Looking for system stress / burn-in software

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PC Guy

I've got a few motherboards that I need to determine their operational
reliability / stability while running XP, so I'm wondering if there is
any free software that can do stress testing or "burn-in" operations for
one or two weeks continuously running under XP. Basically, any software
that can keep a system busy doing stuff until (or if) the system crashes
or locks up. Serial, parallel, network, audio and USB stress testing is
not required.

Anyone know of any such software?
 
I've got a few motherboards that I need to determine their operational
reliability / stability while running XP, so I'm wondering if there is
any free software that can do stress testing or "burn-in" operations for
one or two weeks continuously running under XP. Basically, any software
that can keep a system busy doing stuff until (or if) the system crashes
or locks up. Serial, parallel, network, audio and USB stress testing is
not required.

Anyone know of any such software?
Click to expand...

Any software which runs the CPU(s) at 100% and uses a lot of memory
bandwidth will do what you describe and there are many ways to do it. One
of the simplest, and thus the most popular, programs that fills the bill is
Prime95. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prime95
 
I've got a few motherboards that I need to determine their operational
reliability / stability while running XP, so I'm wondering if there is
any free software that can do stress testing or "burn-in" operations for
one or two weeks continuously running under XP. Basically, any software
that can keep a system busy doing stuff until (or if) the system crashes
or locks up. Serial, parallel, network, audio and USB stress testing is
not required.
Click to expand...

RAM: memtest86
GPU (graphics): 3dMark 2006 or even PCMark Vantage
CPU: I forgot... Everest? SuperPi?

--
@~@ Might, Courage, Vision, SINCERITY.
/ v \ Simplicity is Beauty! May the Force and Farce be with you!
/( _ )\ (x86_64 Ubuntu 9.10) Linux 2.6.35.4
^ ^ 22:43:01 up 23 days 50 min 1 user load average: 1.08 1.14 1.15
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John said:
Any software which runs the CPU(s) at 100% and uses a lot of memory
bandwidth will do what you describe and there are many ways to do
it.
Click to expand...

I'm looking for software that will basically do something to simulate
the workload that an average human being might perform on a PC. I'm not
really looking to max out the CPU just to test the heatsink of the CPU
or something like that.

I can turn on these PC's and just let them sit there with no app running
for a solid week, but I'd like the PC to be doing something more than
that during that period.

Prime 95 won't (as far as I know) do any hard drive reading / writing,
or do anything graphics related. If I'm not mistaken, it's actually
booted from a floppy and doesn't even run as a Windows GUI program.
 
Man-wai Chang said:
RAM: memtest86
GPU (graphics): 3dMark 2006 or even PCMark Vantage
CPU: I forgot... Everest? SuperPi?
Click to expand...

I want something that I can start and then walk away for several days,
maybe even a week or two, and will keep running until I stop it or the
PC locks up or crashes.

And I want one app, not 2 or 3 that I don't even know can run
concurrently under XP.

What about Sandra? Anyone know anything about that?
 
I want something that I can start and then walk away for several days,
maybe even a week or two, and will keep running until I stop it or the
PC locks up or crashes.
And I want one app, not 2 or 3 that I don't even know can run
concurrently under XP.

What about Sandra? Anyone know anything about that?
Click to expand...

Try it then. But I would choose 3dMark even when your graphic card is
not a good one. Just select & run the tests your configuration can handle.

--
@~@ Might, Courage, Vision, SINCERITY.
/ v \ Simplicity is Beauty! May the Force and Farce be with you!
/( _ )\ (x86_64 Ubuntu 9.10) Linux 2.6.35.4
^ ^ 00:03:01 up 23 days 2:10 1 user load average: 1.06 1.08 1.08
ä¸å€Ÿè²¸! ä¸è©é¨™! ä¸æ´äº¤! ä¸æ‰“交! ä¸æ‰“劫! ä¸è‡ªæ®º! è«‹è€ƒæ…®ç¶œæ´ (CSSA):
http://www.swd.gov.hk/tc/index/site_pubsvc/page_socsecu/sub_addressesa
 
I'm looking for software that will basically do something to simulate
the workload that an average human being might perform on a PC. I'm not
really looking to max out the CPU just to test the heatsink of the CPU
or something like that.

I can turn on these PC's and just let them sit there with no app running
for a solid week, but I'd like the PC to be doing something more than
that during that period.

Prime 95 won't (as far as I know) do any hard drive reading / writing,
or do anything graphics related. If I'm not mistaken, it's actually
booted from a floppy and doesn't even run as a Windows GUI program.
Click to expand...

OK, if that doesn't fit your needs then you could install the BOINC client
and pick some project to participate in. Set the client to use whatever
portion of the CPU capacity, memory, disk etc that you think will emulate a
"normal" use of the computer and let the client run for a couple of weeks.
Pick a project which features a graphics screen saver which illustrates its
progress and the graphics subsystem will be exercised also.

If you want to stress the disk operations you can add on a batch file which
copies files back and forth, zips them, unzips them, compares them,
calculates MD5 codes or whatever your heart desires. Add sleep intervals as
appropriate or let the drive(s) grind at full speed as seems appropriate.
 
I've got a few motherboards that I need to determine their operational
reliability / stability while running XP, so I'm wondering if there is
any free software that can do stress testing or "burn-in" operations for
one or two weeks continuously running under XP. Basically, any software
that can keep a system busy doing stuff until (or if) the system crashes
or locks up. Serial, parallel, network, audio and USB stress testing is
not required.

Anyone know of any such software?
Click to expand...

Intel Burn Test.
 
If you want to stress the disk operations you can add on a batch file which
copies files back and forth, zips them, unzips them, compares them,
calculates MD5 codes or whatever your heart desires. Add sleep intervals as
appropriate or let the drive(s) grind at full speed as seems appropriate.
Click to expand...

