Riflemanm16a2

Haha, I do pay the electricity bill! I asked my wife to give me a before and after comparison of a month early on, but I didn't get a clear answer (she generally handles bills). From what I remember, it didn't sound like a huge difference though (ignorance is bliss?).

I just realized that Tuesday (6/13/2017) was my three year anniversary of starting Folding@Home. I've been running 24/7 on my main PC since then (with the exception of when I'm playing video games). I've since added two other PCs that are CPU only (older CPUs at that). For a while, I was steadily rising through the ranks; I got up to rank 47 in LinusTechTips_Team, but, around May 2015, I started going the other way. Now I'm rank 62. I guess people started getting better GPUs and outpaced me. I'm supposed to be getting two GTX 660s for free from a friend at some point. Those will be going in the secondary PC. Anyway, these are my stats: LinusTechTips_Team rank = 62 Score = 76,031,445 WU = 11,328 World rank = 2,991 Main PC = i7 3770K + GTX 760 Secondary PC = i5 750 Tertiary PC = Sempron LE-1230

Last night, I took my graphics card out to test my iGPU for fun and noticed what appear to be three blown SMD capacitors (I think that's what they are) on the GPU's PCB. This surprised me because I have not noticed any odd behavior with my graphics nor did I ever hear/smell a pop or burn in my computer. I've included a imgur album that shows a few picture of what I am talking about. You can see that one of them has a melted appearance on the side while the other two have a hole in the top. There is also some dark black or gray residue around these components as well. My system is air cooled and runs F@H 24/7 with about 7-8 hours of gaming per week. I've never seen my GPU get hotter than about 65 degrees C. I do not overclock my GPU; although, I have played with the overclock settings in the past (only for a few seconds at a time due to artifacting when overclocking, so I gave up). The only potential cause I can think of is that I used to get power surges quite often that would hard shut down my computers (they were on a surge protector though) until about a year ago when I finally got a UPS. My GPU is outside of warranty by about three months. So, my questions are these: 1. Is this a cause for concern? Could it cause damage to other components? I have not noticed any ill effects, and I have no idea how long it's been like this. 2. What could have caused this? 3. Has anyone here experienced this before? System specs: GPU: Asus DirectCUII GTX 760 (default clock speed [factory overclocked to 1072 MHz]) CPU: Core i7 3770K overclocked at 4.2 GHz with Hyper T4 heatsink PSU: ThermalTake SP-850M (older one seen here: http://www.hardocp.com/article/2014/06/16/thermaltake_smart_sp850m_850w_power_supply_review/) Mobo: Asus P8Z77-V LK PICTURES! http://imgur.com/a/J37Vh Thanks for any help you can provide! EDIT: Just to clarify, there are 3 of them that look damaged. In my Imgur album, the first four photos are of the same one. Make sure to take a look at the last two pics to see the other ones.

Wow, after three months you have a quarter of the points I've gained in two years! What GPU are you using?

Today marks two years since I installed F@H. I've been running it almost 24/7 ever since (occasional interruptions for playing video games, rebooting, etc). I've added two other lower end computers to my farm since then as well. At first, I was obsessed with tracking my points and ranking. I got down to rank 47 in the Linus Tech Tips team, and then the GTX 980 and 970 came out and crushed any chance I had of getting any lower on the list. I've been hovering somewhere in the 60s ever since (currently sitting at 67th). My world ranking has continued to go down steadily though. I wonder if my computers have actually helped anyone's research... Current stats: Score 42342012 Donor Rank 3370 of 1829163 WU 6136 Rigs: Main Intel i7 3770k @ 4.2 GHz GTX 760 @ 1097 MHz HTPC AMD Sempron LE-1230 dual core @ 2.2 GHz Teamspeak Server Intel i5 750 @ 2.67 GHz

I uninstalled my old drivers with DDU in safe mode and downgraded to 361.91, and it resolved the issue of the flickering pixels and allows me to choose other refresh rates (although only 85, 100, 120, and 144 Hz oddly, no 59 or 60 Hz). I don't know why I didn't think to try a different driver; I guess I just generally assume newer is better. Thanks for the help!

I have an Asus VG248QE monitor. I have been running it with a display port cable for over a year now, and somehow I didn't notice that it was running at 120 Hz instead of 144 Hz all this time (I guess when I first got it I was using Dual Link DVI and never checked the settings again). Anyway, I switched it to 144 Hz, which I had to do with the Asus GPU Tweak software since only 120 Hz showed up in the drop down in both Windows 7 display settings and the Nvidia Control Panel. I noticed that my monitor was showing what I would describe as artifacting, particularly in the top right corner, but also sometimes in the rest of the screen. It looked like short, white, horizontal lines about 1 pixel tall and maybe 5 pixels long flickering. I tried switching to another display port cable (the same exact type) with no success. When I switched to a Dual Link DVI cable, it went away, and I was able to select several other options for the display refresh rate besides 144 Hz. My only thought is that I purchased low quality display port cables. They were literally the only ones I could find on Newegg when I bought the monitor. They are Coboc brand HBR2 cables (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16812423014). Does anyone else have any thoughts on what this could be? I'd prefer to use display port to DVI just because it's easier to handle, and it doesn't require a separate audio cable. I could always buy new display port cables, but I'd rather not spend the money if they're not the issue since I already have two of them. Specs: CPU: i7 3770K @ 4.2 GHz (overclocked) GPU: Asus Direct CUII GTX 760 @ 1006 MHz w/1072 MHz boost clock (default clock settings) Monitor: Asus VG248QE OS: Windows 7 Let me know if I need to add any more info. Thanks!

Today, I made 80,809 points, and my estimated PPD has been consistently around 70-80K. I'd be surprised if I'm just lucky enough to get that many good WUs in a row, but I'll keep monitoring it to make sure. I didn't think drivers would have a big impact either, but I do remember reading about Nvidia drivers after a certain version crippling GK104 GPUs (but not GK110s) and people purposely downgrading to get their PPD back up. Maybe this is related to that, i.e. Nvidia finally fixed it *shrug*.

I installed the 347.09 WHQL Nvidia drivers on the 23rd, and my estimated PPD has pretty consistently been estimated around 70K since (normally around 30-40K) with some dips back to normal. Unfortunately, I haven't been recording my daily metrics diligently the past week, so I'm not sure if this is entirely accurate. My average is slightly higher than usual (I take the average per day between today and my last record in my spreadsheet; it's not very precise, I know). ANYWAY, has anyone else noticed a performance boost since installing these drivers? I'm running a GTX 760 and i7 3770K btw.

Thanks for the info! It sounds as if there's quite a bit of variance among different hardware. I guess I'm not doing too bad.

I have been folding 24/7 for about five months now except when gaming (only about 5-10 hours a week). On average, I get right about 40K PPD (I keep a spreadsheet that I update every few days. This is the average of the last three months). Some days are as low as 29K, and, on rare occasions, I get 70K. I am simply wondering if I am getting the expected PPD given my hardware. I read about some people getting hundreds of thousands of points per day, and I can't approach that. I know my GPU isn't high-end, but my expectations were a bit higher regarding folding. Hardware: CPU: i7 3770K, OC'd to 4GHz (If I remember correctly) GPU: Asus DCUII GTX 760 at 1097MHz according to GPU Tweak (I think it has a factory OC, but I don't remember) RAM: 16GB 1866 DDR3 Thanks in advance for the input!

I really like the aesthetics. The brushed aluminum finish with the red accents is really nice looking.