Jim/Jacob: Thanks for your comments but I need to clarify: The portion of the i7 machine that was standing idle was ONLY the GPU and as you might be aware the BOINC projects available for GPU processing is limited. And quite frankly I personally do not believe some of those outer-space projects are worth the value of my equipment and the cost of operations. Understand: I have no criticism of others running whatever they choose; I am only speaking for myself.

I used to run POEM but it now extinct. If GPU Grid runs out of work or further restricts its tasks to the highest performing cards then I once again will have to withdraw from support; not voluntarily but by limitation of my equipment. By the way, I just recently bought the GTX 1060s (2) for the specific purpose of supporting GPU Grid. The BIG problem is heat generation as I live in hot-summer Texas. The temps coming out of the computers cases if hot as hell.

Final comment: My current 22 CPUs are all running World Community Grid, a project I believe does some tremendous work for future mankind. As you are probably aware, they are heavily funded by IBM, whose stock I do not directly own.
Again: thanks for your input!!!! Bill

I also did Poem work alongside GPUGrid, until Poem closed shop.

These days, I still keep GPUGrid as my main GPU project (for my 2 PCs and 5 GPUs) .... but I have several other GPU projects set up as backups (like Einstein@Home, SETI@Home, Asteroids@Home, Collatz, MilkyWay, even DrugDiscovery has a new GroMacs GPU app in test, and World Community Grid has had a GPU app before).

So, in times of GPUGrid work shortage, at least SOMETHING is using those GPUs. Utility. Science. That's my take.

There is always Folding@Home too. It doesn't run on BOINC and requires its own app, but I normally have no problems running it on the GPU while BOINC projects run on the CPU. They do not communicate with each other, so you will need to reserve a CPU core in BOINC for use by the Folding card. And their app can be problematic, especially the current beta. But if you get it to work, they have lots of work units and I think the science is good, insofar as I can tell.

The "one-week crunching" contest is not put on by GPUGrid, and they shouldn't be blamed if it coincides with a work shortage. In my opinion, the contest should use some other project.

Yes, it is annoying. They always seem to pick on the projects that are low on work. I don't think they bother to check.

This project (perhaps others too) is using a very low work cache, to achieve very short turnaround times (as the next work is generated by the results of the present workunits). When a crunching contest lures many users to this project, the work cache runs empty in a very short time.
The project personnel keep an eye on the workunit cache, and add some work to it if it's ready and needed.

Most of my machines do not have WUs. Perhaps you could convince the Universitat Pompeu Fabra to hire another PhD? If that is truly out of the question perhaps you could expand your project into something more like Folding@home and accept work from other universities in the down time, with a lower priority than your own work.