Hi there,

I searched the forum but wasn't able to find any related item:
I'm using BOINC on a laptop and used to run the CPU at 100% on my desktop. But on my laptop this drives the fan (and me) crazy. That's why I reduced the cpu usage to 25 or 50%, which creates a fair noise floor.

But when I'm not busy on my laptop I could imagine that the noise floor does not matter to me and cpu usage could therefore be increased back to 100%. As soon as I'm back it should be reduced to whatever I configured before.

Could anyone imagine using this very useful feature too and if yes, could the programmers implement it? Thanks in advance!

An 'idle' versus 'use' CPU setting [either cores or percent], has been requested / proposed many times. Since it is likely never to come [for whatever reason... one to work on all platforms], been doing this with various applications. ThreadMaster GUI [for most all Windows] is one solution. Superior to the BOINC internal solution, because you can set how many cycles can go [in percentage], at science project application level. Instead of the BOINC way at 25% of pausing 3 seconds, running 1 second, TM just lets less cycles through for an extremely smooth crunching experience, without any latency or sawtoothing in the process load.

Maybe, just maybe, controlling the CPU with tools such as SpeedStep achieves the same thing, except then everything is slowed down, whereas with TM you still have full potential for the user apps. Anyway, there's more solutions, the 'set and forget' way.

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Coelum Non Animum Mutant, Qui Trans Mare Currunt

Another solution is to use the Tthrottle program.

Set it to keep the CPU at a lower temperature when the computer is in use to keep the fan noise down, and allow a higher temperature when the computer is not in use to let BOINC run full speed ahead.

I also would see such a feature implemented so I could limit CPU/GPU resources when computer is idle without installing other 3rd party tools.
It should be technical possible as this already works on non-idle situation.
Maybe there is a thread where users could vote for features to be implemented ?

I do like to participate in BOINC projects, but I'm considering to stop because it eats up more resources than I'm ready to share when computer is idle: my electricity bill, CPU life because of temperature, today I even lost my laptops power adapter - it was too hot :( .

I agree with you.

It would be nice to able to set these to three different percentages.

On Battery: x%
While in Use: y%
While not in use: z%

And while we are at it, the same for GPU:
On Battery: a%
While in Use: b%
While not in use: c%