First of all, I have been a member of SETI since Dec 99 and a member of Team Canada almost as long. In those days, while there may have been a Team Canada, there was no working site or much of any kind of organization.

Still, I ran SETI @home faithfully for a couple of years both at work and at home, 24x7. I was even in the top 1% for a while. Then I retired, moved to a new city, and got a new computer. About that time, SETI changed and my new computer ran quite hot so I was reluctant to run it at 100% CPU.

Anyway, I'm an old SETI user, an old Team Canada member and just plain old. I'm 65.

I recently got yet another new computer and this one is a 'Quad 6600' (Best Buy had a good sale on Acer Aspire quad 6600 systems). So, I got everything moved over and running and I thought I would fire up SETI again. I figured that by now they would have a mechanism to limit CPU utilization or perhaps limit the number of CPUs used. So far, their "limiting" appears to be limited to allowing only two WUs to be worked on at one time and that seems to limit my CPU utilization to just over 50% although all four cores are in use fairly heavily - two of them heavier than the other two. I was mostly concerned about heat but the temperatures of the cores has stayed under 60C under all conditions and the CPU and motherboard temperature is at or below 50C. The CPU fan does go from under 1100 rpm when cold to over 1700 rpm at around 55-59C. I don't know what would happen if I pushed the total CPU utilization up near 100%.

BTW, while I was a member of Team Canada, I could not remember either my user ID or password so I had ti register again. As a consequence, I probably have a shadow lurking around here somewhere.

Welcome Back Chimo79!!!
We have lots of computer gurus around here (although it sounds like you know a thing or two!! lol) to help out with any BOINC problems you may have and if you remember the email addy you used for your old account I could dig up the info for you. Well the user name but not the password.

Welcome! If you need any config info, feel free to ask - someone around here will be able to help. A lot has changed since the old SETI days (I remember them well...) and there are now a ton of great projects to choose from in the BOINC world from protein folding and drug design to purely mathematic based. You can check out several of the projects by following the links at the bottom left of the home page. If you just want to cruch SETI - that's great too!

Check out the forums and keep crunching!

Welcome chimo79

I to started with SETI in Jan 01 and crunched for Canada. It's great to see some of us still around. And one of my computers I had back then is still crunching at 100%, I've gone through a couple of power supplies but that is about it.

Welcome Back chimo79

I just recently built Q6600 rig for crunching.

You can adjust the number of CPU's and CPU time from your project account
from what you wrote it seems it's set for 2 CPU's at 100% of the time

go to the project website your attached to right now
click on Your Account
then click on 'Veiw or Edit' General Preferences
General Preferences will show you how many CPU's Boinc is allowed to run on and what percentage of time
there is an 'Edit Preferences' button at the bottom of the page if you want to change the settings

once you made the changes the next time the Boinc client contacts the project server it will make the changes to your computer
you can click on 'Update' on the Projects tab of Bionc Manager to make changes immediately or wait for the next time the schedular makes contact


As to the CPU temps

I did some research before I built Q6600 and even more when I started built it
I didn't like stock heatsink that came with the CPU
I read where people had to retighten the heatsink after running for while because excessive temps (70-90C with full load)
if the heatsink is seated properly it shouldn't go over 65C
The case that my Quad was going in to is one I used to run my AthlonXP 2800, I had installed a water kit to cool that beast and extra fans

Your MB temp does seem high though, usually this caused by poor air circulation from the case
If this is your beasty Acer 6600, from the limited photos it doesn't look it has any exhaust fan
if you added an exhaust fan get biggest that will fit (bigger the fan the lower the RPM's the less noise)
this will help with the CPU temps too.

