Prime 95/ stability

[Greatestfoe]

Hi. I recently built my first pc and today I was working on overclocking the cpu. Nothing  crazy, more on the conservative side with 4.8ghz. I was just wondering what is a good amount of time to run prime 95 for a stability check? I know it's intensely debated by some people but I couldn't find anything quite recent, I think the most recent thing was about a 6700k and I don't know if anything changed from suggestions that far back. 
ive been running prime 95 for about 4 hrs now with max temp of 69c but it usually stays 66 or 67c. I was gonna run for about 6 hours total and do a realbench stress test for 8 hours when I sleep. Any suggestions or input is appreciated. 
 

also cpu is a i5 9600k

[Cyracus]

Blender does an excellent job for stress testing

[DominicNikon]

1 minute ago, Caroline said:

0 seconds

My cpu made it 2 seconds through prime 95 and in real world usage on the exact same settings its been running for 8 months 24/7 no errors/crashes 

[Kisai]

22 minutes ago, Greatestfoe said:

Hi. I recently built my first pc and today I was working on overclocking the cpu. Nothing  crazy, more on the conservative side with 4.8ghz. I was just wondering what is a good amount of time to run prime 95 for a stability check? I know it's intensely debated by some people but I couldn't find anything quite recent, I think the most recent thing was about a 6700k and I don't know if anything changed from suggestions that far back. 

ive been running prime 95 for about 4 hrs now with max temp of 69c but it usually stays 66 or 67c. I was gonna run for about 6 hours total and do a realbench stress test for 8 hours when I sleep. Any suggestions or input is appreciated. 
 

also cpu is a i5 9600k

You're not supposed to use Prime95 as anything other than "are my cpu cores working at load" really. It does not test memory, it does not test all the various instructions found on cpu's.

 

If the computer BSOD's, or Prime95 shows errors, then you need to lower the settings or return it to stock.

 

What's dangerous, is if the thermal sensor is damaged or not working, and/or the heatsink isn't on the CPU. You can incinerate a CPU without a heatsink. It's not recommended to run a CPU without at least the heatsink, and any damage the CPU incurs will not be noticed for possibly years.

 

Short story:

So I was originally sold a Pentium II 300 as a "450", it had no fan on it, it was just one massive heatsink with fins over an inch long. Anyway, before I ever looked up the numbers on it, it was fine. Then Diablo II came out. Diablo II would BSOD crash the system, on the dot every single time. Likewise the new Xvid/H323 codec's at the time ALSO would do this. So around the time Windows XP came out I was forced to replace the CPU with a Pentium III 500, and lol, it now worked fine. This PC is still under my desk as a last-resort backup as it has the 5.25", 3.5" and CD-ROM burner in it. >_<

 

The point is, what doesn't crash it now, may crash it in the future after the damage has long been done. All it takes is a change in the compiler optimizations and the CPU goes from useful OC to not functional at any speed. OC'd GPU's have the same issue, which is why you really shouldn't buy factory OC'd cards, or if you do, don't OC them further. When new games come out, they may use new instructions or features from newer versions of the API, and then suddenly that card you OC'd becomes completely worthless. Neir Automata and FFXIV (DX10 version) did this to a lot of people, and it's like "no, it's not an optimization problem, it's your crappy hardware that you don't want to admit is crappy." 

 

Likewise that's also why a lot of games just kinda never get past DX9 feature sets, because a lot of people play games that work on potato PC's and if they push the requirements too high, they don't run on ANY laptop.

[VeganJoy]

people will tell you that prime95 puts unrealistic loads on your cpu and that avx instructions arent relevant. they will tell you that their cpu crashes on p95 instantly but that its stable 24/7 in everything else that they do. they will tell you that itll burn up your components and turn your room into a fiery wasteland

 

these are all true in many ways lol

 

but i still run a lot of prime95 stress/stability tests, very often, and on every cpu that i own. its unmatched for testing cpu overclocks and it supports sophisticated memory testing. you can also stress test your gpu with mfaktc which is very closely related to p95. nowadays those are the only two programs i use for definitive stress tests because in my experience it finds the most weaknesses in my hardware. sure, i can dial in a higher overclock outside of those programs, but i take solace in having a completely bulletproof overclock. thus i never have any stability issues pertaining to major components. (always ends up being my monitor and windows install...)

