How long should I run prime95 for to check for a stable overclock?

[CyberJesus88]

So, yeah...title says it......

[CwGoh]

24 hours. 48 if you're OCD. 

[M-ursu]

Personally when i am OC:ing more i test for 10min then i change settings and test for 10min again, when i am happy for my OC, i will leave it for 24h

[Volbet]

12 hours if you're in a hurry. 24 hourse if you want to be safe. 48 hours if you want to be 100% sure

[Hirad123]

Personally when i am OC:ing more i test for 10min then i change settings and test for 10min again, when i am happy for my OC, i will leave it for 24h

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[WoodenMarker]

4-8 hours is generally enough. Maybe more like 4-6. 

It's not thorough but it's enough for me.

[whatthe_fuzz]

overclocking is weird. Prime95 is just a big math test for your computer. the best way to test your cpu is to run prime95 and play a cpu intensive game such as BF3, this will find any computational hiccups you might have. i run prime for about 20-26hrs. ive had an overclock freakout at the 15 hr mark once because thats when i opened a game. blue screened all because of BF3. 

[sezir]

i would recomend 30 mins between each adjustment the a 36 hour final... 

[CyberJesus88]

Seems like some very mixed responses.........

I'm thinking 15min between tweaks and changes in clockspeed, then overnight once I've found my 24/7 clock ( just to insure its stable)

That's the vibe I'm picking up, correct me if I'm wrong?

[MPX309]

I ran mine for 6 months once

 

(I joke)

[Appelzaadje]

Personally when i am OC:ing more i test for 10min then i change settings and test for 10min again, when i am happy for my OC, i will leave it for 24h

Agree with this one however u know prime cant do this for haswell

[xeks]

12 hours with 10 FFT

[raxx]

Never. Prime95 isn't a real stress test.

[Darell3]

12-24hrs small FFT's

[M-ursu]

Agree with this one however u know prime cant do this for haswell

Why?

[Appelzaadje]

haswell will throtle back and can continue to be stable then. it will seem u have a stable overclock but actualy when its unstable or to hot it wil bump the speed down instead of crash.

[ProKoN]

Never. Prime95 isn't a real stress test.

 

Prime95 is still a good stress test. If you own a Haswell cpu stay far away from prime 95. I still think its a good stress for ivybridge or any older generation intel cpu, or to stress amd systems.

 

I do believe, in my opinion, small ffts are too synthetic and will never represent any real world situation.

So, yeah...title says it......

8-24 hours minimum is required to verify a stable overclock

[eshbop]

prime95 only test specific instructions sets. Even then it does it at an unnatural level. If you want to run prime you need to run for at least 17.5hrs for it to go through each FTT length (at 15min per length) because some chips will BSOD at specific FTT length and not others.

You want other stress test that stress all aspects of the CPU (eg PC Mark 7, AIDA64) to make sure you've go it stable. Though in saying that prime95 won't hurt as long as you used a manual voltage with Haswell. Offset or dynamic vcore settings put unnaturally high volts through the CPU when stressing using prime, which makes prime useless for homing in an OC (on Haswell). Through it is still useful to quickly (in manual vcore mode) get an idea of the vcore required for your chip at a specific frequency.

[grayperview]

Do a few (3or4) hours anything more is a waste of time.

Then just start using your computer as you normally would, if your doing work on it do regular saves.

If its not stable you will find out a lot sooner than a 24/48 hour stress test.

Also bare in mind even if it passes the stress test, that does not mean that its going to be 100% stable in games and programs.

[eshbop]

Do a few (3or4) hours anything more is a waste of time.

Then just start using your computer as you normally would, if your doing work on it do regular saves.

If its not stable you will find out a lot sooner than a 24/48 hour stress test.

Also bare in mind even if it passes the stress test, that does not mean that its going to be 100% stable in games and programs.

I've had my system BSOD at ~14hours. Though in saying that if your system lasts that long and then crashes it's because you're smidgens just under a stable vcore, so it won't happen too often.

 

I've got a pretty higher standard on what I call stable though (well above what real world is going to through at the CPU). I tend to pump a bit more vcore than is really need through my chip.

[grayperview]

Mine is rock solid stable, over 2 months now without a hiccup

all i did was found the lowest voltage (1.117v) 4.3ghz would run at, ran it through OCCT for 30mins (passed),

Then started running games (failed) so i increased the Voltage slightly and all was good.

Ran OCCT for around 7 hours while in bed(passed)

Good enough for me,

Giving the CPU a touch more voltage than what it needs isn't a bad idea, i myself now run at (1.21v-1.24v)

[eshbop]

Mine is rock solid stable, over 2 months now without a hiccup

all i did was found the lowest voltage (1.117v) 4.3ghz would run at, ran it through OCCT for 30mins (passed),

Then started running games (failed) so i increased the Voltage slightly and all was good.

Ran OCCT for around 7 hours while in bed(passed)

Good enough for me,

Giving the CPU a touch more voltage than what it needs isn't a bad idea, i myself now run at (1.21v-1.24v)

Yeah I suppose it can be a chip - chip basis to some extent as well. My 2600k could run OCCT Linpack/Intel Burntest for days but would fail prime within minutes.

 

I've got a pretty bad chip, won't go beyond 4.5GHz no matter the volts I throw at it (ASrock mobo might not be helping though) and even then it need 1.45v to get 4.5GHz stable. It never hits that voltage under load any way, and even if it did I'm not too concerned about degradation, I'll upgrade before I burn out my CPU. Been running it like this for about 2years and haven't needed to increase vcore, which is what would be needed if it had degraded.

 

Adding a tad more voltage to make sure your chip is rock solid stable isn't going to hurt it.

[mgsstar]

I would personally use AIDA64 for stress testing because it uses all the instructions that are on the cpu to ensure that your cpu is stable. I would run that for 6 hours.