What do you do after building a computer?

[chrism00n]

After you assemble a new computer (my parts are in the mail!), which tests/benchmarks do you like to run to verify that everything is working optimally?

 

[erikistired]

doom 3 demo1, 3dmark03 and 05, other games.

 

[alphadude]

I would use SiSoft Sandra to test the computer, 3DMark to test how fast the machine performance wise and PCMark

 

[Gamingphreek]

Sis Sandra is more of a diagnostic program and it does a lot of synthetic benchmarking. Just play your games and do as fisher suggested.

-Kevin

 

[DrCool]

always run a burn in, anytime you build a new system.

necessary programs:

mbm (motherboard monitor)
cpuBURN4 (run for aprox 4 hours or until cpu temp peaks out)
PASSMARK BurnInTest (run for 24 hours)

during this period constantly monitor system temps to ensure they stay within limits:
AMD Athlon XP (100F idle / 160F load)
Intel Pentium 4 (95 F idle / 145F load)

benchmarks:
sisoft sandra
3dmark
pcmark
doom3 timedemo demo1
HL Source video stress test
farcry

 

[imported_Kiwi]

Originally posted by: DrCool (snip)
necessary programs:

mbm (motherboard monitor)
cpuBURN4 (run for aprox 4 hours or until cpu temp peaks out)
PASSMARK BurnInTest (run for 24 hours)

during this period constantly monitor system temps to ensure they stay within limits:
AMD Athlon XP (100F idle / 160F load)
Intel Pentium 4 (95 F idle / 145F load)

benchmarks:
sisoft sandra
3dmark
pcmark (snip)

If dial-up is all that a person can afford, both aquamark and 3Dmark are too large to try and download; anyone know if there has been any service to burn such huge tools to CD for a small fee, plus the shipping?

Neither of those burn-in program names are familiar-sounding. They must either be new since my last (1996 +/-) run at home-built PC's, or gained fame after that. PCmark sounds perhaps "somewhat" familiar -- maybe I've seen it mentioned since returning to this corner of PC-using.


:frown:

 

[JBT]

Get Prime95 too. It is a small download and very good at taxing you system's CPU, motherboard and RAM.

 

[dguy6789]

Install a few games and enjoy. No need to waste time useing benchies. If you want to showoff to your friends, let them come over and play games on your pc, and if they cant tell it is any better, you just wasted some cash.

 

[chocoruacal]

First thing I do is run Memtest86 overnight. If that checks out, I run Prime95 for 24 hours. If that checks out, the machine is good to go. If the person will be doing a lot of gaming, I might throw a little 3dMark at it. The worst thing you can do is start hooking your data drives up to it and banging away. Data corruption is a nasty thing.

 

[dug777]

Installing your o/s flawlessly is a good start- if that screws up i guess that it's kinda obvious there's a problem

Then all the progams u plan 2 use, and then test them all with a few files...

Then if u've had no problems- shutdown and hit the sack If u really want 2 make sure all's good, and have the bandwidth, and the time, a bit of 3dmark doesnt hurt, prime95, memtest86, burnintest etc.

If you just plan on a bit of word/excel/IE/Outlook ( the casual home user), and don't care about games/photoshop/videoediting/CAD, then i wouldnt get too carried away with the stress tests/benchmarks, just try playing a few DVDs with a few word/excel/outlook files open...but..if you want to show how awesome it is- benchmarks are the way to go-then brag 2 your m8s

 

[DrCool]

Originally posted by: chocoruacal
First thing I do is run Memtest86 overnight. If that checks out, I run Prime95 for 24 hours. If that checks out, the machine is good to go. If the person will be doing a lot of gaming, I might throw a little 3dMark at it. The worst thing you can do is start hooking your data drives up to it and banging away. Data corruption is a nasty thing.

I knew I was forgetting something.

Memtest is a great test tool as well, if your can't run that for a couple hours or as chocorucal mentioned overnight, your definitly going to have problems.

I use cpuBURN in place of Prime95, as it seems to stress the CPU more. It's a lesser known program, but much easier to use.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Originally posted by: chocoruacal
First thing I do is run Memtest86 overnight. If that checks out, I run Prime95 for 24 hours. If that checks out, the machine is good to go. If the person will be doing a lot of gaming, I might throw a little 3dMark at it. The worst thing you can do is start hooking your data drives up to it and banging away. Data corruption is a nasty thing.

Yep. Wiser words have never been spoken, or at least ones about computer hardware. I likewise run tests on newly-purchased HDs for a few weeks just to "bang on them", before I start to transfer any data over permanently. You never know how HDs have been handled (well, you might have a good idea, if you've bought them from the same vendor before), and mishandling is pretty-much the number-one cause of drive failure. A good system-image backup never hurts either, when changing out major hardware. 3DMark is good to test out video card stability and CPU/GPU temps too. If things start to artifact, at stock settings, check out your power and cooling.

 

[Thor86]

In this order:

Stock settings
1) Prime95 (two instances if using HyperThreading) minimum 24 hours.
2) Gaming/Apps/3Dmark2001SE Demo loops.

Overclock settings:
1) Memtest tests 5 and 8 for about 40+ passes each (error free)
2) Memtest full test for 10+ passes (error free)
3) Prime95 (two instances if using HyperThreading) minimum 24 hours.
2) Gaming/Apps/3Dmark2001SE Demo loops.

 

[Zero Plasma]

bump

 

[uOpt]

FreeBSD's `make world`. that means rebuilding FreeBSD with itself, everything, not only the kernel. That includes a lot of junk written in C++, perl and the like and is taxing the system in a different way than just doing straight C files only (such as the Linux or FreeBSD kernel).

It is the hardest test I ever found for a computer.

It is the reason why I don't overclock, BTW. Everytime I experiented with it and it ran fine for games, simple compilation and the like it would blow up when doing a loop of FreeBSD's `make world`s.

It is also an excellent RAM test. The compilation stops for something that worked before, with a syntax error or a corrupted object file.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Originally posted by: MartinCracauer
FreeBSD's `make world`. that means rebuilding FreeBSD with itself, everything, not only the kernel. That includes a lot of junk written in C++, perl and the like and is taxing the system in a different way than just doing straight C files only (such as the Linux or FreeBSD kernel).

It is the hardest test I ever found for a computer.

It is the reason why I don't overclock, BTW. Everytime I experiented with it and it ran fine for games, simple compilation and the like it would blow up when doing a loop of FreeBSD's `make world`s.

It is also an excellent RAM test. The compilation stops for something that worked before, with a syntax error or a corrupted object file.

Wasn't there a CPU bug discovered via a Linux kernel-compile loop? Something about an internal hardware address TLB limitation on some of the early Athlons, such that addresses exactly 32MB apart from each other weren't differentiated properly or something? I have a vague recollection of that.

Maybe this ?