If you ask me, "Use... at most 25% of CPU time" does not mean that all your tasks should use at most 25% of the CPU time, it means that BOINC should use at most 25% of the CPU time. It is meant to be used to reduce CPU temperature and energy usage. Basically, in your case using 25% it means that computing should be active for 25% of the time and inactive 75% of the time, or, in other words, computing should be done for 1 second, then suspended for 3 seconds, then resumed for 1 second, etc.

Another example: 75% means compute for 3 seconds, wait for 1 second, and repeat.

A warning is in place: using this feature might sound like a good idea™, but as you can read in post 708115, limiting the CPU-time is counter-productive, as explained by alanb1951. A better way would be to reduce the number of running tasks by limiting the CPUs in use to a certain percentage. So, instead of using 100% of the CPUs, you could use your mentioned 25%.

Adri
PS Mentioning the name(s) of your task(s) doesn't help. If you really want us to take a deeper look at the state of your tasks, use their workunit-IDs or their URLs. Where do you find a workunit-ID? Go to your My Contribution -> Results, search for a specific taskname there, then click on the 'Result name', e.g. MCM1_0243564_9301_2 like you said, then copy the URL or select the last part of the URL (i.e. the number in the address bar).

Rosemary - another way to reduce heat and fan noise is to lower the maximum allowed CPU frequency. Sometimes a small reduction can made quite a difference. If you are running Windows cannot help more, sorry. From distant memory think it might be in the advanced power settings somewhere. Used to do that on a windows laptop before I retired 10 years ago. Then converted it to Linux. (Hope you get well soon).

Hey Tony, nice to see you here, 3 minutes before my former post.

Adri

A guess here but it seems reasonable. The task is a retry and has a higher priority than your other tasks, the manager sends it to core 1 where it runs for 1 second and stops, core 1 is then rested for 3 seconds.

However, as the task is high priority it is then sent to core 2 for 1 second, then core 3 and then core 4. Each of the cores is obeying the 25% rule but the high priority task is getting the 100% runtime it needs to complete on time.

Hi Adri, currently writing another mainframe CPU story for you...

Rosemary

Botched my previous attempt, lets, try again

If your other work is important for you, then maybe reducing the number of CPUs running WUs is worth a try. Fewer CPUs running at 100% should give somewhat the same number of results. The OS constantly moves any work, including WUs, between CPUs. They therefore will all be about the same temperature. As the WUs move around then each individual CPU will only be working part-time.

However, if your laptop don't have enough CPUs, then you may not achieve fine enough control. Anyway, easy enough to try. Reduce the number of CPUs allowed to run WUs, stop the throttling and see how you go. Change the number of CPUs for desired temperature/fan-speed. This will also ensure retries run at the same speed as normal WUs. Easy enough to get back to where you are now if not successful.

Another little help is to use a suitable object underneath the back of the laptop to lift it a bit. Be careful not to block any air vents. On my laptop the bottom runs much cooler as more air can easily flow. As well the keyboard is more comfortable for typing. Of course, not so practical if the laptop is moved around frequently.