takes quite a few hours every year to maintain the comps: cleaning the dust out, checking the capacitators, updating the software, cleaning out all useless stuff), keeping up with the science and the stats, doing some stats ... but that is the really fun part for me

 

[Assimilator1]

Originally posted by: Extelleron
The biggest problem is probably power usage if you fold 24/7. Computer components (except for the HDD, perhaps) are not going to have a problem running constantly.

Fans wear out quicker ,but it still takes years & years of 24/7 operation to kill them.
Unless its those cheap crappy little high speed fans that some mbd makers fit to the chipsets:|

Oh yea & stats addiction

[edit]
*waves to Orange kid*