With the water kit my Quad runs full load @2.8 GHz all 4 cores at 100%
CPU temp 60C
MB temp 37C
an 80mm fan air in
and a 120mm fan exhausting

Hope some of this helps you

Cheers
Frank Encruncher

Frank Encruncher
I have tried various combinations of the number of CPUs and the %CPU time but nothing makes any difference. I 'Update' after each change and even wait for some time between changes. At the moment, I have my Preferences set foe 4 CPU and 100% yet only 2 WUs are being worked on and my total CPU utilization remains just over 50%. This is my first experience with Vista so it might have something to do with Boinc on Vista.

Incidentially, my system is an Acer 5620. The only exhaust fan appears to be the power supply fan. I don't think there is any intake fan. At least, there is no noise from one. There is side ventilation holes in the case and I may eventually onstall the kind of side cooling that is directed at the CPU.

I bought the system because it was a Core2 Quad 6600 with 3 Gb of memory, a 500 Gb drive and came with a 22 inch LCD monitor that I upgraded to a 24 inch one for $150 more. The package cost was $900 plus the $150. I also found attractive the fact that it had no graphics or sound boards beyond the on-board ones. That leaves me with the ability to make my own selections along with a TV tuner. I have great plans to make this system the centre piece of a Home Theatre system. One downside is that the power supply is inadequate for anything more. I will probably yank the PSU from my old system along with the old DVD drive so I will have two optical drives. I might have been able to save a few dollars by building it from scratch but I doubt I could have saved very much. Even upgrading my old system was not attractive since it would have required a new motherboard, CPU, memory, DVD burner, Graphics card (probably)and I needed more disk. So, about the only things I could have salvaged would have been the case, PSU and DVD reader.

In the past, I used a free temperature monitoring piece of software called MotherBoardMonitor or MBM. It worked well but has not been supported for some time. The author got himself real paying job and more or less abandoned it. There does not appear to be a version for Vista and none for multiple CPUs. I found a program called Hardware Sensors Monitor for Vista by a company called [url=http://www.hmonitor.net/]AB Software.[url] It is not free and I have the trial version so it is limited to 10 min. run at a time then it must be restarted. It works OK but not great. It is designed for a dual core system so only shows temperature for two cores. I can live with that if I must. It will monitor 4 fans and picks up the most important voltages. It allows settable alarms and the alarms can trigger a program or action like a shutdown. Like I said, it looks Ok but if you know of any others that might be more appropriate (or free), I am interested. I don't have a lot of faith in some of these readings since the startup temperature of the CPU (not the cores) indicates 15C. While my house may be cool at night, I am certain it is not down below 15C.

Like Grizz said


Now for the Core usage/heat matter.

Ive got a Core2Duo on this end thats been running at 100% 24/7 since May and the darn thing barely register above normal temp.

I do seem to remember that after installing the BOINC manager on this box, i had the same issue you have, only 1 of the 2 cores registered. So i did pretty much the same as you did, changed the setting on all the various projects without much luck. Then, after poking around, i tried it via the BOINC manager advanced preference options and/or modifying the <max_cpus>X</max_cpus in the global_prefs_override.xml and global_prefs.xml in the BOINC folder.

That did the trick for me, so maybe it can for you, if you havent already tried it

Thanks WereChild, forgot about those things

@ chimo79

a quick search at the Boinc messageboards I found this thread
http://boinc.berkeley.edu/dev/forum_thread.php?id=1944

give Kathryn's suggestion a shot



HTPC's and crunchers have same requirements
you want them to run 'cool and quiet'
If you are going HTPC route then you'll want to keep the number of fans down to a minimum
One exhaust fan, biggest that will fit preferably 120mm
And since you want to change your power supply get one with a 120mm fan
With those two changes you should be able keep temps and noise levels down

After fishing around some, I found out what was going on.

