How many of you have fried your laptop with computer chess?

[smatovic]

I am aware that there are gamer and workstation laptops in the market, but I
doubt that common latops are suited for running pro computer chess in the long-
term.

So, how many of you have fried your laptop with computer chess?

I wracked one CPU fan in my Lenovo T61 with ZetaDva development, but was able
to replace it with a spare part for 25,- euro, since then I run test suites
and tournaments only on my workstation or a rented server in the cloud.

--
Srdja

[pkumar]

Code: Select all

So, how many of you have fried your laptop with computer chess?

I did, but only the HDD with OS.
Probably the exit vent was clogged as the laptop was not cleaned for a long time.
The laptop now runs with linux on pendrive.

[mar]

I fried my fan as well (still works but sound is weird) - will never again use a laptop for testing

[Modern Times]

I agree, a normal laptop is just not meant to be run for long periods of time at high CPU usage. The manufacturers would never say that, but it is the reality. Those tiny fans run at very high RPM and wear out fairly quickly as a result.

If your laptop or tablet is passively cooled, and I'm thinking of some Apples, you may say great, no worries for me then, but if there is no fan taking away that heat then you need to be very sure that it is being dissipated out of the case somehow. Of course passively cooled CPUs probably throttle which again kind of makes them unsuitable for chess testing.

[Jouni]

I tried Stockfish benchmark with my brother brandnew laptop. With all threads running it became very noisy and benchmark never finished at all! But Pohl seems to run laptops 24/7 always.

[algerbrex]

I can tell even though my current laptop is a huge upgrade over my old one, I'm still starting to run the fan out. So I'm in a bit of a bind with further testing and improvement on Blunder, as this is my primary laptop for school work as well, so I can't risk frying it.

In the coming weeks, I'll need to look into investing in a decent testing framework, enough cores, and threads. I'll either build this myself, which I'm leaning towards, or purchase this in the form of a desktop. In the meantime, I'll either put Blunder's development on hold, or move all testing to my old laptop, which I've already run pretty hard, and might as well get my money's worth from it.

The only other option I'd look at I suppose are dedicated cooling fans, in the form of a pad or whatnot.

Chess programming is a very fun hobby, but it'd be perfect if it wasn't so CPU intensive!

[smatovic]

Let me crosspost this, for the files...

Be very careful with CPU temperature. The fan makes no noises so you are not warned about motherboard becoming incredibly hot especially running chess engines. I have experienced that with iMac 2013 Intel and Mac mini M1 with unrecoverable damages to the logic board. Now I've switched to a Tower PC with Linux and big fans. Sorry to say that to you, but Apple isn't good for chess engines and I will not use a Mac for that anymore.

Hear hear

I will link this one to upcoming "Just buy a MacBook" posts in future

I myself fried a laptop fan with computer chess, I won't use laptops anymore for pro computer chess...just as a terminal to workstations.

How many of you have fried your laptop with computer chess?
viewtopic.php?p=917820

^^ not many people answered to that post, but if you read this forum over t, there are quite some issues with frying consumer laptops with pro computer chess.

--
Srdja

[...]
521€ asked by Apple (but not given!) to repair a 2020 Mac mini M1 8-256GB for a broken logic card to test my SF derivative against other engines
Mac mini M2 now costs 579€.

Apple is crazy! With this money I will buy a Super PC 3 times faster and with 16-32 GB RAM, all components NOT SOLDERED to the board to upgrade and repair it easily.

Switched to Linux, and I'll not play computer engines tests even with it. Since now I will only mod SF, compile and play against it for my exclusive pleasure on occasional games.

--
Srdja

[pohl4711]

I tried Stockfish benchmark with my brother brandnew laptop. With all threads running it became very noisy and benchmark never finished at all! But Pohl seems to run laptops 24/7 always.

Of course. I never lost any laptop by fan-problems.
After each testrun, I use a vacuum cleaner to clean the air in/outs of the machines, of course.

Just dont buy crap.
Buy good laptops. Here (customized machines, made in Germany):
https://bestware.com/en/