Best way to set computing preferences for Dell 5488 All-in-Ones

Try opening up the computers and cleaning out the accumulated dust bunnies.

Hi Mark,
Welcome to Einstein@Home.  Thanks for participating in the project.

I'm not familiar with your particular hardware.  I presume it's something like an iMac where everything is in the back of the screen itself.  I'm not sure what OS you are running as your computers are hidden.  I presume it's Windows.

I ask because I became aware of something a while ago that may be of interest to you and perhaps will explain why running a heavily reduced number of tasks doesn't have more of a cooling benefit for you.  I run Linux with both CPU cores and GPUs doing the crunching.  I spent a bit of time adjusting the number of active CPU cores since the GPU was much more efficient in producing results.  The intention was to maintain pretty much the same output (slight reduction only) but actually make things more efficient by reducing the power consumption and hence the waste heat.

I experimented with progressively increasing the number of CPU cores doing crunching whilst measuring the power consumption at the wall.  I was puzzled by what I saw.   The major portion of the power increase happened with the very first CPU core allowed to crunch.  After that, adding a 2nd or 3rd core to the mix added only very slightly to the power consumed.

I did a bit of searching around to find out why and came up with an explanation that seems believable.  Essentially, with multicore CPUs, it's the operating frequency that has the biggest impact on power consumption.  If all cores are at idle load, the frequency can drop right down - as will the power consumption.   With Linux, if just one core is subjected to a high load, the usual default behaviour is to ramp up the frequency on all cores - unless you change settings buried deep in the OS to do otherwise.  So it was the ramping up of frequency on all cores when only one was loaded that was causing the behaviour.  In Linux, this can be changed so that unloaded cores don't ramp up in frequency until they actually receive a load.

In Windows, there might be a similar ability to tweak this behaviour.  I know nothing about Windows so have no idea how you would go about that.  Maybe one of the Windows users here might have come across this.  In theory, your best way of controlling heat would be to use a reduced number of cores provided you can keep the other unused cores essentially at idle frequency for most of the time.  A machine being used for casual 'office' type duties is essentially at idle.

If you are actually using Linux, I could go dig out the information I found previously.

My last experience with Windows was in about 2006 with Windows XP.  I do see people posting from time to time about various Windows utilities that can monitor/adjust parameters to do with frequencies/CPU loads/core temperatures, etc.  If I were in your shoes, I'd be investigating various third party utilities to see if any could lock tasks to particular cores and monitor/adjust the frequencies of the other unused cores to use an idle frequency.  Since all the cores are in the one package, the overall package temperature should be more stable and less likely to cause fan speed to cycle up and down.

The thing I don't particularly like about a duty cycle is the rapid (and violent) swings in internal core temperatures that must be happening.  I imagine the fan sensor doesn't really see a violent swing since it's probably looking at a much dampened package temperature.  This is all just conjecture on my part but I vaguely remember reading a discussion a long time ago about potentially harmful effects of rapid thermal cycling deep in CPU cores.  I had the impression that it was beneficial to avoid rapid load cycling if possible.  Maybe, someone who knows more about this might be able to comment.