I just used dbpoweramp to convert flacs to lame mp3's and my cpu usage was 100%!! Is there a setting or something that I did not do right?

Ron

100% CPU usage is a good thing. It means you aren't bottlenecked at the hard disk. Don't worry about it, encoding takes CPU cycles

Okie dokie. Just thought I would browse the net while it was encoding. While possible it would be very slow going. Would more memory or better processor speed things up? Just curious. I have 1800 more songs to go = a very long time.....

Ron

Tasks like encoding eat up as much CPU usage as possible no matter what CPU/memory you have. BES is helpful for such cases: you can restrict CPU usage as you like.

BES, Battle Encoder Shirase: Controls Per-Process CPU Usage
http://mion.faireal.net/BES/

Or just lower process priority by Task Manager, but it won't work sometimes.

Even a lower priority (such as idle) would still 100% the CPU.

It should leave the PC in a more usable state though.

Glad its ok then. I thought it might cause some overheating of some kind. It's not a big deal as I will only have to convert the songs once(i hope) and then I'll just convert as I put new cd's on the pc.

will it hurt the PC(proccessor etc,) if I let it convert for 10+ hours straight?

thanks for the help,

Ron

by the way, i have dbpoweramp set at alt-preset-standard with quality at normal. is this fine or should i change something?

If it is a bought PC (ie dell), then running at 100% for any length of time shouldn't effect it.

Your settings are fine.

Not storebought. I built it about 4 years ago. It was my first build. Any special settings I should look at?(maybe in the bios?). Tho I did build it, I still don't know much about issues/how things work with PC's. Anyone can build one IMO with all the information available these days.

Thanks spoon for all your help.

I'm gonna set it to rock tonight so hopefully when I wake up in the morning I will have a bunch of mp3's...

Ron

You could always get a dual core processor, that should only eat one core unless the encoder is optimized for 2 cores.

Using 100% of the CPU for encoding is normal, and won't damage anything if you have a competent cooling system in your computer.

You can test system stability by running a Prime95 torture test for a few hours. If you get no errors then your system is fine.