prime stability really necessary?

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ok, unless you're going to be rendering, encoding, folding etc.. is it really necessary having your system prime95 etc. stable? well, before yesterday i was running my i7 windows/games stable, but then when i tried prime after 20 mins it crashed when it got to the small fft's, IBT was fine till max ram usage and 8t, while normal usage had a max temp of 71 - 72, and after running most games for a bit, with system on for couple of hours, temps would max at around 58 - 62.
Now, though i have my system running prime stable (mostly, as i did a 40 min run of small fft in prime) temps went up to 76, and ibt full stress 8 thread at 77, which i'll admit is pretty high. also after watching hd movies a few hours i reached a max of 67 in coretemp. i havent noticed one bit of difference at all having it this stable (i know you're going to say run 24hrs, but screw that).
so do you think unless im going to be doing those things mentioned above, is it really worth it getting those extra few degrees, or do you reckon i should just go back to my old settings and relieve the cpu a bit?
 
I think the point of doing it is that you know your system is working how it should, heard somewhere that errors can corrupt programs, mathematical outcomes and file structure. Probably just total rubbish.

Try get it stable for 8 hours or how ever long you sleep/work for that should be enough.
 
The main advantage of stress testing a new PC is that it establishes that no matter what you throw at it later on it will do what it's supposed to do. Possible outcomes if it doesn't are as iNPUt says, corrupted programs, damage to files, and even a borked Windows installation.

It's also mitigation against future issues due to aging cooling, less effective fans, clogged vents due to dust, increases of ambient temperature due to the hights of summer etc that can all act to move the CPU closer to unstable operating temperatures.

If you are at stock, Intel/AMD will have built in so much headroom that it doesn't matter other than establishing that your CPU does actually work, but when overclocking you are effectively using that headroom up.
 
I got a new motherboard the other day, overclocked to 4ghz and left it there. Haven't got round to stress testing as have been very busy, but during the time I've had it at this speed it has BSODd twice. Once was loading a game of Bad Company 2, and the other was when I was downloading a movie. That's why you need to stress test, because instability can rear its ugly head any time.
 
I agree with the above, you should have your PC 100% stable, as it could cause big headaches later on if it’s not, corrupt files or BSODs.

If temperatures are becoming a concern why not get some better CPU & case cooling.
 
thx for the replies. i did notice a while back that my new spinpoint f3 500gb had been saying that it was starting to fail, even windows said it. i think i may have changed some settings in the bios between that time and now, and i havent had that problem lately, so maybe that could have been un-stability issues?
i will try running prime for a couple of hours then, but what worries me is how much higher do you think my temps would go, if they're 76 after 40 mins of small fft testing?
because at the moment im not too happy with 76-77 temps, but for 4.2 its just bordelining worth it.. and thats with load, so i'll have to really see what real world temps are (that 68 seemed a bit odd, i think one of those wierd temp spikes).
Btw i have an antec 1200 case, with the middle fans running on full, with a 3rd fan added to that mid airflow, all with a tuniq tower 120 extreme cooler, seated with arctic mx-3 tim, so my cooling is adequate i reckon

i have never had bsod or other issues before, only rounding errors, and sometimes freezes when doing those hard tests, hence the reason why i kept it like that and wasnt too bothered. i had also passed a quick ibt mode, so probably thought it was also alright from that. its just mainly prime where it all started going wrong
 
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Heat is something you have to deal with, that is your barrier at the moment, how you overcome it is up to you, do you spend more or just drop back to 4ghz.

Obviously your cooling is "adequate" if your worried about stress testing you machine :/
 
if my temps dont go into the 80's while testing prime (and thats if it is fully stable) i would be happy. but do you reckon the temps will go any higher?
 
They might go a bit higher, but I wouldn't worry too much if it is a one off test and won't be getting that much load normally / constantly.
 
All stress testing is doing is finding weak points in a certain clock, volts wise for all things, cpu, chipset, memory.

Personally i never do all this 8hour rubbish on prime, most i will do is 1hour Blend, 1 hour OCCT aswell, and 20 runs of either IBT or Linx on max settings.

And ofcourse game for abit, encode for abit aswell, as thats what the comp is used for and if no errors, its stable to me.

If my clocks pass all the above, then to me its stable.

Your temps won't really change much if they where that after 40mins, it generally takes 15-20 mins to find the max temp out, unless ambient drasticly changes. If you trully want to see if a clock is stable all around use blend test, its less heat, and checks everything, not just the cpu.

