Stress testing CPU - when is it good enough?

Amin S · October 11, 2018

I'm a noob and this has been covered before, I'm sure, but looking for some input specific to my case.

I delidded my 8700k and had a great result - close to a 20 deg drop in temps. I'm overclocking all cores to 5.2GHz with AVX neg offset of 2 at 1.425v and LLC set to 6.

My system has been completely stable with normal use for weeks and is also stable using Prime95 v26.6 and Cinebench as recommended in this video:

However, it always seems to crash with more than a couple hours of RealBench.

I'm guessing that RealBench is a heavier stressor than any game or other use I will ever have for my PC, so can I just assume it is "stable enough" barring any instability encountered in regular use? Or should I find an overclock setting which can survive 8 hours of RealBench? Of note, prior to the recent delidding, my CPU was long term stable at 5GHz and AVX neg offset 2 at 1.275v and LLC.

A related question - could an overly ambitious GPU overclock affect the stability of my CPU overclock?

FloRolf · October 11, 2018

i mean, as long as you don't do 8h video renders or anything else CPU intensive for hours and hours then i guess you are fine.

I've found that one round of Intel Burn Test (ca. 30minutes) had my OC rock solid and the system was able to run at 100% load for a whole week after without any issues,

TheGlenlivet · October 11, 2018

I have the same thing with OCCT. My system is OC'd and stable for everything I throw at it except this stress test. It fails almost immediately, like a bug or something. i haven't looked too far into it as everything else is pretty bulletproof (at least right now).

Realbench, P95, Aida64, CPUZ. I can do all f those no prob, but OCCT kills it.

At this point I am just using the system daily and ignoring OCCT.