Stress App Test (chronic memory stress test)

Silent_Scone · 13 Jan 2017 at 09:15

What with these new DDR4 platforms and now Kaby Lake pushing frequencies even higher, you'd do well to make sure your memory is stable. Quite a few users are starting to swear by this test when overclocking memory for their daily systems.

Conventionally, Stress App is meant for Unix. It's used by Google to stress test their servers. Even compared to HCI Memtest, which if set up correctly is a fairly brutal test, Stress App can be dream shattering as to what is stable as it's that good at isolating this subsystem compared with other tests.

You can let the test run for 1 to 2 hours. More if you want to, but 2 hours is more than sufficient I've found.

Install Linux Mint from here: http://www.linuxmint.com/download.php
Install the Google Stress App test from here: http://community.linuxmint.com/software/view/stressapptest
Once installed open “Terminal” and type the following: stressapptest -W -s 3600
This will run the stressapp for one hour. The test will log any errors as it runs.

It is possible to run stress app from Windows if you are too lazy to install Mint.

http://www.howtogeek.com/249966/how-to-install-and-use-the-linux-bash-shell-on-windows-10/

Note that although this is viable, with Windows 10 you are not able to allocate as much memory to the test, and with auto allocation it is easy to end up testing your paging instead of your memory!

To allocate a set amount of memory add the argument -M followed by the amount of memory you want to allocate to the test.

RavenXXX2 · 30 Jul 2018 at 09:17

Is this better than mem test?

Silent_Scone · 30 Jul 2018 at 13:53

RavenXXX2 said:
Is this better than mem test?

Which? Memtest 86, 86+ and 64?

Yes, by a country mile. Memtest isn't capable of picking up bit errors beyond faulty modules with DDR4 platforms. Unless the memory OC is very unstable.

Jamin280672 · 6 Sep 2018 at 10:34

Silent_Scone said:
Which? Memtest 86, 86+ and 64?

Yes, by a country mile. Memtest isn't capable of picking up bit errors beyond faulty modules with DDR4 platforms. Unless the memory OC is very unstable.

Excellent find, thank you, installed Ubuntu into Windows 10 as im too lazy to set a live distro up lol, running now.

Failed at first, although I passed Prime95 12 hours of Blend, its a brilliant test, just adjusted a couple of voltages here and there and then passed, if anyone else decides to run this test, and has any issues with pauses and restarts, change the run command to:

stressapptest -W -s 3600 --pause_delay 100000

Silent_Scone · 6 Sep 2018 at 17:44

No worries. Yes, people still tend to sometimes overlook memory instability as it can be quite difficult to pinpoint. Stress App isolates the memory subsystem better than anything, and running the test for an hour can be telling.

The delays are designed to test load transitioning stability and isn't as important as the rest of the routine, so it's safe to disable it as you've posted above. Some configurations can tend to hang there (not due to instability).

Loading the test through BASH terminal is fine, the only downside is not being to allocate as much memory as through Mint, but it's by no means a deal breaker.