Make Matlab work for several hours can damage my laptop?

Hi all,

sorry if my question is a little naive but I'm not too expert. I need to do a work on Matlab and my university tutor said me that for this work I need to make several operations with very big matrices on Matlab and all the work could take up 2/3 hours.

Now, I always used Matlab for very lower time in respect to that case, so I wanted to ask you if it's possible that my notebook could be damaged if I make Matlab work for several hours.

Thanks

Answer 1

[John D'Errico]

Massive, long computations with large matrices, etc., can indeed heat my computer up, forcing my fan to kick on. I use a stationary system though, so it has a sufficient internal fan that can handle the load. So I have had this computer running flat out for multiple days at a time, with all cores in operation.

When my wife was using her laptop for some extensive work a few years back, we got her an external fan, one that the laptop would rest on. We also found and installed a temperature monitor application, one that could report the temperature in various components, so the graphics card temp, CPU temp, etc. You could see the difference with the external fan on.

At the very least, you might want to raise the laptop from the surface it rests on. Air flow under the case can allow it to cool down.

[Walter Roberson]

I used to run various high computation public interest projects such as SETI@Home and protein folding, on my MacBook Pro, some of which used the gpu as well . After a time I noticed my laptop was rocking as I typed and eventually I took it in for repair . It turned out that the case was warped by the lithium battery expanding, which happens when they overheat. I did have a spacer under it but it had not been enough to keep the device cool over sustained heat.

Working full out for 3/4 hour is not likely to damage your laptop provided that there is space around it and the fans are not clogged with cat fur. But Yes sustained work on a laptop can damage it if you do not have enough cooling .

[Gianluca Ligresti]

To do what I need I should run Matlab for up to 80 minutes continouosly (in the bad case), but my tutor told me that I can change some parameters and arrive to 25 minutes.

If I make Matlab work in the range 25 minutes/1 hour do you think that the eventual problems to my laptop could be the same?

Thanks

[John D'Errico]

One thing you could try is to use the laptop plugged in, but the battery completely removed, if you are really worried, or if you find the case getting warm. While I've not tried our old laptop out under heavy load without a battery, it does seem to run with no problems.

That would significantly reduce any problems with heat for you.

[Walter Roberson]

Quality laptop makers expect that someone might play a game for an hour but do not expect a full day.

[Joss Knight]

Any laptop worth its salt should shutdown before damaging itself. That said, many laptops are not worth their salt.

[Walter Roberson]

Computers do generally shut down or start to error badly enough to crash if they get hot enough. However, in the meantime components wear when at high temperatures that are sub-critical. Lithium Ion batteries in particular wear out with heat. They used to explode, until technology was reformulated to have them expand instead of explode.