I used to have my computers as part of SETI@home, and other BOINC based distributed computing. I did not make a correlation with this causing problems in the long term until recently.
In the last 15 years I have had to replace the motherboard in 3 computers twice. At first I though this was just computers getting old, but I now suspect that in all 3 cases the demise of the motherboards or problems that had arisen were because of the intensive CPU usage of these programs.
2 Intel DP67BG motherboards with failing or bad CPU power regulators
2 Vostro 220 motherboards with failing or bad CPU power regulators
1 HP Z2 G4 motherboard with failing or bad CPU power regulators
The Intel DP67BG's just died with no warning, The first one in 2014 (3 years after I got it) and at the time I had been using BOINC with SETI@home until that program ended in 2020, and then Folding@home until January 2021 when the second motherboard failed.
The Vostro 220 Was running SETI@home since sometime before 2010, and I had replaced the motherboard once around 2015, and then again in 2024. I had been running different BOINC programs in the last 9 years before the second motherboard failed. I am no longer running any BOINC programs on it.
In the case of the HP Z2 G4 I though the issue was my Nvidia RTX 4000, as the problem first appeared with random reboots in the middle of the night, and when playing a game with intensive real time ray tracing, and heavy CPU usage. basically the computer would pull more than 3 amps from the wall and then suddenly reboot. I had been running Folding@home during the night. When I removed BOINC the problem then only appeared when I was playing a game. I eventually had to replace the motherboard. So far the new motherboard has not had the problem and I am not running any Distributed computing programs and will probably not in the future.
In every case the CPU voltage regulators were either failing or somehow damaged from possible overheating. Some of the boards had heat sinks on them, others did not.
Sorry BOINC I cannot afford to have anymore computers die.
This may seem anecdotal but I have other computers that still work after 10 or more years of constant use, and those have never ran any distributed computer programs.
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