I am running BOINC continuously on my Windows 10 home computer (DELL XPS-8500 with 16G RAM, Nvidia GeForce GT640). The BOINC processor option is set to use a maximum 90% of CPU (50% when there are complaints about the noise).

When the BOINC screen saver starts up after the PC has been idle for a while there is a big increase in noise from the fans even though the Windows task manager shows no increase in CPU activity.

My question is this: when the screen saver is running is the PC actually doing more useful work than before or is the screen saver just putting more load on the GPU to no useful purpose? How can I tell BOINC not to run the screen saver (which is annoying anyway) and instead default to a black screen?

Thanks for any advice.

In fact, it's the opposite - BOINC will actually do more work when the screensaver is *not* running: that's pure eye-candy, and takes away processing power that could be more productively used.

If you have no need of it, use the Windows control panel to choose a different screen saver, or just a blank screen - the simpler the better (avoid the 3-D ones), as far as BOINC's concerned.

That's exactly the answer I was hoping for. I've set the screen saver to blank and it's a lot quieter now. Thanks a lot.