Does Folding@home decrease the life expectancy of my iMac G5?

[Littleodie914]

Hey guys, waiting desperately for X-mas so I can open our new iMac, and I was thinking about a few of the first things I want to do with it. One of them was Folding@home. I run it on our HP all the time, since it's just a weenie PC that sits in the corner, but I'm kinda worried about running it on the iMac. I try to take real good care of my macs so that they'll last a long while. Will Folding do anything evil to my iMac, like overheat it or decrease its life expectancy? Any advice would be great!

 

[musicpyrite]

I would think folding would decrease the life expectancy a little, how much though, I couldn't guess. Running any processor at 100% 24x7 can't be good because of all the heat generated.

Though folding at home is nice, when it gets cold in my room, I let my PC run it all the time; keeps my room nice and toasty. On a side note, does anybody think it would be a good idea to use F@H to do stress testing of the processor, like Prime95?

 

[Littleodie914]

...Running any processor at 100% 24x7 can't be good because of all the heat generated...

Yea, that's exactly what I was worried about... Guess I'll have to check up on this.

...Though folding at home is nice, when it gets cold in my room, I let my PC run it all the time; keeps my room nice and toasty. ...

Ooh.... Not a bad idea you've got there!

 

[jimsowden]

My PC is below the desk, so it not only warms the room, but my feet first.

 

[Littleodie914]

My PC is below the desk, so it not only warms the room, but my feet first.

Haha, yea, our PC is below the desk too, but it's a very open room, so the heat doesn't really get anywhere before the evil cold air smooshes it.

Does anybody have anything further on the life expectancy issue? I'm still kinda debating whether I wanna fold with it or not.

 

[diamond geezer]

Make sure you have the energy saver set to switch the display off as LCD panels have a limited lifespan, other than that I spose the bearings in the fans will probably be the most likely candidates to fail earlier than normal

 

[Timelessblur]

Yeah it going to put a small dent in the life span of the CPU and a few parts but those parts will still out live the rest of the computer that are uneffected by the CPU running at 100%. So it will not matter much in the end.

 

[daveL]

I've been folding 24x7x365 for nearly 2 years on my 1 GHz TiBook without any problems. I also run it on my new PM G5 2x2.5 GHz and my wife's new iMac G5. I would absolutely recommend that you run it 24x7 for a couple months, at least. Why? It's a great way to burn the system in. Since most hardware failures occur during the first few weeks/months of a system's life, stressing it from day one should weed out any weak system components. Just my take on it.

 

[wdlove]

I have been folding 24/7 on my four year old G4 for 11 months now without any problem. There is also wear and tear when doing a restart.

 

[Mechcozmo]

I read something about overclocking and how little it can damage your computer.

Linkety
Go about halfway down. Below the "About this Mac..." screen showing a 1.33Ghz processor, look at the side note.

Thanks, lbodnar!

 

[Littleodie914]

Alrighty guys, thanks a bunch! Sounds like I'll be folding!

 

[wdlove]

Alrighty guys, thanks a bunch! Sounds like I'll be folding!

Thank you Littleodie on your decision to begin Folding@home. It is a worthy cause to assist Stanford with disease research. The side benefit is that it helps MacRumors.

 

[Littleodie914]

Thank you Littleodie on your decision to begin Folding@home. It is a worthy cause to assist Stanford with disease research. The side benefit is that it helps MacRumors.

Yea, I've been folding for about a month now with our PC (on team MR... hehe ), and I haven't really worried about it, since it's just a PC that I wouldn't mind getting rid of anyways.

 

[Xtremehkr]

I fold 24/7 on my iMac G5 and iMac G3. I have a 5 year full replacement warranty at Fryes though, which means that if it dies in 4 and they can't replace the motherboard, they replace the entire computer with whatever the top of the line model is 4 years from now. If it gave out at 4 years and 11 months I would be really happy.

Aside from that, the G5 folds at an incredible rate compared with my G3. With no noticeable slow down either. My G3 works its way through about 3% of a unit per day while my G5 has been doing about 1 a day, sometimes more.

 

[superbovine]

Hey guys, waiting desperately for X-mas so I can open our new iMac, and I was thinking about a few of the first things I want to do with it. One of them was Folding@home. I run it on our HP all the time, since it's just a weenie PC that sits in the corner, but I'm kinda worried about running it on the iMac. I try to take real good care of my macs so that they'll last a long while. Will Folding do anything evil to my iMac, like overheat it or decrease its life expectancy? Any advice would be great!

If you have to ask you wouldn't notice it anyways.

 

[Sun Baked]

Yes it will, it'll deplete the electrons and wear out the wiring in the CPU.

If you overclock the PPC970FX and boost the voltage above 1.3V you'll reduce the life of the CPU -- seems they have problems above 1.3V

But overclocking will probably be a PIA anyway.

Planning on Overclocking Your G5? thread.

At the same time, the 1.3-V application condition can only be applied to products with <50 000 power-on-hours (POHs)_. To accommodate the reliability requirements of a 100 000-POH system, the upper voltage must be limited to 1.2 V

Which basically is telling you that simply bumping the voltage by .1V will cut the CPUs reliability in half.

 

[Rod Rod]

The only disadvantage to folding on an iMac G5 is the noise. It's not loud, but it is there and right in front of your face, unlike a tower which you could situate under a desk or 6 feet away or both.

When it's not at or near 100% processor load, the iMac G5 is pretty quiet. I think it's more pleasant to use a quiet computer, but of course it's up to you how you use your machines.

I've been running SETi non-stop on both my Power Mac G5s (I'm trying to sell one but in the meantime I'm getting some use out of it). At full load, the two of them combined are quieter than the iMac G5s (17" & 20") I used to have.

As for longevity issues, just resist the temptation to tape up the vents and you'll be fine.