 

if you value a bit extra performance in place of rock solid stability then prime95 wont be of much use to you. if thats not the case then id be more than willing to share my stress testing process with you 

[Greatestfoe]

16 hours ago, VeganJoy said:

people will tell you that prime95 puts unrealistic loads on your cpu and that avx instructions arent relevant. they will tell you that their cpu crashes on p95 instantly but that its stable 24/7 in everything else that they do. they will tell you that itll burn up your components and turn your room into a fiery wasteland

 

these are all true in many ways lol

 

but i still run a lot of prime95 stress/stability tests, very often, and on every cpu that i own. its unmatched for testing cpu overclocks and it supports sophisticated memory testing. you can also stress test your gpu with mfaktc which is very closely related to p95. nowadays those are the only two programs i use for definitive stress tests because in my experience it finds the most weaknesses in my hardware. sure, i can dial in a higher overclock outside of those programs, but i take solace in having a completely bulletproof overclock. thus i never have any stability issues pertaining to major components. (always ends up being my monitor and windows install...)

 

if you value a bit extra performance in place of rock solid stability then prime95 wont be of much use to you. if thats not the case then id be more than willing to share my stress testing process with you 

I'm not debating that doing tests are bad, I just feel a bit apprehensive to run something that hammers the cpu and or gpu for 24hrs. I just curious what is a good gauntlet for it to check stability. I need my pc for work atm, my laptop is getting repaired. I'd love to know your stress testing process. I ran prime95 for about 5 1/2 hours, did a couple cinebench r20, an 8 hour realbench, and 2 passes of memtest86, I would've done 4 if I was able to get xmp to work but it's at default 2133mhz and I did 2 passes before I did my cpu oc. It didn't crash and I never seen warning or anything, temps seemed good besides the max 69c in p95 the highest was 56c.  I usually only game for about 2 hours at a time if that maybe 4 hrs total if I have more time, the rest is usually just normal workstation tasks nothing that demanding 

[VeganJoy]

1 hour ago, Greatestfoe said:

I'm not debating that doing tests are bad, I just feel a bit apprehensive to run something that hammers the cpu and or gpu for 24hrs. I just curious what is a good gauntlet for it to check stability. I need my pc for work atm, my laptop is getting repaired. I'd love to know your stress testing process. I ran prime95 for about 5 1/2 hours, did a couple cinebench r20, an 8 hour realbench, and 2 passes of memtest86, I would've done 4 if I was able to get xmp to work but it's at default 2133mhz and I did 2 passes before I did my cpu oc. It didn't crash and I never seen warning or anything, temps seemed good besides the max 69c in p95 the highest was 56c.  I usually only game for about 2 hours at a time if that maybe 4 hrs total if I have more time, the rest is usually just normal workstation tasks nothing that demanding 

the risk of something bad happening is extremely low for modern components, itll shut itself down before any permanent damage occurs. keep in mind that any ram oc increases your cpu temps by a few degrees so youll need to factor that in, xmp is important for performance. i run PRP tests for my main stability test after an 8-10 hour small ffts test overnight. if youve got time id fit in a few hours of large ffts, small ffts stresses cpu and large ffts stresses memory. once youve got everything dialed in you can run PRPs through the worker windows tab, "type of work to get" is "first time PRP on mersenne cofactors." you only want 1 worker window to keep things simple, and for the 9600k youll wanna run 6 threads. its similar to the usual stress test but it tracks the output with self checking algorithms so you can find non-critical errors in your memory.

 

i also run several hours of mfaktc, gimps has a github for it. works out any kinks in my gpu overclocks, for the core clocks anyways. you can use this https://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/video_memory_stress_test.html to stress test vram on the gpu. i contribute to gimps regularly so i run PRPs and mfaktc frequently, which serves as its own little continuous stress test, but for long term power usage i only run 4 cores on PRPs and 60% power limit in mfaktc on my 1080ti, and that still heats up my room significantly. 

 

all of that may seem like overkill and perhaps it is, but if you do all that and get zero errors or crashes, i cant foresee having any hardware issues. you might be able to get 4.9-5.0 ghz on the 9600k without overheating, i try to keep p95 avx temps under 90C through the use of avx offsets. the default is -2 i think but you can change that around to fit your setup. whats your cooling solution?