1) Message boards : Questions and problems : Computer reboots when running BOINC (Message 103262) Posted 27 Feb 2021 by Harry Post: I decided to approach INTEL about my problem because I could see others with the same processor (I7 4790K) were also reporting temperature throttling and some were delidding theirs in order to replace the internal thermal paste; not something I wanted to contemplate. INTEL had me run several of their utilities and their Extreme Tuning benchmark to gather data and about a week after I did this they said my processor was no longer under warranty but they would send me a replacement heat sink. I couldn't get them to tell me anything about what the "happy numbers" should be for the processor voltage, frequency etc. While doing this investigation I found I was overclocking but don't recall ever doing this; such are the mystries of life. In any case, I reset my BIOS to defaults and reset some settings to the way I need them and for RAID1 support so that now my processor was running at 4100MHz. At that point, with the replacement fan installed, Using Core Temp (many thanks to Jord who recommended I run that and yes I did blow out the dust!) I could see a big initial improvement but over about a 5 hour period with BOINC tasks running I could see the max temperatures per core kept slowly spiking into the high 90C range, starting from the low to mid 70s. To me that seemed to be saying the processor was still having overheating problems. I took a look at the BOINC settings and changed the computing preferences and reduced the "% of CPU time" from 75 to 50, leaving the "% of the CPUs" at 50. This did the trick for me. Now, after several days, my max temperatures haven't exceeded 81C for any of the four cores. Bottom line for me: reduce the overclocking, replace the fan (looks identical to the original) and reduce the BOINC %CPU. When I was speaking to the INTEL support person he mention a web site where you can check out processor tuning and I wrote down ARK.FREQUENCY.COM but I must have written it down incorrectly because it doesn't exist and they closed my case as soon as they shipped the fan, without asking me if the problem was resolved, and haven't responded to me since, so who knows. Yes, I know this processor is supposed to have a base speed of 4000MHz but it was also supposed to allow some over clocking. I think there is another BIOS setting I can change to get it below 4100MHz but at this point I am happy with the current results. I am back to running BOINC tasks! As I write this I have 5 tasks running with temperatures peaking in the very low 70s and no temperature throttling. Perhaps my experience can be a lesson to other folks not experts in processor tuning.

2) Message boards : Questions and problems : Computer reboots when running BOINC (Message 102574) Posted 15 Jan 2021 by Harry Post: Well, after cobbling together some replacement legs and pins from an older PC I was able to get my heat sink reinstalled with new Arctic Silver 5 thermal paste after a thorough cleaning using isopropyl alcohol. The heat sink posts went into their holes with a nice satisfying couple of clicks for each post. However, I am still running hot. The first three cores reach 100 C pretty quickly when running BOINC. Even at idle activity running under 10% load my cores are running in the mid 30-40C. Looks like I really do have to get a better heat sink but that is going to be a very big job since with my case I cannot access the bottom of the motherboard in order to attach the metal bracket those new heat sinks use. I will have to remove the MB to do this :( So, waiting for the lock down to end!

3) Message boards : Questions and problems : Computer reboots when running BOINC (Message 102092) Posted 11 Dec 2020 by Harry Post: Well so much for my attempt to replace the thermal paste. I discovered why my system was overheating; the Intel heat sink that came with the processor was not seated fully, When I removed it I discovered one of the four locking pins that was supposed to go into one of the four holes on the MB around the socket was partially bent. The old paste was spread out in a big dot on the lid so I guess it was seated enough to work but not 100% correct; I was lucky it ran since I built it in 2014. So, I removed the old paste as per the instructions you provided and some YT videos :). Everything looked clean and I tried to reseat the original heatsink/fan but couldn't get the four posts to go in the holes at the same time. When I rechecked I saw that one of the four pins was bent. Tried to straighten it out and somehow broke one of the retaining clips inside the post. So, will go to the store tomorrow to buy a new (hopefully more efficient) CPU cooling fan. As a side note, who thought it was a good idea to imprint black directional arrows on the tops of black posts for insertion into a rather dark cramped case. Any way I moved I seemed to leave some portion of the CPU socket in some or complete shadow making it impossible to locate the holes and then determine what direction to turn the darn posts to tighten things.

4) Message boards : Questions and problems : Computer reboots when running BOINC (Message 102029) Posted 8 Dec 2020 by Harry Post: I thought SETI was on hiatus till they got more data. If you say it will no longer do that then I can remove it. If none of the active tasks need VM then I would think they won't start the VM environment. Some of my tasks do use VM so that is why I installed it.

5) Message boards : Questions and problems : Computer reboots when running BOINC (Message 102028) Posted 8 Dec 2020 by Harry Post: I do have a GPU: GEForce GTX 750 Ti. Thanks for the advice about Core Temp; I just installed it. The max column showed high 90 degrees values and TJmax of 100 so I guess I have been running hot. I just reset the max values, enabled heat over protection and enabled logging. Tomorrow I will run BOINC to see what happens. The funny thing is, my ASUS Z97 motherboard came with some software to monitor the core temps but I couldn't find any documentation about normal operating temps or maximums for my processor so I turned off the alarms; yeah I know, pretty dumb but it was the middle of summer and I couldn't be sure they were telling me something really important or just giving me false alarms. I only added one extra fan when I built the system in 2014. The case came with one for the power supply and the GPU has its own and the processor has one that came with the Intel processor which I thought would be sufficient. So, I figured I only needed to add one more to the front of the case to push air directly over the two HDDs. I thought I read recently that the thermal paste could need replacing after a few years but I've never done this and I don't know if it is easy to use too much or not enough. Cleaning off the existing paste looks like a delicate operation using a link free cloth. Harry

6) Message boards : Questions and problems : Computer reboots when running BOINC (Message 101963) Posted 5 Dec 2020 by Harry Post: My system is running the latest Windows 64 Pro level (all patches installed) on an Asus MB with an Intel I7 multicore processor and 8GB RAM in a RAID1 HDD configuration. Back in the summer I noticed my computer would have rebooted overnight. This happened so often I decided to shutdown BOINC at startup. I've been running his way for months now and my computer has not rebooted. Yesterday I decided to get BOINC running again so I downloaded the latest level from this web site, including the Oracle Virtual box. I started BOINC up again after I restarted for the VBox install and it started fine with fresh work units. I am connected to 6 projects: Asteroids, ClimatePrediction, Cosmology, Rosetta, Seti, and World Community Grid. After it connected with the servers I had 5 tasks active: 1 Asteroids, 2 Rosetta and 2 World Community Grid. After about 30-60 minutes, my system did a hard reboot. The Windows event viewer doesn't show much other than the event denoting a restart without a clean shutdown. I run my hdd in a RAID1 configuration so when this happens my system is difficult to use while the RAID1 goes through verification. If there are BOINC or VBOX logs that might help, please tell me where they are and I can try to get them to someone so they can investigate. I am at a loss what is wrong. My only suspicion is that it has to do with WCG since I only started including them this past summer around the time the problem started. I have to keep BOINC down until this is resolved. Harry

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