How to *actually* limit CPU usage for Hashcat
I’d rather not fry the living crap out of my CPU.
The hashcat program uses a lot of CPU and GPU.
I know, the simple solutions people recommend online, such as using tools to limit cpu usage, such as cpulimit, but all it does it cut Hashcat.
Limiting the threads or cores doesn’t help either, if anything, makes it worse. My cpu constantly sits at about 94-8%, at over 90 degrees during Hashcat running. The -w option only helps it cool a few degrees at the most!
So is there any solution to this, or do I have to either kiss my cpu goodbye or run Hashcat for short periods at a time, and pause to cool down?
I’d rather not fry the living crap out of my CPU.
That’s incredibly hard to do these days, thanks to thermal throttling and safety measures built into CPUs of the last 15 to 20 years.
So, there’s little "frying" going on; a CPU will protect itself sufficiently from overheating to a temperature that leads to immediate. Yes, higher temperatures reduce semiconductor life, by increasing the rate of spontaneous dopant relocation. It is my understanding that consumer CPUs are throttled in a way that this won’t become an issue until well beyond other computer components lifetimes, and of course obsolescence (it’s not a great a great idea to make your CPU slower than it needs to be, so that you still have a slow CPU in 30 years. You will want to have a different CPU in 30 years.)
I know, the simple solutions people recommend online, such as using tools to limit cpu usage, such as cpulimit, but all it does it cut Hashcat.
I’ve never read these simply solutions, but it sounds like you’d want something to watch your CPU temperature and reduce clock speed when certain thermal thresholds are reached.
That exists, you’ll want thermald.