How to test a new build thorougly?

[cmai]

I'm about to purchase all my parts but I wanted to run tests that would help me find problems that might occur down the road. Prime95 is one I hear about a lot. Are there any other ones that you gurus use? This will be my first build, so I want to make sure everything is in working order when it's done to save me headaches later if I need to call on the warranty and such.

Thanks,

cmai

 

[Sheriff]

Sisoft Sandra is a free Proggie and you can use the Burn In Module

 

[Robor]

In the "old days" I used to run prime95 with the Unreal intro in a loop overnight. Of course the Unreal intro doesn't stress systems anymore.

 

[Robor]

DOH! Hit "reply" instead of back!

 

[charlie21]

Memtest86, Prime95, and 3DMark03.

 

[mechBgon]

I can top that... fire up a UT2003 Demo Deathmatch with 63 Adept-level bots and see if you can beat them for three hours! That stresses the audio, video, memory and CPU all at the same time. It stresses the keyboard-to-chair interface pretty well, too.

Actually, I have a suspicion that when I set it for 63 bots, it only gives me 32... but it's hard to count them and be certain Suffice it to say, the games are a bit crowded!

 

[MasterHoss]

Yeah, UT2k3 is a good tester for CPU stability. Oddly enough the very buggy HighHeat Baseball 2004 is the game that caught my Radeon9600 Pro OC's instability. Oh yeah... good lord you're nutts to be playing a game for 3 hours... how do your fingers, wrists, and arms feel afterwards?

 

[mechBgon]

Originally posted by: MasterHoss
Yeah, UT2k3 is a good tester for CPU stability. Oddly enough the very buggy HighHeat Baseball 2004 is the game that caught my Radeon9600 Pro OC's instability. Oh yeah... good lord you're nutts to be playing a game for 3 hours... how do your fingers, wrists, and arms feel afterwards?

I'll tell you what's bad on the arms and shoulders, is playing Mechwarrior4 for like five or six hours.

 

[EglsFly]

I use to run the UT2K3 benchmark to check for stability when overclocking, or play a game of it or America's Army.
I typically would rack up a couple hours of America's Army gaming in any given single session, and had the computer that way for quite some time.
Later I found out that was not fully stressing the system, even though the CPU usage is at 100% when playing AA or benching UT2K3. Thinking my system was stable, then later I ran Prime95 stress test, only to have it fail. So I had to back off on the overclocking a bit.

So the moral of the story is, if it will pass Prime95 stress test running for awhile, then it should be rock steady.

 

[Thor86]

Originally posted by: charlie21
Memtest86, Prime95, and 3DMark03.

 

[WarCon]

Originally posted by: charlie21
Memtest86, Prime95, and 3DMark03.

Third that.

 

[Souji4]

Regarding Prime95, I've seen people on other forums say that it doesn't stress computers enough these days and run Folding@Home instead. Any thoughts?

 

[Thor86]

Originally posted by: Souji4
Regarding Prime95, I've seen people on other forums say that it doesn't stress computers enough these days and run Folding@Home instead. Any thoughts?

Hmm, people who say that about Prime95 either don't know what they are talking about, or don't know how to use it properly. Of course just using Prime95 is not the be-all/end-all for testing stability.

 

[Souji4]

Originally posted by: Thor86

Originally posted by: Souji4
Regarding Prime95, I've seen people on other forums say that it doesn't stress computers enough these days and run Folding@Home instead. Any thoughts?

Hmm, people who say that about Prime95 either don't know what they are talking about, or don't know how to use it properly. Of course just using Prime95 is not the be-all/end-all for testing stability.

that's what I thought

I have 3DMark03, Prime95, SiSoft Sandra, and Folding@Home dled (don't own UT2K3) and the final parts of my new rig arriving in 2-3 days but equipped w/ a newB knowledge of stress testing

4 programs seems almost excessive, and most of you recommended 3 progs (MemTest, Prime, and 3dmark). But do you run those one at a time? Or run all simultaneously for 10hrs or so?

For OCing (sorry, I know there's an OC forum, but this thread is related) when I up the FSB in 5MHz increments, is there a quick way to test for stability? Or am I going to have to run 12hr tests @ 205MHz, 210, 215, ... all the way up to 250+?

 

[MasterHoss]

In general, I would say that when OCing your FSB (running your RAM in sync) run Memtest86 ... if it passes a minimum of 3 passes of the test, exit out and up your FSB some more. When you finally hit the magic number, go into Windows and run some stability tests. If it fails, it's time to back the FSB down some more or increase your RAM timings (to more conservative timings).

EDIT: What RAM are you going to OC and what mobo? That'll give you kind of an idea of where to start.

 

[Souji4]

Originally posted by: MasterHoss
EDIT: What RAM are you going to OC and what mobo? That'll give you kind of an idea of where to start.

Sorry, didn't mean to hi-jack the thread here..
Asus P4P800 Deluxe w/ Corsair TwinX 3200C2 1GB (2 x 512MB)