Simply using badblocks sounds a lot less complicated then all of
that.
 
Simply using badblocks sounds a lot less complicated then all of
that.
Click to expand...

It depends on what you want to test. Since badblocks is a Linux program and
does a one-time scan of the drive it is hard to see how it is going to
simulate a realistic system load for a week or more under Windows. As for
complicated, writing a BAT file to do some disk activity on a continuing
basis and exercise a system's drive(s) for a long period is pretty simple
and non-threatening.
 
PC Guy said:
I've got a few motherboards that I need to determine their operational
reliability / stability while running XP, so I'm wondering if there is
any free software that can do stress testing or "burn-in" operations for
one or two weeks continuously running under XP. Basically, any software
that can keep a system busy doing stuff until (or if) the system crashes
or locks up. Serial, parallel, network, audio and USB stress testing is
not required.
Click to expand...

This is a bit strange.

So you wanna test a motherboard, but you don't wanna test mouses, printers,
networking/internet,
soundblasters/audio chips.

Then later on you describe an "average human being".

An average human being uses all of these things which you think are not
required for testing.

To me it seems you testing idea/method is already flawed from the start.

Bye,
Skybuck.
 
Skybuck said:
So you wanna test a motherboard, but you don't wanna test mouses,
printers, networking/internet, soundblasters/audio chips.
Then later on you describe an "average human being".

An average human being uses all of these things which you think are
not required for testing. To me it seems you testing idea/method
is already flawed from the start.
Click to expand...

I'll give you some background:

Our company has shipped a number of data acquisition computers based on
the Soyo SY-P4I 845PE ISA (SY-845PEISA) and SY-P4I-845GVISA Plus
motherboards over the past 5 to 6 years.

http://www2.dealtime.com/xPF-Soyo-SOYO-P4845PEISA-DDR333-A-L

The first of these boards that we used was the PE-ISA, which does not
have on-board video but it does have an AGP slot. Starting about 3 years
ago we started shipping systems based on the GV-ISA-Plus. These boards
seem identical except that the GV has on-board video (Intel Extreme
graphics or something like that - 8mb video ram) and no AGP slot.

I'm sure that all of these boards (both types) were originally
manufactured between 2003 and late 2005.

Over the past year, we've had some of the GV boards fail in the field,
exhibiting strange problems (some don't boot at all, some will partially
boot XP and then just freeze, some will boot XP and run fine for 6 to 12
hours and then either spontaneously re-boot or just freeze/lock-up).
It's likely that very few of these systems have printers attached to
them, and probably half of them are not connected to a network.

The problem does not seem to happen with the older PE motherboards (the
boards that don't have on-board video but do have an AGP slot). We have
some of these PE boards being used heavily in-house for the past 5 years
and they work great - no problems ever.

The systems that have failed have been working for at least 1 to 2
years, but the frequency of use of any given system is unknown. They all
have socket 478 Intel Celeron CPU's, 2.6 ghz speed, stock Intel CPU
cooler/fan, and either 512 mb or 1gb ram, 80 gb WD hard drive.

We don't have that many of these boards left for use in new systems, and
some of those that we do have seemed to have problems on the
construction bench in the past and were not used for one reason or
another.

I'm aware of a massive problem with capacitors that really affected Dell
around the same time that these boards would have been made, and we are
experimentally taking a few boards and changing the electrolytic
capacitors (1000 and 1500 uf) with new ones to see if that solves their
problems with operational stability.

Hence the reason for my original question, which was to seek software
that simulates medium to heavy single-user load on systems running XP.
We have to insure that these replacement systems can run for at least a
week solid with no hint of trouble before we ship them back out.

I am aware that Soyo went bankrupt or went out of business around May
2009, and I've seen some comments that they stopped making motherboards
about 3 years before that.
 
I'm aware of a massive problem with capacitors that really affected Dell
around the same time that these boards would have been made, and we are
experimentally taking a few boards and changing the electrolytic
capacitors (1000 and 1500 uf) with new ones to see if that solves their
problems with operational stability.
Click to expand...

I'll bet that fixes your problem. Not just Dell was affected, and
electrolytic caps only have a lifetime of 2000 hours or so anyway. Make
sure you get low ESR types for replacement. If the problem persists, try a
new power supply as well.

You could try this diagnostic, there's a 30 day evaluation:
http://www.passmark.com/products/bit.htm
If it does what you need it's pretty reasonable price-wise.
 
I'll bet that fixes your problem. Not just Dell was affected, and
electrolytic caps only have a lifetime of 2000 hours or so anyway. Make
sure you get low ESR types for replacement. If the problem persists, try a
new power supply as well.
Click to expand...

That life span sounds like it is straight from a device data sheet
without considering what that data sheet actually says: it is easy to
come up with misleading conclusions as a consequence. 2000 hours is
less than a quarter, and even the majority of cheap tat on sale today
lasts longer than that. The quoted lifespan is usually quoted at the
device's maximum temperature which is going to be 85C even for the
lowest grade caps. For every 10C under the limit capacitor life
slightly more than doubles. Reduce the temeperature down to a typical
working temeprature - say 30C - and that 2000 hour capacitor can be
expected to last a decade of 24/7 operation. The more common 105C
caps would be good for 40 years. Soundly made electrolytics last a
long time in conservative operating conditions.
 
This is a bit strange.

So you wanna test a motherboard, but you don't wanna test mouses, printers,
networking/internet,
soundblasters/audio chips.

Then later on you describe an "average human being".

An average human being uses all of these things which you think are not
required for testing.

To me it seems you testing idea/method is already flawed from the start.

Bye,
Skybuck.
Click to expand...

Coming from a world class nitwit like you, I find your comments friggin'
hilarious.
 
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