There are specific processes that seem to load only one of the processor cores, out of the eight cores my processor has. I have some such processes that run only 10-20 seconds, but others run in this fashion for up to 1.5-3 minutes. During this my cooling fan can speed up to really intense rates. I was thinking, if there is so much heat to deal with, while it is being concentrated on only one core, then is it possible — considering the entire area of the processor — that some part is getting hot while the opposite end/corner isn't so much? When considering heat expansion in materials, shouldn't it mean that the processor's materials are under extra stress and may be driven to develop cracks from the uneven expansion? Is this how it happens really? Can there be a difference in this regard between processors used in laptops (smaller, I guess) and processors used on traditional format motherboards?  Clarification 1: I am not interested in the effects of heat when:  its origin is distributed evenly across the processor body when it is encountered in a constant / long-term fashion.  This question is specifically about heat-expansion involving the processor, while  happening in an uneven distribution, happening in cyclical bursts.   Clarification 2: The post that is suggested to contain answers for this question (in the &quot;duplicate&quot; marking), in fact does not take uneven distribution into consideration, and addresses a lot of peripherals, but not does not seem to go into depth of heat distribution in, and material engineering of processors.
42630
I have a Dell XPS 15 9570, 32 GB ram, 2.2 ghz and 6 cores. When i use an application (The parsim command on MATLAB) ()  then my fan starts running fast , during this my PC doesn't seem to be heating but it never got this noisy in the past so it got me worried. In my task manager , the CPU usage shows 100% when this application is running.   Is it a problem for the life of laptop, if I run the PC at CPU 100% for like 4 hours in a day? Do I need to be worried about the noisy fan during the application?
1041
On my new computer, my fan(s) is/are plain LOUD! Using SpeedFan, I find that my temps are all under 32 degrees C under my normal use (IDK how accurate that is but the CPU itself says 27 C).  The fan doesn't sound unbalanced and it isn't making sounds in rhythm (Not the usual rrrrrrrRRRRRR... rrrrrrrRRRRRR... rrrrrrrRRRRRR... rrrrrrrRRRRRR), just a constant fan. I am thinking about oiling the fans, but I can't decide if it is the PSU fan or a case fan or the CPU fan. If it's the CPU fan I will most likely just replace that with a quiet fan. How can I tell which fan is making the noise (if not multiple)?  One thing that I am thinking may be the problem is my CPU fan isn't PWM so would swapping that out help? There is no "linear voltage" or etc thing in BIOS so I think it may be running at full speed. Also, I could have too much airflow because it is also making a whistling noise that you can hear close to it that sounds like when I accedentially put part of the side cover over my floor vent to get it out of the way.
38040
Two things I'd like to know:   how do you safely move tempdb with minimal downtime? how many tempdb files do you need?   Is it 1 file per core? So quad-core = 4 tempdb files, creating three new ones?
36765
I am currently using Sheep It! to render my blend (built on v2.68c) on multiple computers, and I noticed something rather strange. According to the log on-site, the frames rendered from other people's blends were completing in 3 to 4 minutes. This was on an 4 core i5. My main rig (with an 8 core i7) was completing frames in no less than half an hour. How is this possible?  To clarify, these people's frames are very complex, often with very detailed textures. I have 2 objects in my blend. Below are the options I changed for my blend:   Aspect Ratio: 1000px x 1000px Output: PNG Clamp Indirect: 0.98 Render Sampling: 128 Min Light Bounces: 0 Max Light Bounces: 4 Cycles Render   Is there something in there that I should change to make it go faster? I can't really comprehend how it's going to quickly.  EDIT: To answer what @Duarte asked...   System Specs: i7-920, 3GB DDR3, GT 630, Windows 10 I have two circles, extended to form a sort of coin with a star on it. It is not complex at all. I have Firefox and Steam running in the background, but not actively. I've been away from the computer for 8 hours and noticed this behavior. (I am running Blender from Steam.) I made sure when I began rendering that the blend was set for CPU rendering.          And to answer what @pycoder asked, yes, I am using Cycles Render.
