cpu usagelifespanoverheatingphysical-wear
I often do 3D rendering in the background which consumes 100% of the CPU (I lower the priority of the process so that it does not hinder any tasks I am working on).
My concern/question is whether it is okay to run a computer/laptop with a 100% CPU load constantly.
Could this reduce the lifespan of the system?
If this process is causing high CPU usage, it's a driver. See these questions for further analysis support:
This process will use all remaining CPU resources that were not used by any other process. That's actually how CPU load is measured in the first place.
If the CPU spends 20% of it's time processing the Idle Process, then it's under 80% load. This process is nothing to worry about.
services.exe is the service control manager and shouldn't really be causing you any trouble.
What could cause trouble is svchost.exe which is the host process for Windows services. Every service in Windows is started through an instances of svchost.exe. So if a svchost.exe is causing high CPU load, it's a service running wild.
You can use Process Explorer to determine which services run inside a service host by simply hovering over the process:
Perhaps try using auditd, which would roughly be something like :
$ sudo yum install auditd
$ sudo auditctl -a exit,always -S all -F pid=1234 & sleep 15
$ sudo auditctl -d exit,always -S all -F pid=1234
$ less /var/log/audit/audit.log
This will install and start auditd, set a policy to capture system call info for your PID (1234 in the example), wait for a short while to capture a decent amount of info, then remove the audit policy. Take a good look over the auditd.log for your gnome-terminal PID, you may get a better idea of what it's busy doing.
Another quick tool for spotting what a process is spending it's time doing is just strace, wait a short time, then hit CTRL-c :
$ sudo strace -c -p 1234
strace: Process 1234 attached
^Cstrace: Process 1234 detached
% time seconds usecs/call calls errors syscall
------ ----------- ----------- --------- --------- ----------------
56.98 0.003496 388 9 clone
17.19 0.001055 8 135 rt_sigprocmask
6.19 0.000380 21 18 9 wait4
4.58 0.000281 16 18 close
3.80 0.000233 26 9 read
3.47 0.000213 24 9 stat
3.37 0.000207 23 9 9 rt_sigsuspend
3.08 0.000189 21 9 pipe
1.34 0.000082 9 9 9 rt_sigreturn
------ ----------- ----------- --------- --------- ----------------
100.00 0.006136 225 27 total
Then if you want to learn more, check the appropriate man page for the system call you're looking at :
$ man -s2 clone
Good luck!
Best Answer
As long as the system is adequately cooled, it won't be a problem. For a laptop, this is a greater concern and you would be well advised to make sure that vents have adequate clearance and that the ambient temperature is kept in check. You'd also want to clean the dust out of the system every so often too. The same routines apply to desktop systems too, but they often have more space for better cooling. Small form factor (SFF) systems and iMacs require care similar to laptops because of their design.
If you can offload rendering to a dedicated system, you might be better off overall, but it's not necessary.