There are two sets of "Preferences" that can control how Boinc performs on a system. Both sets have much the same parameters such as %CPU to use and the No. Of CPUs to use. One set of parameters is stored in the users Boinc account while the other set is stored on the individual system. The user can alter either set independently and select either set. The Boinc account set is altered by opening the user Boinc account either directly or through the "Your Account" or "Your Preferences" button in the Boinc application, and then editing the preferences. The local set of preferences is changed by selecting the "Advanced" tab, from within the Boinc application, then the "Preferences" option. A sub-window will open showing the local parameters including %CPU and No. of CPUs to use. These can be directly edited and the method used to close this window will determine which set of parameters will be used by the application. If the window is closed with the "OK" button, the local parameters are used by the Boinc application on this system only. If the "Close" button is used to close the window, the local application reverts to the Boinc Account parameters.

All very confusing.

I now have to determine what setup is best. The "No. of CPUs to use" or the "%CPU" can both be used to reduce the load on the system (and heat generation). The %CPU appears to start up and suspend the processes as a means of controlling load while the # of CPUs will allow the specified number to run for whatever percentage of time is specified (but less than all four CPUs results in the WU being rotated through all four in a manner that is equivalent to less than all four). Anyway, there must be some overhead associated with either method and I have no idea what that is. To complicate matters, my Quad 6600 system "Throttles" the CPU speed up and down depending on load and alters the Vcore voltage at the same time to help accomplish the CPU frequency. The CPU frequency appears to vary from a low of around 75% of max up to 100%. The Vcore appears to range from about 1.1 Volts up to about 1.25 Volts. All this has been derived from observation. I have no real documentation that explains this.

If anyone can offer any insight, I would greatly appreciate it. The "trial and Error" method is very time consuming and not necessarily the best.

The preferances with BOINC account manager started with version 5.9.X and higher. You can default to the project preferences by opening the manager preferences and pressing clear.

welcome Chimo79

This is how it looks on my box

Yo. Just came back from a forum vacation and found this thread. I also picked up a new machine with a quad-core 6600 and was experiencing the same dual-core experience that was mentioned above. Being able to process 4 projects at once is going to really help my numbers. Thanks to everyone for diagnosing this earlier!

Hope you had a good forum vacation Rintaran. Welcome back.

And I'm glad we could help you out.

Hey Rintaran!! Welcome back!! The new machine sounds great!

Welcome back Rintaran! I'm sure you'll be happy with the numbers that quad core will put up, they're quite impressive compared to the dual cores out there...

Welcome back Rintaran. Got to love them Quads

Hi rintaran:
Since I started this thread I received notice when you posted. I thought I would add some additional information I have found since I last posted.

Here are some gems I have discovered about the Q6600:

-The max specified operating core temperature is 62.2C.
-My system runs uncomfortably close to that max if I run all four processors at 100%.
-Limiting BOINC use to three processors works reasonably well and, under Vista, does not use 3 processors at 100% while leaving one at near zero. Rather, the load appears to be relatively evenly distributed (rotated?) over all four.
-Limiting BOINC to some percentage through the the Preferences does not work well. The overhead of starting and suspending the processes significantly reduces the work accomplished.
-I have found the best way to limit use (and thus temperature) is by allowing BOINC to use all four processors at 100% while limiting the processor speed and core voltage through the Vista Power Management Settings. I don't know if this capability is universal, unique to Vista, unique to Vista with Intel multiprocessors, or unique to my (Acer) implementation. I just know it is there and works well. In the Advanced section of the Power Management you can set various parameters for each of the Power Management schemes. One of those parameters is the Max and Min CPU speed. It is expressed as a percentage and appears to go in steps of 11% regardless of the setting. That means I can set it to 66%, 77%, 88% or 100%. Settings in between just results in the lower one of these. Anyway, I find 88% works well for me. Core temperatures stay between 55C and 57C and core voltage is 1.2V.
-The new Task Manager and System Monitor do an excellent job of allowing you to see performance (but not temperature)
-A free utility called Sandra from SiSoft provides an excellent snapshot of your system, including temperatures but it is a single snapshot.
-For continuous monitoring of Core, CPU, and Mainboard temperatures, along with fan RPMs and system voltages, I found a utility called hMonitor from AB Software to be very good. They have a 15 day trial that is a full version. The purchase cost was 29 Euros. It can be set up to issue audible alarms when any of the monitored parameters goes beyond limits you set (two levels) as well as initiating any program or script you might care to use (IE. emergency shutdown on fan failure.)