Also if u don't want the computer just doing stress tests all day, use linx or ibt on max settings set to 20 runs.
 
Not only Prime but Occt,Linx and Intelburn test are the programs i use to ensure 100% stability as you can be successful on one program for 8 hrs and fail on another in 15 mins...i always test with these 4,if one of these fail then my system is not 100% stable so i go back to the tweaking board until it is.
 
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Im stable with IBT with maximum stress level and 8 threads, and i've just done an hour and a half of prime blend, 8 threads and its great. going to try and see if i can possible sleep with the computer on, if so, i'll run prime longer. temps seems capped at 76-71-71-68, most of the time all 4 are running 2-3 degrees cooler. so its a hell of a lot better then what i thought. still got to try occt, then it seems i'll be sorted. and you know what i've gained? just a good peace of mind haha
 
If an error happens any time when windows is writing to a hard disk, then any file on that disk is at risk of having data written over the top of it.

Example, Windows requests data from the file system as to where to store a new file, but as it reads the data it errors, without realising the error, windows now writes the file to the hard drive, while in the process overwriting parts of another file. Now this may cause minor corruption, or on the other hand, it could overwrite large chunks of the systems registry file, causing major corruption of windows, and trigger windows to give a most unhelpfull boot loop, with an error telling you "If this is the first time you have seen this restart your computer"

An error like this could happen hours, days, or even years later, and more than likely 90% of people will blame microsoft. But in reality, it was most likely caused by a hardware error / system instability.

By the way, I've had systems which have appeared prime stable, but left on a long duration test (over 16 hours) would still fail due to overclocking problems.. In one case the cure was simply 1mhz less on the FSB, it was a FSB wall on a motherboard, with various P4 processors, it would fail at exactly the same FSB, regardless of the CPU's multi (266mhz good, 267mhz prime failed on exactly the same test repeatedly).
 
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I think the point of doing it is that you know your system is working how it should, heard somewhere that errors can corrupt programs, mathematical outcomes and file structure. Probably just total rubbish.

Try get it stable for 8 hours or how ever long you sleep/work for that should be enough.

when you have an unstable clock it can affect the outcome of the adder circuits in the processor (the ones used to add up) this can then result in calculations not being rounded properly.

Also, electron migration can become an issue where the computer will send too strong a signal which overpowers other signals thus causeing the computer to come confused.

This could lead to a difference in mathematical outcomes and can thus have an issue in any programme which makes use of a calculation. However, this is only likely to happen in complex calculations.
 
Jokester Gave you the perfect answer it's a question of programe and hardware lifespan if you're CPU makes a mistake and locks you're system and you have to hard reset you could perma damage you're hardware.
 
Jokester Gave you the perfect answer it's a question of programe and hardware lifespan if you're CPU makes a mistake and locks you're system and you have to hard reset you could perma damage you're hardware.

The only damage i could think of on a hard reset is Windows going bye bye due to lost files in memory/swap or whatever. No idea how permanent damage can result really.
 
Having tested many systems over the years with Prime95 I can say that without a doubt a system failing Prime95 within a 24hr period will probably crash at some point or other.

As an example I had a system which crashed at odd times, maybe once or twice per week when running games. A near identical system never crashed. Both systems were overclocked to the same degree. At the time I ran Prime95 for 12hours and the problem system showed no errors. I clocked it down to stock. The crashing stopped. At the time I thought that 12hrs of Prime95 was more than enough but I decided to go back to the overclock and run Prime95 for longer. After 20+hrs (I can't remember the exact time) Prime95 had an error. I added a bit of extra juice, ran prime95 again for another 24hrs and the system was fine from then on.

As another example I recently built an i980x system. During my OC attempts I had Prime95 run for more than 8hours without issue but LinX failed after no more than 2hrs. The system in general use "seemed" stable but obviously it wasn't truly stable.

I'm not suggesting that you HAVE to run Prime95 for 24hrs to prove your system is stable (in fact I would personally suggest using LinX in any case to begin with) however you see forums full of people saying that their overclocked system is totally fine with every other game so it must be a bug in the new game which makes their PC reboot/crash not their thoroughly proven overclock!
 
The only damage i could think of on a hard reset is Windows going bye bye due to lost files in memory/swap or whatever. No idea how permanent damage can result really.

You can actually ruin the memory moduleson SSD which then won't even let you format them not to mention on normal rpm hdd you can ruin sectors of the storage discs.
 
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