24/7 Folding - Fans At 100% - Safe?

DAnDan · 8 May 2011 at 14:09

Basically I'm going to be heading back up to uni, so will be leaving my computer at my parents' house folding 24/7 hopefully. I was wondering if it's safe to leave the fans running at 100% permanently or if it would be better to turn them down a bit and let everything get a bit hotter?

What's your verdict guys? I can't see any reason why it should be an issue, but I don't want to come back to find the CPU/GPU fans burnt out!

Reaper 392 · 8 May 2011 at 14:14

DAnDan said:
Basically I'm going to be heading back up to uni, so will be leaving my computer at my parents' house folding 24/7 hopefully. I was wondering if it's safe to leave the fans running at 100% permanently or if it would be better to turn them down a bit and let everything get a bit hotter?

What's your verdict guys? I can't see any reason why it should be an issue, but I don't want to come back to find the CPU/GPU fans burnt out!

take computer to uni??

if you really cant do that, then keeping fans on 100% would probably be the best option. i would be very surprised if they cant handle it because its almost what they're designed to do

DAnDan · 8 May 2011 at 14:15

Reaper 392 said:
take computer to uni??

if you really cant do that, then keeping fans on 100% would probably be the best option. i would be very surprised if they cant handle it because its almost what they're designed to do

Nah that's not really an option due to space. I've got a laptop that I take for work and whatnot, so taking my full computer would be a bit pointless really.

Surveyor · 8 May 2011 at 14:23

DAnDan said:
Basically I'm going to be heading back up to uni, so will be leaving my computer at my parents' house folding 24/7 hopefully. I was wondering if it's safe to leave the fans running at 100% permanently or if it would be better to turn them down a bit and let everything get a bit hotter?

What's your verdict guys? I can't see any reason why it should be an issue, but I don't want to come back to find the CPU/GPU fans burnt out!

I would think it's the graphics card fan that will be a problem.

If it has a stock fan then they spin at several thousand RPM at 100% and I'm sure they're not designed to do that 24/7.

DAnDan · 8 May 2011 at 14:37

Surveyor said:
I would think it's the graphics card fan that will be a problem.

If it has a stock fan then they spin at several thousand RPM at 100% and I'm sure they're not designed to do that 24/7.

It's the Gigabyte 460, so not the stock cooler, but still quite a small fast fan. I guess I can leave the GPU can on auto but keep the rest manually on full, they're 120mm case fans so hopefully should be fine?

EniGmA1981 · 8 May 2011 at 14:38

Surveyor said:
I would think it's the graphics card fan that will be a problem.

If it has a stock fan then they spin at several thousand RPM at 100% and I'm sure they're not designed to do that 24/7.

Plus the noise of a GPU fan @ 100% 24/7 would probably do your parents heads in!

Krislord · 8 May 2011 at 14:38

My first question would be are your parents happy to have your PC on 24/7 wasting their electricity and as an albeit small fire risk?

Jokester · 8 May 2011 at 14:39

Fans are rated for a mean time between failure of about 100,000 hours. I'll let you do the maths!

Reaper 392 · 8 May 2011 at 14:40

DAnDan said:
Nah that's not really an option due to space. I've got a laptop that I take for work and whatnot, so taking my full computer would be a bit pointless really.

ah, fair enough. i've got a desk big enough to sleep on in my room. (although may be moving to a house with a smaller room in the summer

)

Surveyor · 8 May 2011 at 14:52

Jokester said:
Fans are rated for a mean time between failure of about 100,000 hours. I'll let you do the maths!

Really, not any many fans OcUK sell.

Life expectancy on relatively slow spinning fans is mostly 20-50,000 hours.

Fast spinning fans running 100% 24/7 will be less.

Surveyor · 8 May 2011 at 15:03

And do your parents mind the cost of the electricity?

Say 300W x 24 hours x 30 days @ 15p/KW/h = £32.40 in electricity every month.

yashiro · 8 May 2011 at 15:16

Just turn it off. Running a traditional PC to fold unattended 24/7 at your parents expense is not a sensible thing to do.

DAnDan · 8 May 2011 at 16:22

yashiro said:
Just turn it off. Running a traditional PC to fold unattended 24/7 at your parents expense is not a sensible thing to do.

They know about it and really don't mind, so I don't see that as a problem at all. It'll also be used to run calculations for me that my laptop at uni would take too long to do.

Krislord · 8 May 2011 at 16:24

DAnDan said:
They know about it and really don't mind, so I don't see that as a problem at all. It'll also be used to run calculations for me that my laptop at uni would take too long to do.

Do they know the actual cost or just that its switched on?

Surveyor · 8 May 2011 at 16:32

DAnDan said:
They know about it and really don't mind, so I don't see that as a problem at all. It'll also be used to run calculations for me that my laptop at uni would take too long to do.

Tell them it's going to cost them over £30 a month and see what they say then.

DAnDan · 8 May 2011 at 16:35

Surveyor said:
Tell them it's going to cost them over £30 a month and see what they say then.

Yes, they know the costs.

Now please, I didn't ask your opinions on folding, I asked about the fans, so please stick to what I asked, thanks.

Surveyor · 8 May 2011 at 16:39

DAnDan said:
Yes, they know the costs.

Now please, I didn't ask your opinions on folding, I asked about the fans, so please stick to what I asked, thanks.

OK.

Leave your graphics card fans running at 100% speed 24/7 for weeks on end and something will break.

wentalong · 8 May 2011 at 20:08

tell your parents to turn it off if it starts to make funny noises or anything like that, and maybe buy a delta and put that on the gpu? but only if you parents can take the noise -.-

PhillyDee · 8 May 2011 at 20:13

You will be able to VNC into it to keep an eye on things. I really do not see an issue tbh.

dekez · 8 May 2011 at 20:30

It should be fine, I've had rigs folding constantly for months and never had a fan fail, even when using cheap ebay china jobs. I would make sure they have dust filters though and give them a good clean whenever you are back as the dust can build up if on 24/7 and effect temps.

If you set up HFM.net to upload the info to a website you can monitor your folding remotely, in a worse case senario if one of the fans do fail and something does overheat either the whole system will shut down or the folding will fail and you will know about it either way. You could train your parents as apprentice folders if anything does fail