Just how important is stress testing

[Shash]

I am having a nightmare with stress testing progs (running vista 64) orthos, prime and sp2004, I pushed my q6600 in a p5k premium to 400fsb, I have 4x1gb of pc6400 geil black dragon. CPU is on 1.45v and ram 1.9v.

I am just wondering, the overclock seems fine when running games and what I usually do on my computer, but I get a bluescreen in stress testing progs, it takes a dump of the system memory and stuff but boots up again with no problems.

Basically if I can't get a stress test to work properly am I risking any hardware, or is a stress test just to make sure that an overclock isnt unstable for when you're in the middle of a css match later and risk it bluescreens on you? I'd rather see if I get trouble with it during normal use than struggling with stress tests anymore, because it seems fine.

 

[Jokester]

Stress testing just tests your PC to the maximum, if it fails any test, no matter what program (assuming the crash is hardware related) then it isn't 100% stable. If you're happy with your system as it is, then it's not something to get overly worried about. The only thing to be aware of is that if it's ok it might not be in the future as coolers get blocked up with dust and perhaps more importantly hot summer weather increases your ambient temps considerably.

Jokester

 

[WJA96]

Stress testing isn't actually all that important if the system doesn't crash when you are doing your normal stuff - it just means you don't max out your system.

If you want to enter overclocking e-penis competitions then stress testing is important because it shows that you have achieved a certain basic standard at a particular overclock.

Why you might want to get your system stable is primarily to do with the very rare occasion when you do max it out, and it crashes. It's no biggie usually, but if you had almost completed a level of Crysis or something, and you have to start again - it could really hack you off.

Also - if you are using your system for University coursework etc. you need it stable to guarantee you can get everything done on time. But even if it is stable - take good backups!

 

[XeNoN89]

I was also having problems with stress testing programs on Vista64, found prime to work best though (Q6600, Maximus Formula)