Energy consumption from crunching using Rosetta@Home on my Mac

Project help Fold for Covid
1

Hi,

I just installed balenaOS on my old 2012 13" MacBook Pro (Core i7, 8GB Ram) in order to crunch numbers with the Fold For Covid initiative (using Rosetta@Home). My only concern is that the heavy CPU/GPU usage on my laptop will use excessive amounts of energy causing my electricity bill to be astronomical. I also am slightly worried about my fan burning out as it is running for most of the day while the computer crunches data. This laptop was not built to be used in this way and I just want to ensure that I am not running any risk of damaging the internals.
Additionally, is there any way for me to choose specific hours in the day that R@H runs so that my system gets a break? Finally, do I still have the option to boot into MacOS from my machine or has my entire hard drive been rewritten with the balenaOS image?

I am quite new to all this.

Thank you very much in advance for your help, I truly appreciate it!

2

Do you have a BOINC screen which has both simple and advanced settings? If so, Options --> Computing Preferences is where you can set the the time when the program is allowed to operate and other useful settings. Does this help?

3

Thanks. Hmmm, I don’t have any options on my screen actually - I only see the Balena logo.

4

For energy usage, you can take a look at your charger and that would be the maximum. Your MacBook has a 45W charger. On a PI, the charger is 15.7W. It may run cooler if you dim the screen all the way down.