20433
I am having a problem with Windows 7. When I boot up, the CPU jumps to 100% execution for about 10-15 minutes. During this time, it is really slow, and if I play any music, the songs play slowly and sound distorted.  I tried to scan my computer with different antivirus programs, I used Spybot, HijackThis, and CCleaner, but I didn’t find anything of note.  I watched the process list in Task Manager and saw that there are two processes that are to blame. There are two copies of svchost.exe, one using ~48% CPU, the second (under the Network Service account) using ~37%. For the first 15 minutes, the CPU runs at about 70-80%, then eventually drops to 30-40%.  I don’t know what to do. I could not find a way to stop the services, and if I try to kill them, sometimes the system crashes.
71225
If I use a program such as SpeedFan to keep my fans at 100% power 24/7, will it harm my computer? I don't care about my power bill but if the excess power could harm my computer I would worry. I have a 350 watt power supply so I don't think the excess power usage will harm it. Here's what I think:  Pros   Things it cools off are kept cooler Cooler parts = faster computer Cooler parts = slower fail rate   Cons   It just sounds wrong. I know this sounds dumb but still Most fans are designed to do their job already I'm either gaming or just browsing the web. Obviously gaming while keeping the fans on can be beneficial but my computer doesn't get very hot while browsing the internet.
19649
I've installed Process Lasso and in All processes tab, set all affinities to 1-7, meaning that all the processes can be start on all my CPUs except the first one. Yet, there is a huge load on my first CPU.   I personally have no clue what's happening here and really appreciate any help.  My system is:   Intel core i7 - 4720 HQ  2.6 GHz upto 3.6 Windows 10 (64 bit) NVidia GTX 950 M   This screenshot, shows the software's interface. Those 8 green bars on upper right show my CPU usage. Also the column called Rules, indicates the affinities on the processes.       PS: These are screenshots that show the more familiar Task Manager and Resource Monitor. I've sorted all with respect to their CPU usage. Note that the overall CPU usage is just fine (less than 30% most of the time), but in Resource Monitor, same as the Process Lasso, it's obvious that that most of the load is on CPU0 and the others are almost free.  Also I found out that my total CPU usage, is actually more than all my processes altogether! The orange line in Resource Monitor picture, shows the amount of CPU usage of all my processes. (I did the same in safe mode. Orange line, exactly coincides the total usage in safe mode. So I'm suspecting that something is happening in my normal boot.)
10730
I often do 3D rendering in the background which consumes 100% of the CPU (I lower the priority of the process so that it does not hinder any tasks I am working on).  My concern/question is whether it is okay to run a computer/laptop with a 100% CPU load constantly.  Could this reduce the lifespan of the system?
119659
Fellows,  I have several computers, some new, some old ( I collect them, since my first one, which has 2Kbytes of RAM, from 1979 ). The collection is getting huge, but the purpose of this question is related to the fact that I always loved the power of supercomputers, or at least, the power of the big machines ).   I ever thought about the idea of joinning machines in order to get a more powerful one. I run a LAN ( local area network ) 1Gbit apeed, where there are 4 machines intel i7 2600k running at 4.8Ghz watercooler, each one with 16Mb RAM, SSD and common hard drives, for a total of 30Tb of space ( total on the LAN ). Having read articles and watched many videos about virtualization, I question for the possibility of installing bare metal ( Type 1 ) hypervisors on each machine, then, creating a virtual machine which spread across the physical machines, so I could install an operational system like windows on top, to run softwares that need much resources, like CPU, RAM, Hard disk, etc.   I imagine that there must be a way that a virtual machine "thinks" that it´s installed on a single machine, but indeed, it´s spread along several nodes ( like a cluster ). For the virtual machine, it sees the system as only one big machine, but indeed, there´s shared CPU, shared RAM and shared hard drives.   Using this way, we could install an OP and run for instance, Adobe After Effects, or Adobe Premiere, which needs an outstanding parallel processing ( or cpu power ) in order to make previews in real time, or to run complex software which could benefit from multiple processors. I know many people would suggest purchasing a big multi-cpu, multi-core xeon machine for parallel processing, but it´s not the case...I like to think that with the current technology, there must be a way to join PCs and get more computational power.   I see people joinning Raspberry pi and making "supercomputers" at youtube, with kind of 1 teraflop, so why can´t we do it with our own machines, which has LAN, ram, disks...isn´t it the same thing, we only need the software and how to do it, no ? Is it possible ? How to do it ?  Thanks
25304
Whenever I start my laptop the process tracker-store and tracker-miner-fs eats up my CPU between 30-40% for 10-15 minutes. I am on ubuntu 12.04.  What does these processes do? How to get rid of  processes?
