Is it true?

[Kinantay4]

Recently I bought wallpaper engine from Steam for these generous Sakura animated wallpapers. I am using a laptop with core i5 7th gen, 930mx and 8 RAMs.

My brother told me that having these extra features like the animated wallpaper will drain the laptop's performance (despite setting my wallpaper engine settings to pause when I'm in full-screen mode). And he said that it will decrease the laptop life-span, causing it to start lagging sooner. He also mentioned that this app is mainly directed to PCs not laptops, since I can change the PC parts if it started lagging, while I have to change the whole laptop if something happened to any part to it. So I have to avoid taking the risk.

What do you think guys? Should I stay safe or go for it?

[amdorintel]

https://steamcommunity.com/app/431960/discussions/2/348293292498304781/

 

that is an interesting read

[StareX]

I mean, it's running a live video that presumably is also alive with effects and such, you can lower the FPS and such in the settings to lower the resources and turn off Anti Aliasing, but yeah, it can drain your battery cuz it's literally live.

 

But there's also options for it to stop running in the background if there's an app like Google chrome opened, or you can pause it too.

 

But nah, it won't damage your PC.

[Kinantay4]

Just now, amdorintel said:

https://steamcommunity.com/app/431960/discussions/2/348293292498304781/

 

that is an interesting read

I always keep my laptop plugged with the charger, so I don't think the battery is being used here, I'm more concerned about the other laptop parts (draining the graphics card performance or something like that).

[amdorintel]

its just normal wear and tear, nothing out of the ordinary

@Kinantay4

[Kinantay4]

3 minutes ago, StareX said:

it can drain your battery

I won't use this app if the laptop isn't plugged in, will this still affect the battery?

[StareX]

Just now, Kinantay4 said:

I won't use this app if the laptop isn't plugged in, will this still affect the battery?

If you won't use the app, no.

[Kinantay4]

Great, thanks for the help guys

[TempestCatto]

I like how he thinks your laptop isn't a PC. I discount everything he's said based on that alone.

You own it, right? That makes it a PC. It's your personally owned computer.

If you had a Macbook, and you owned it, it'd still be a PC. Your personally owned computer.

 

Your questions have already been answered, I just came here to say that.

[Kinantay4]

Just now, TempestCatto said:

You own it, right? That makes it a PC.

I'm sorry, I used the wrong word, he means I should not treat my laptop like a desktop.

[onlybuilt4cubanxlinx]

Back in my day we would sacrifice having a wallpaper at all for those sweet FPS gains.

[Kinantay4]

1 hour ago, onlybuilt4cubanxlinx said:

Back in my day we would sacrifice having a wallpaper at all for those sweet FPS gains.

Ok boomer

[LogicalDrm]

Your brother is both right and wrong. Since you are running video or live rendering, it will have effect on CPU and GPU usage. This is also said in software when you enable those wallpapers. The effects are to both ways, unless you set Wallpaper Engine as high priority software in which case wallpaper will be smooth. but other software, like even browser, will have issues.

 

The life-span thing is one of great boogeymans of PC hardware. As there's no definition of what lifespan of each component is. It is greater than warranty period, but we still have hardware working after 20-30 years of use. In this case, I think your brother means degrade in overall performance. Using your laptop at normal loads, this would be 100% load few hours per days and rest of the time under it, will keep it in good and working order for 4-7 years. Somewhere at that point things will start to have issues, depending on build quality. Like fan can die, some constantly heating part might degrade.

 

If running those wallpapers causes your CPU or GPU to be pinned at 100% all the time, then that will have effect as consumer hardware aren't meant for that kind of use. They will last that 3-5 years still, but you will notice degrading performance at some point after that.

 

I've had 3 laptops, one died due overheating so not counting that one. One I had to replace cooler after 4 years in use. I retired that at 8 years in use when it was too slow with Linux installed and I couldn't add more RAM (CPU was too slow to run modern websites like youtube also). The one after that has been in use for 4 years now. I just reinstalled Windows on it, and it still works great for my usage. Like I can stream 720p30 at 2700kbps without any issues with that i5. Not higher quality, but I don't know if that was possible before....