Folding@Home - GIVING TO CHARITY FOR FREE(ish)

[Tran51ucent]

To The Division Forums community,

When you're not playing The Division a lot of your computing power sits idle doing nothing but you're probably still using about 50-60% (not actually tested by myself) of the power consumption of your PC. Even whilst watching Youtube videos, using Facebook or those lovely evenings of Netflix and chill you're not maximising the use of your PC.

To me this seems like a waste of the worlds resources and a waste of a perfectly good PC. Why not put your PC to good use (whilst still not stressing it) and Fold@home?

Folding@Home is a distributed computing network for disease research that simulates protein folding, computational drug design and other types of molecular dynamics (thanks Wikipedia).

What this means in layman's terms is it is a network of computers working together using idle processing resources to help find cures for diseases such as Alzeimers, Huntington's, Parkinson's and many forms of cancer. (If you would like more technical knowledge of the process then please dive into Google, it's actually very interesting)

Folding@Home is an application developed and operated by Stanford University and is shared by various scientific institutions and research laboratories around the world.

Here is a link to the folding@home website which I encourage you to check out for yourselves. Hey, what have you got to lose? I wouldn't post this here if I didn't feel a strong conviction towards the cause.

Also, if you're like me, there's a competitive element to it as well. I am a member of the LinusTechTips Folding team and there is a stats page for yourself and your team. Gotta love those numbers! I'm currently #233821 of 1825753 active folders, lets see if you can top me

I know this isn't as fun as The Division but it is something I am passionate about and considering it takes you a few clicks and mouse movements I feel like there should be no excuse for anyone to not give it a go.

Happy Hunting,

Trans.

p.s.  Folding@home is one of the world's fastest computing systems, with a speed of approximately 40 petaFLOPS. This performance from its large-scale computing network has allowed researchers to run computationally expensive atomic-level simulations of protein folding thousands of times longer than formerly achieved. Since its launch on October 1, 2000, the Pande Lab has produced 129 scientific research papers as a direct result of Folding@home. Results from the project's simulations agree favourably with experiments. (Again, thanks Wikipedia)

 

[Xeromaus]

Proudly endorsed by myself as well...lotta family has gone away due to things this program is hoping to help end. You barely have to do anything, just download it and let it run your comp while you're not.

 

[Tran51ucent]

Proudly endorsed by myself as well...lotta family has gone away due to things this program is hoping to help end. You barely have to do anything, just download it and let it run your comp while you're not.

If a lot of your family have passed due to suffering from any of these diseases then I ask that you get checked for any sign of them yourself throughout your entire life and tell any family and close friends you might have now and in the future of it. It is better for them to know in advance.

Having a family member recently pass after suffering from Alzeimer's for a number of years and having worked as a domiciliary carer previously I know and have seen the effects of some of these diseases; it's not something you want a person or their family to live through.

 

[Xeromaus]

If a lot of your family have passed due to suffering from any of these diseases then I ask that you get checked for any sign of them yourself throughout your entire life and tell any family and close friends you might have now and in the future of it. It is better for them to know in advanced.

Having a family member recently pass after suffering from Alzeimer's for a number of years and having worked as a domiciliary carer previously I know and have seen the effects of some of these diseases; it's not something you want a person or their family to live through.

I absolutely do, but thank you for the concern. :12_slight_smile:

My condolences on your loss as well.

 

[Tran51ucent]

Xeromaus,

Thank you for posting the video, I don't know how to post on PhP any more.

Conversely I always find myself smiling when watching that video imagining a gamer getting frustrated because of his random fps drops due to folding  :4_joy:

 

[Tran51ucent]

Dear potential folders and The Division community,

One of the most contested points against Folding@Home is that it destroys your hardware because it often runs at higher temperatures when you're Folding@Home. I accepted this might be the case and have since studied it on my own PC.

These are my findings.

Whilst idle, Folding on light settings:
Here.

Whilst watching a film, Folding on light settings:

Here.

Whilst watching a film, folding on medium settings:

Here.

Whilst watching a film, folding on high settings:

Here.

Whilst watching a film (in the background), folding on high settings and having run The Division until I get to character screen:

Here.

These readings were all taken after hour intervals.

Please use your PC as you see fit.

Happy hunting,

Trans.

p.s. This is one person Folding and one person using their own PC as test subject. I do not think that these results are accurate unless you can accurately mirror my build. Nor do I think that this shows you will not wear out your components from running Folding@Home on your PC. I merely wanted to show you my results.

However, from personal experience I do not see how using the Folding@Home application will put any undue stress on your system.

SIDE NOTE: MY PC RUNS VERY COOL AND I BUILT IT THAT WAY. MOST COMPUTERS RUN  A CPU TEMPERATURE OF 70+. PLEASE DO NOT EQUATE TEMPERATURES TO PERFORMANCE AND PLEASE DO YOUR OWN RESEARCH.

Edit: before anyone says it the light and light whilst watching a film were basically the same but I forked the screenshot and forgot to get a new one.

 

[DLKnives]

I just joined - these diseases have impacted me and my family so I'm happy to do this.

 

[ThePassionateGamer]

I always wanted to join something like folding@home for a long time but never did it or forgot to do it. Now I run it on my office PC and will run it on my home PC when I am back from work.  Thx for reminding me again.

 

[who-dat]

I folded on PS3, unfortunately afaik the ps4 does not support folding...