burn in?

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~hpXH535~

Hi,
When you build a new computer and it finally works, do you have to "burn it
in?" I remember somewhere being advised to leave it on for a month or so.
Is that still good advise?
Thanks,
Mike
 
~hpXH535~ said:
Hi,
When you build a new computer and it finally works, do you have to "burn it
in?" I remember somewhere being advised to leave it on for a month or so.
Is that still good advise?
Thanks,
Mike
Click to expand...

Burn-in procedures, are intended to be carried out by a builder or
manufacturer, before shipping a product to an end user. The intent,
is if problems are going to arise, they are detected before the
product is shipped.

In a volume testing environment, that kind of testing is expensive.
A factory which employs such techniques, has large storage areas
for the equipment under test. Usually, there will be temperature control,
and either a high temperature will be applied, or a ramping temperature
could be used (alternating hot and cold).

If you are building a computer for yourself, you are both the manufacturer
and the end user. In such a case, the best procedure, is to use test
utilities, to uncover the quality of your build. Programs like
memtest86+, Prime95 (or Orthos), 3DMark, are all handy for stressing
the machine and seeing whether it is stable or not.

A stability test is about 100x more effective than sitting idle
in the desktop. In other words, in one hour of stress-type program
testing, you'll uncover as many problems, as leaving the computer
sitting idle for four days.

If the computer tests stable, and passes all its stress tests, it
is ready to use, to be switched on and off, as appropriate. It
should not need any special consideration after that.

Since many PC components are cheaply made, you can expect failures
at any time. For example, the PSU is most likely to give you problems,
and it will fail whenever you least want it to. While the price of
the PSU is related to its expected failure rate, even expensive
PSUs fail.

Paul
 
~hpXH535~ said:
When you build a new computer and it finally works, do you have to "burn it
in?" I remember somewhere being advised to leave it on for a month or so. Is
that still good advise?
Click to expand...

It's a good idea to run it "full bore" for a while (several days, at least) to
uncover any weak spots. Usually if the hardware survives the first week, it'll
last a long time.

If you want to do something useful during your stress test (and for as long as
you want), look at a distributed computing project at Stanford called Folding
at Home (http://folding.stanford.edu). Not only is it a worthwhile science
project, it can be used as a CPU and Graphics stress test. Running the F@H
client will rune the CPU at 100% (or whatever lesser setting you specify),
taking up all the spare CPU cycles without intruding on your normal work. If
you have a dual-core CPU, you can run 2 instances to test both cores. If you
have an ATI X1600-X1950 series Graphics card, you can run a special client on
the graphics card, too!
 
It's a good idea to run it "full bore" for a while (several days, at least) to
uncover any weak spots. Usually if the hardware survives the first week, it'll
last a long time.

If you want to do something useful during your stress test (and for as long as
you want), look at a distributed computing project at Stanford called Folding
at Home (http://folding.stanford.edu). Not only is it a worthwhile science
project, it can be used as a CPU and Graphics stress test. Running the F@H
client will rune the CPU at 100% (or whatever lesser setting you specify),
taking up all the spare CPU cycles without intruding on your normal work. If
you have a dual-core CPU, you can run 2 instances to test both cores. If you
have an ATI X1600-X1950 series Graphics card, you can run a special client on
the graphics card, too!
Click to expand...

Would MS Windows run continualy for a month without Crashing ???
 
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