What is F@H?
Folding@Home is a program you can run on your computer which lets you contribute your compute power to help fight global health threats like COVID-19, Alzheimer’s Disease, and cancer.
The project is dedicated to understanding protein folding, the diseases that result from protein misfolding and aggregation, and novel computational ways to develop new drugs in general. A number of research labs around the world are involved with running F@H.
If you want to learn more, visit foldingathome.org.
How do I join?
You can join your computer to one of the world’s largest supercomputers by downloading this software:
If you use macOS or have multiple computers, I would recommend trying the v8 beta software instead:
You probably will want to create a unique username and passkey following these instructions. It isn’t strictly necessary, but you will earn far fewer points without one, and it helps you track your stats even if someone else enters the same username as you.
After installing the client, be sure to enter our team number 228579 ← This is required to earn forum badges and participate in any future Folding events here.
View our team stats here: https://stats.foldingathome.org/team/228579
If you have a supported GPU, using that will get you the most points and provide the most value in terms of efficiency, but any work counts and CPU work is needed by the network as well.
Why should I fold?
It’s mainly for the knowledge that you are contributing to a good cause. Folding@Home results have been used in hundreds of published research papers, and the problems it tries to solve are very difficult for even single advanced supercomputers alone to handle.
There’s also a fun points perspective! As you fold, you’ll earn points which you can contribute to the Techlore Folding Team #228579 to boost us up the rankings, and you can have a friendly competition with other members of our community and the Folding community at large on the F@H leaderboards.
Forum Badges
Get rewarded for completing various milestones!
To claim your exclusive forum badges/titles, see this thread:
Why am I not earning as many points as my PPD estimate?
If you’re earning much fewer points than you expected, you may not be earning the bonus points. To get the bonus, you must meet both requirements:
- Completed at least 10 Work Units (WU) - You can check this on the leaderboard, but if you just started you probably simply have to wait until your computer has completed 10 tasks, so be patient.
- Set up a passkey and have it entered in your client. Not doing this means you could be missing out on 50+% of your potential points!
You can troubleshoot whether you got the bonus points by entering your username at https://apps.foldingathome.org/cpu
(0 = false, 1 = true in this column)
The web client doesn’t connect or show progress
You might have an adblock filter (for example the Block Outsider Intrusion into LAN list in uBlock Origin) preventing the client from communicating with your F@H install. Try disabling uBlock Origin / Brave Shields / whatever adblocker on the F@H client interface to see if that helps.
Will this affect my PC performance?
No, Folding@Home uses the lowest CPU priority possible on your system, meaning it will give up all its own resources for your other applications if needed. You’ll see 100% CPU/GPU usage, but if you use your computer at the same time you shouldn’t notice a difference.
That being said, it will heat up your computer, which could potentially cause thermal throttling (see next section). The F@H client software also gives you the option to pause at any time if you want to be extra certain nothing is running in the background, the option to automatically pause unless the computer is completely idle, and the option to automatically pause on battery life for laptops.
There is also a basic power slider in the client, but I recommend leaving it at Medium/Full unless you are dealing with overheating issues, because of the aforementioned lower CPU priority.
Is Folding safe (for my PC)?
Folding does introduce a lot of heat to your computer, and heat is probably the biggest risk to computers alongside mechanical failures. You should have a quality heatsink and fan, as well as adequate ventilation (clean out that computer!)
If you keep your components running at reasonable temperatures, everything should be fine. Modern computer components are engineered to run for a very long time, and also generally have thermal protections built-in anyways to prevent you from doing actual damage.
Another thing to consider is the quality of your power. You might be running your CPU/GPU at full load running this software, which can be a problem with cheap power supplies or ones which don’t supply enough power. Ideally you should have a quality power supply, and if your local power isn’t great consider a UPS for your computer as well. Really everybody should be running their desktop computers on a UPS anyways.
If you keep your PC free of dust and keep temperatures reasonable, your computer will be old and obsolete long before it fails due to Folding.
One last thing to consider, it’s possible that your hardware already has some hidden defect, and running Folding at full load could bring that to light. Not much can be done about that situation, although it’s always a good idea to run a good stress test like this within your component’s warranty period. I hope this doesn’t happen to any of you!
Is this free?
The software is of course completely free. That being said, running your computer constantly and at higher loads will almost certainly impact your electricity bill. It all depends on how much wattage your computer draws. If you use electric heating in the winter, maybe you can turn it down and offset it with your computer heat.
If not, well… we’re doing this for a good cause 