Did you know that you could use your computer's spare computational capacity to find disease cures, map the galaxy, and help research in practically every area of science? You can by installing the BOINC software and picking a project to attach to. We call processing for these projects "crunching". It can be set to only run while your computer is not in use, so it won't slow down anything. You don't need to be computer-savvy to run BOINC.
BOINC works on all types of computers and hardware (PC, Mac, Linux, GPU support too!).
Are you a researcher who needs free computational power? Check out our researcher guide!
How to download and install? Which projects should I crunch?
Whichever one you want to, of course! If you have a graphics card (GPU), you may wish to prioritize projects which can utilize this hardware since it is often orders of magnitude more efficient.
➡️ Check out our list of active projects to find one that you're excited to contribute to. It's sorted by category (medical research, astrophysics, etc) and shows which projects support which hardware (CPU/GPU) and OS (Windows/OS X/Linux).
If you don't want to deal with picking specific projects, you can use Science United instead of BOINC, which is a simplified version of BOINC where you pick "areas" of science such as "medicine" or "physics" and it automatically picks projects for you. Note that this is incompatible with incentivization methods like Gridcoin, and you do not get individual stats on sites like BOINCStats.
➡️ Once you have your project's picked, go to the BOINC download page. Open the downloaded file to install it. Linux users should use this guide to install BOINC. There are videos to guide you through installation on Windows and MacOS if you'd like, the whole process takes less than five minutes. Android users should download directly from the BOINC website or from F-droid, the version in the play store is very out of date and buggy. See below for warnings about crunching with Android.
It's a good idea to crunch for at least two projects, that way if one project runs out of work, your computer won't be sitting idle. You can set a project's resource share/weight to zero which means that it will only be crunched if work for other projects can't be found. You can, of course, crunch as many projects as you'd like.
Where can I go for help?
The BOINCNetwork discord is probably the best place to get quick answers. You can also make posts here. Most projects have active forums on their site as well, which is particularly helpful if you have project-specific questions.
Does crunching actually accomplish anything?
Absolutely! BOINC has resulted in the publication of hundreds of scientific papers, the production of new drugs and vaccines, and produces several ever-growing databases of stellar objects (black holes, pulsars, etc). It's worth noting that while some of BOINC's work is directed at producing particular "products of science" such as new drugs, much of it falls under the realm of "foundational science" for example finding binding sites for a protein which are then used to tailor specific drugs to match. Or testing a variety of hypothesis as to why a subatomic particle behaves a certain way. Foundational science is particularly hard to fund as VC and angel investors see no way to make a return on it, yet it is critical to the advancement of science. If you care about making sure your crunching has the biggest impact possible, consider in your project selection whether the project openly publishes their results for others to use and build upon.
Can I crunch on multiple computers?
Absolutely! Just make sure you use the same e-mail address and password for all your machines so that all the credit gets pooled together under one account. The BOINC Account Manager (optional) can help you manage multiple machines, sign up for multiple projects quickly, and show you cool stats from your crunching.
Will crunching hurt my computer or shorten its lifespan?
The short answer for desktop computers is no. Crunching will not harm your computer, computers after all are designed to compute! While crunching does utilize your CPU/GPU heavily, the reality is that every other component in your computer will likely fail first (your hard drive, OS, etc) or become obsolete before your CPU/GPU dies. Many computers crunch for a decade plus with no issues, at which point they make most sense to replace from an energy perspective alone.
However, if your machine has a pre-existing problem with heating (like if it's full of dust or running inside a cabinet), crunching can exacerbate this problem or make its symptoms more readily visible. Modern CPUs are designed to throttle and turn off if the heat becomes too high, but for longevity it is best to stop them from getting to this level in the first place. You should be removing dust from your computer's fans every 6-12 months depending on your environment. Making sure your computer is not on the floor or carpet will also help greatly with dust accumulation. Here's a video documenting the basics of dust removal, be sure to do it outside and wear a dust mask or other respiratory protection to keep yourself from inhaling all the dust.
Generally speaking, a CPU under high load shouldn't be higher than the mid 80s in Celsius. Note that newer processors (Alder Lake and Raptor Lake), and Ryzen (Zen 4) are designed to operate closer to their max temp which is 90-95. You can monitor your CPU temps with a tool like Open Hardware Monitor. If you are cleaning out your case regularly and your computer seems to be running fine, you don't need to keep an eye on temps. I don't monitor mine, for example. If you research what "safe" temps are online, you will see widely differing opinions. This is partially from people who do not know what they are talking about, but also because CPUs can have wide temperature ranges in their official documentation. If your heat seems too high, you can limit the number of cores BOINC can use in the settings, or clean out dust, or add fans, or even run your computer with the case open. Re-applying thermal paste can result in a dramatic reduction in heat, particularly for older machines.
Laptops, on the other hand, are often built with insufficient heat exhaustion and can quickly overheat at full load. Heat will also shorten your battery life significantly. Set BOINC to only use 50% of your CPU power and not to use your GPU to keep heat manageable. Be sure to regularly clean dust out of your vents just like with a desktop PC, you can use a pen to hold the fans in place while blowing the dust out. With laptops, remember that warm is fine, hot is bad. Even without BOINC, always run laptops on hard surfaces, placing them on blankets or carpets can quickly cause overheating.
While BOINC does have an Android app, it is widely considered a quick way to kill your phone. It has no good way to manage heat, phones are not designed to be run at 100% all the time, and can quickly lead to swollen and dangerous batteries. You can limit BOINC's usage but even 50% is too high for some phones. I do not suggest crunching with Android unless it's an old device you are willing to sacrifice. Removing the battery (if removable) is a really good idea. That being said, many Android devices are much more efficient per watt than desktops or laptops, so they are actually a great choice if you can work around their limitations.