So far I am happy with the system and it crunches through the WUs well. My RAC is approaching 1700 on this one system and it is still rising - but I don't expect it will go much higher unless I go to some optimization scheme.

Chimo:

Thanks a ton for that information. I've been running at full burn 100% on all four cores for the past two days now and my temp is only ringing in at 57 C. I attribute this mostly to a combination of the huge intake fan my machine has, and the way that the people who control the temperature in my building refuse to turn it on (I've had to scrape frost off my old CRT some mornings). I'll be moving to a new place in a little over a month, so I'll definitely tune things down at that time (as those people like their heat)

From the description you gave earlier, I figure we have pretty much the same rig. Only difference I'm seeing between the Best Buy Acer A5620 and my Source Acer M5620 is the inclusion of a separate video card.

It's great to hear that it's really helped your numbers. Hopefully I'll see a similar skyrocket over the coming months.

Hi guys, welcome back.

I've been reading your posts with regards the 6600. Are you both running a standard cpu cooler? If so, consider changing to a better one.

My dual core used to run at close to 70% under full load, but since upgrading my cooler, it now runs at 30% - 32% at full load.

Hi guys, welcome back.

I've been reading your posts with regards the 6600. Are you both running a standard cpu cooler? If so, consider changing to a better one.

My dual core used to run at close to 70% under full load, but since upgrading my cooler, it now runs at 30% - 32% at full load.

Hi Serius B
The numbers I am seeing for temperature on my system do not seem to me to be out of line. That is, they are within the range I might reasonably expect to see. The temperatures at the core are (I believe) measured through a 'on chip' sensing device. They respond very rapidly to load changes. The CPU temperature sensor is (again, I believe) in close contact with the CPU case. The Mainboard sensor is a sensor located somewhere on the motherboard and responds mostly to the case environment temperature. Under 'cold' conditions just after startup and as soon as the Hardware Monitor Software is up and running, I see a Mainboard temperature that is near my known room temperature so I believe it to be relatively accurate. The Core and CPU temperatures will all be in in the 30s by the time I first see them and when I turn on BOINC processing, they rise as one might expect. At least, I don't see anything unusual or unexpected. There is some 'lag' in the response of the fan speeds so the core and CPU temperatures might 'overshoot' before the fans catch up. This 'overshoot' is where my core temperatures come uncomfortably close to the max allowable by the specs (62.2C).

The CPU cooling system appears to be a reasonably capable air cool system with a large four-bolt heatsink and a fan that blows air directly through the fins from a funnel shaped channel direct to the side vents of the case. The system or the CPU fan itself adjusts the CPU fan speed as temperature rises. The beginning speed under 1100 rpm and it gets up near 1700 rpm at the upper end of the CPU temperature range. I'm not sure how high it can go but it seems to think it doesn't have to reduce the CPU temperature by going faster. Case exhaust fan operates similar but never gets to the same speed as the CPU fan so presumably it thinks the case temp is OK. Under high load, that is usually around 50C - similar to the CPU but usually one or two degrees less.

BTW, has anyone ever seen a stick-on air filter that I can put over the air intake holes in the side of the case. The CPU fan blows this air directly through the fins of the cooler and I filtering it would help prevent dust buildup.

FAN FILTER
USED BOUNCE DRYER SHEET.

As cheap as it may sound Chimo, zappdog's right, a bounce dryer sheet works magnificently (or a swiffer if you splurge). Those makeshift filters are actually what MaximumPC magazine recommends a modder use unless they've the cash to dish for a real expensive filter to add on their system.