19463
Whenever I render a video using the blender video editor only one core is ever used at any time. I have an 8 core CPU(FX-9590) yet regardless of whether blender is set to auto detect or a fixed 8 threads only one core ever sits at 100% at any given time. The rest of the cores sit and really low usage as if blender is completely ignoring them. I'm running blender 2.77a on Linux. I'm using Theora as the codec with an ogg container and Vorbis audio. How do I get blender to use all my cores?
60698
After reading alot of links, it bothers me that there is so much overlap between simple definitions such as CPU, processor, core, etc.       Let's clarify first what is a CPU and what is a core, a central processing unit CPU, can have multiple core units, those cores are a processor by itself, capable of execute a program but it is self contained on the same chip.        A CPU, or Central Processing Unit, is what is typically referred to as a processor.   So which one is it?  A CPU (central processing unit) contains (1-many) cores. Each core can execute (1-many) threads depending on hyper-threading technology - it does the actual computation sort to speak.  So what is a processor? Does it refer to the CPU, the entire chip as  a whole? Does it refer to one core on a CPU? And what exactly does multiprocessor/multicore mean? Are they synonymous?
41441
I wonder what's the difference between a dual core computer and a computer with 2 processors on the mother board.. I think it's something related with the threads but a I don't understand it very well..
89280
I got me a nice new laptop and I want to know a bit more about the hardware.  How can I see how many CPUs my computer has in Windows&nbsp;7?  (Note: Clicking on Start → right clicking on Computer → selecting properties shows me the processor type, but it does not say anything about the core count.)
76987
I'm thinking about upgrading the CPU in my MacBook Pro from its current  dual core processor to a  quad core processor.  Is there any reason why this wouldn't be a good idea? The socket, operating temperature, instruction set, wattage, and memory specifications match perfectly.  It's a summer 2012 production model, 13" unibody, FCPGA988 socket, 4GB DDR3 1600 MHz RAM (upgrading to 8GB shortly), with 10.8.3.
79843
I searched a lot about this online and couldn't find a solution, I turned off fast startup as many answers have suggested. But it didn't work ,  The problem happened after I connected a secondary hard drive to my laptop removing the dvd drive , whenever I remove the secondary hard drive , above processes act normal. I have a SSD as my primary drive , the problem happens only when the secondary drive is connected , I desperately need a solution since this is killing my computer.
115904
I would like to buy a new computer case. Last time I bought a computer was in 2008 and many things have changed up to day. Many new computer cases have power supply unit (PSU) placed down, at bottom. I'm thinking about buying some of those cases, but I'm not sure about this: if PSU is placed on the bottom it can't take away hot air from the case and pump it out, right?  All my PC parts are silent - CPU (E8200, placed below 12 cm Nochtua fan of PSU) has heat-pipe cooler with Nochtua fan spinning at only 800 rpms, GPU has cooler powered by 7 V instead 12 V. That's why I don't want to have to place another fan to pump out hot air instead of PSU placed on top. That might make some noise.  So I ask someone more experienced: if I buy a computer case with PSU placed down, do I have to place some fans to pump out hot air?