CPU vs GPU tasks and credits

Until you get used to how things work, you should hasten slowly :-).  If Einstein is the only project you have that is active now, what have you done with the others?  I presume you may have set NNT for them or perhaps even disabled or removed them completely.  What is your ultimate aim?

If we just talk about Einstein for the moment, there are three active searches that are open to you, two for CPU cores and one for your GPU.  If you set a work cache of 0.5 days for starters and leave most other things at default values, your BOINC client will ask for work as needed and the server will supply for all three.  It's many years since I knew what the default settings were, but I think you will probably be automatically participating in all three searches.  Just check through all the project and computing preferences on the website to get an overview with the things you can play with.  If you decide to change anything you need to go to the bottom of the page you are on and click the 'save' option.

With default settings, if your GPU is crunching a task, one CPU core will automatically be 'reserved' for GPU 'support' duties.  You don't need to do anything about that.  Can you please open BOINC Manager Advanced View and examine the tasks tab to see what tasks you have and exactly what is crunching.  Put in your next response the type of tasks you have and how many of each are crunching concurrently.  If nothing has been modified, it should be 3 CPU tasks and one GPU task.  You may have been crunching 4 CPU tasks initially if you didn't have any GPU tasks.  As soon as a GPU task starts to crunch, one of the 4 CPU tasks would pause and only three would be left running.  The paused task would resume when a running task was completed.

OK, thanks for that.  It's now clear to me why you will see 4 CPU tasks running when you are using your computer.

My experience is that for normal 'office' type duties, letting GPU tasks crunch continuously doesn't have a noticeable impact on the 'usability' of the machine.  This is even so when running two concurrent GPU tasks.  If you're interested in maximising your output, it's worth experimenting for a bit to see if crunching continuously with the GPU has any adverse effect for you.

Another thing to decide about is the effect that crunching will have on electricity costs and hardware life.  For many, electricity cost is a big deal.  Crunching will increase your use of power considerably and this will show in your electricity bill.  Because GPU crunching produces more work output per kW consumed, some people tend to disable CPU crunching and just use the GPU.

Hardware life is sensitive to excessive heat so you should keep a close eye on your cooling system.  Monitoring temperatures and investigating sudden changes are important things to do.  CPU fans, PSU fans and case fans can all run out of lubricant and create heat issues quite quickly.   With fans working harder, noise may be an issue and the tendency for dust and fluff to clog up fins on heat sinks, you will need to pay some attention to these potential problems.  As long as you maintain proper cooling, the hardware can run for many years.

So, if you're comfortable with running costs and dealing with excess heat, and are still interested in getting more out of your GPU, let me know and I'll give you options for how best to do that.

Holmis is correct, the new default is to hide your computers. If you haven't already done so, you may change this setting in Account -> Preferences -> Privacy, look for "Should Einstein@Home show your computers on its web site?". Enable by clicking 'Yes'.