Will this make my electricity bill skyrocket?
No. Most of a computer's energy usage is simply due to it being on, not being run at "full blast". A standard desktop or laptop might draw 90W at full usage, a 20" Box Fan would draw around the same. This might cost you $2-$10 per month, assuming you'd have your computer on half the time anyways, running BOINC 24/7 would cost you an additional $1-$5/month depending on your electric rates.
Determining your wattage: You can find your computer's actual electrical draw by using a device like a kill-a-watt. You can also look at your computers power supply (where the power cord comes into a desktop, or the power brick your laptop uses) to see the wattage. Actual wattage used under full load would generally be 80-90% of that number. If you have a custom built computer like for gaming, your power supply might be significantly oversized to leave room for future expansion, so your actual wattage is likely closer to 50-80% of the listed wattage,
Here's a handy calculator for figuring our your monthly cost. The calculator provides a good default electrical rate for US consumers, but you can find your specific electric rate by googling "electric rate city, state, country" or by looking at your utility bill. Keep in mind that you can offset some of this cost in winter, since your computer is replacing heat you'd otherwise have to pay for.
Why is crunching in winter cheaper or even free?
Every electric appliance is equally efficient at generating heat. That means when you put 1W in, you get 1W of heat out, it doesn't matter whether it's a computer, a blender, or an electric space heater. This may be counter-intuitive, but it's not controversial physics. When you see an appliance which a "high efficiency" it is describing the ratio of electricity consumed vs "work" done. For example, a microwave might be "60% efficient" which means 60% of the energy used ends up in your food ("work"), and 40% ends up "lost to heat" converting the electricity to microwaves. But if you leave that heated soup out on the counter, what happens to the heat in the soup? It dissipates into the room. So all the energy put into your microwave ends up as heat. No energy was lost, it simply changed form before arriving at its final form as heat. You can essentially think of a 90W computer as a 90W space heater.
This means that crunching in winter, depending on your setup, may be low cost or even free. If you have electric resistive heating in your home (space heaters, baseboards, ceiling/floor heat), it is equally efficient to heat your room with a computer or your thermostat. As long as your thermostat is turning on the heat regularly, you are not spending any money on crunching if you assume you'd have to pay for the heat anyways. Your thermostat just has to spend 90W less to get your space to the same temperature. There's even a tool to control BOINC based on room temperature.
If you have a heat pump/"reverse ac", that is much more efficient than electric resistive heat, so it's cheaper to heat your space that way than with a computer. Gas furnaces are also usually more cost effective per unit of heat. Nonetheless, using your computer to crunch does generate heat, just at a slightly higher cost. But it all depends on how much you value the scientific contributions you are making, I am happy to pay for example a 50% premium on $5 my electricity per month knowing it came from searching for a cure for cancer.
What about my internet connection? Will BOINC use all my capacity?
No. Each project is responsible for deciding how much bandwidth their workunits require, and they are all cognizant of people with bandwidth caps. Chances are you won't notice BOINC's impact at all. If you want to limit bandwidth usage, set BOINC to be allowed more disk space to store files (prevents having to re-download when switching projects). You can also set time of day restrictions and speed restrictions to avoid impacting other uses such as zoom. If you are an extremely limited bandwidth plan (like tethering to a cell phone), you may want to look into bandwidth requirements of your specific project.
What kind of hardware and OS should I use?
BOINC supports all major brands of CPUs and GPUs and Windows/Mac/Linux. Some projects even have special functionality for Apple's M1 chips. Linux is usually the most efficient, but getting drivers to work out of the box for GPUs can be quite difficult, though CPU crunching always runs fine. Generally speaking, the newer your hardware, the more you can crunch and the more efficiency per watt. GPUs are massively more efficient than CPUs, but not all types of problems lend themselves well to GPU processing and therefore not all projects have GPU workunits.
From a climate perspective, making hew hardware produces a lot of CO2 (and e-waste is a major problem) so there is an argument to be made that using old hardware is easier on the environment. But it all depends on where you draw the box.
What about Gridcoin, how can I get paid to crunch?
Gridcoin is a cryptocurrency which rewards people who crunch BOINC and has been around over a decade. If you collect Gridcoin, all of your energy usage still goes towards BOINC, and you earn some GRC along the way. You probably will not turn a profit from it (unless you are utilizing the waste heat), but you might break even, and at any rate it can help offset your electrical costs. If you are interested in learning more about Gridcoin, go to c/Gridcoin.
Anything else I should know about BOINC?
- The BOINC manager has an "advanced" view which is way more powerful and imo easier to use.
- You can join "teams" on BOINC and some projects regularly host competitions and "sprints" which can be quite fun to participate in.
- BOINC projects award credit for your work, but each project is responsible for determining how to award that credit. This means you cannot compare credit between different projects since the amount of work required to earn each credit may be vastly different. This is a surprisingly complicated problem to solve and won't be getting solved anytime soon.
I like donating my computational power, what else can I donate?
Many BOINC projects allow you to donate money on their website, you can also check out the SCI webstore for merch with the logos of your favourite BOINC projects. The proceeds benefit BOINC projects and BOINC development. You can also donate directly to the SCI to support BOINC development
You can donate your bandwidth to archiving the internet or helping users in countries with censored internet access the web. Or help seed dataset torrents for researchers at Academic Torrents.
You can also donate your brainpower with Zooniverse. Help train AI models for identifying galaxy's, monitor wildlife populations, and more.
There are also other projects similar to BOINC like Folding @ home and Dreamlab. Folding @ home uses your GPU/CPU for protein folding research (medical research) and Dreamlab uses your android phone for several scientific research realms.
If you have coding, design, or sysadmin skills, consider donating to BOINC itself or the various BOINC projects. New promotional materials for projects or BOINC in general are always welcome!