does your CPU need a "workout"?

No it doesn't need a workout, I think the spinning peppermint/beach balls are enough.

This thread may help answer your question: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/857345/

I was interested in the same thing a year ago! Basically the conclusion in the thread is that CPUs do not get slower over time, so we can then assume that they don't need a "workout".

Actually this brings up an interesting scenario. I have a custom built tower that is about 2 years old at this point. It used to be my powerhouse until I got my Mac. Since I got my Mac I hooked it up to a TV to use for watching vids.Recently it began BSOD'ing a couple times a day.

Well I have been converting a TON of vids with my Mac Mini using Handbrake. I had the thought about a week ago that my tower is a far more powerful machine, so I created a HandbrakeCLI batch script, and began using it to convert. It has been running that batch script 24/7 since then with a processor affinity of 2 out of 4 cores. Since then I haven't had a single BSOD all week.

It is interesting to me to say the least.

If properly cooled the only thing that usually goes out are power supplies (high heat=capacitor death)

CPU's rarely die (only saw one die in my life)
Motherboards some times go crazy (electrolytic caps dry up, had a few die)
Ram rarely die (sometimes contacts get oxidized)
Hardrives die more or less often (depending how you treat them / dumb luck)
Graphic cards sometimes due to excessive heat produced by the GPU

Power supplies depending on the quality die or start to produce instability due to improper voltage regulation.

I've seen lots of machines with stability issues due to bad power supplies, sometimes due to mixed ram and with cheap mobos with crappy chipsets / power regulation circuitry.

Capacitors age, hard drives age, fans age, every thing ages but stressing out components is a way to make them fail faster. So keeping the computer lazy wont make it slow, maybe it will prolong it's useful life

But sometimes it boils down to pure dumb luck

Blondie :) said:

Sorry, but I'm having difficulty understanding your post. The way it's worded rather confusing, but I think your'e telling me that your tower is the one that was BSODing? And then as soon as you started using a batch script instead of the GUI, it started working better?

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Sorry I think my last past was a little run together. Bullet points are as follows:

1. Custom build used to be my workhorse till I got my Mac, not it just plays movies.

2. About 3 weeks ago the custom build started BSODing at least once every day or two.

3. Last week I made the custom build start handling Handbtrake work (I have always used HandbrakeCLI, batch scripts are better for handling large amounts of videos).

4. Ever since I have had it doing that, it hasn't BSOD'ed even once.

It's strange because I couldn't figure out what was causing the BSOD, and now that I'm making that quad core CPU ride over 90% it has not happened again.

BTW I hate stuff like this. It doesn't make since, and it's impossible to diagnose.

Blondie :) said:

That makes a lot more sense now haha. And that indeed is very strange my friend. I guess you just had to give it a workout to keep it busy instead of trying to find random errors on your computer? lol either way it hasn't happened again since, so just keep ripping movies I suppose lol

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I told my girlfriend that the computer was punishing us because it was so bored, and now it's happy again.

LOL I recently had my backup fail, so all I have is my original, uncoverted files, about 800GB worth. It'll be busy for a while.

This time when it gets finished though I will be rsyncing to another drive.

Blondie :) said:

This just randomly popped into my mind for some random reason haha. My question is this: Does your CPU need to be heavily used occasionally? Just like you need to use your battery, do you need to use the cpu as well? Like if you don't use your battery a lot, it gets lazy basically. Does your cpu get lazy if you don't use it a lot too?

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Nah, of course not. The CPU isn't a consumable like the battery.
It will just feel slower with the addition of new software over time.