Hello,

I'm putting together a persuasive arguments presentation and would like to compare advantages and disadvantages of distributed computing projects so that the audience can evaluate the economics of joining projects or not. A particular point that I would like to address is the question of computer lifespan.

Within the Boinc community or elsewhere: Is there a set of plots showing CPU Life vs. CPU usage?

Any contributions would be greatly appreciated,
MCB

FWIW, I've never, ever had a CPU fail.

As you mention 'computer lifespan', maybe you want to know about other components? If, so, here's my list of component failures, most common first, with my experience on non-BOINC machines added:

1) PSUs - These fail regularly on my BOINC machines. Lifetime is probably around 2 or 3 years. I can only recall one failing on a machine not running BOINC.

2) CPU fans - Less common now, but the bearings wear out leading to overheating and either crashes or BIOS shutdowns. Again, only happened once on a non-BOINC machine, but that did get heavy use in other ways. I know some CPUs did pop if the cooling fan failed, so maybe that's the factor in CPU failure running BOINC. Cheap bearings sieze due to running at 100% 24/7.

3) HDDs - Have lost of few of these over the years. Nearly always newer SATA ones, which is interesting/worrying. Non-BOINC, probably only one standard drive, but laptop drives seem flaky generally. I don't do BOINC on laptops, apart from one hateful Vista lappy that I'm trying to kill ;)

4) Motherboards - Have scrapped a few machines due to dried out caps. Not worth fixing when the whole board is covered in popped caps! Possibly not BOINC related, but the higher case temperatures probably don't help.

Oh, I only use cheap (or preferably free!) machines that have been abused in offices or universities for a couple of years before I get them, so I always expect early failures :)

Al.