Checking CPU stability - settings?

[Ghan]

Ok, so got myself a new CPU cooler today and I was simply wondering what settings I should be running in AIDA64 to stress test my CPU.

I was planning on doing a pre/post comparison of my temps before overclocking. But I'm rather unsure of what settings should be used when doing so.

 

Got a Asus Z97-A, 4790k & 16gb 1600mhz RAM if that makes any difference (guessing the GPU doesn't make a difference in this case).

 

[WereCat]

Default settings are good enough. Have in mind though that passing stress test for many hours doesn't mean your OC is stable, you can still crash within 10 seconds into CS:GO.

 

[Ghan]

Granted. But at least for temperature it simulates a extreme situation as far as I know?

But I recall reading something about some setting causing temperature shenanigans for the Haswell architecture?

[Drak3]

Aida64 is a piss poor stress test. It's not actually that taxing on a system, only thing it's actually good at is seeing if a CPU can handle the heat of running Windows + a light program or two.

Running something like Prime95 will give you the most stressing scenario, and if you can stabily run P95 small FFT and blended, you're pretty rock solid. Monitor the temps with a close eye, and stop the test if you hit 95C (ASUS's recommended max temp, leaving 10C until Tj Max, for headroom and in case your monitoring soft is 1-2C off), and I wouldn't run Prime95 for that long.

 

Alternatively, ASUS Realbench provides a 'good enough' stress scenario for gaming and most consumer level productivity. Monitor temps here too.

 

But for the best idea of stbility, you should run multiple benchmarks and stress tests. 

[Ghan]

How long would you say each (small FFT & blended are different testing methods/settings?) test should be run before you can judge it "stable"? Heard of several sources that say it should be run 2+ hours to get a good grasp on stability.