SteveSmith1980 :
True or false: A working CPU should not crash in a stress test that last a certain amount of time.
Thanks for the help.
A working *system* should not crash in a stress test. A CPU stress test that runs the CPU at full load for an extended period of time only fails if the CPU screws up, but the CPU itself may not actually be the problem as something else may be causing it to screw up calculations:
- Your CPU may be inadequately cooled due to an inadequately-sized or dirty heatsink, poorly-ventilated case, inappropriately slow heatsink fan speed, or the CPU-thermal compound-heatsink interface may be messed up (too much/little thermal compound, poor fit, rough heatsink base.)
- Your power supply or motherboard may have too much voltage droop under full CPU load, causing the CPU voltage to dip too low and the CPU to screw up calculations.
- Your RAM may be faulty or set with inappropriate voltage or timings, causing data corruption and the CPU to do math using faulty data.
- Your chipset may be inadequately cooled or have its voltage set incorrectly so it introduces errors when transmitting data from RAM to the CPU if your system has a frontside bus. It could also be faulty as well.
So what you should do is try to track down the problem.
- Memory issues: run Memtest86+ for several passes and make sure there are no errors.
- Power supply issues: use a hardware monitoring tool like SpeedFan to monitor PSU voltages and CPU core voltage and make sure they are in appropriate ranges.
- Temperature issues: use the same hardware-monitoring software to ensure that all temperatures are within normal limits.
If all that looks okay and you still get problems, then it is probably time to start swapping out parts to see what is bad.