why would anyone run an app that is
specifically designed to crash their
computer
that's a good question and i have some
pretty good answers
stress testing applications can make
your computer overheat or even outrage
crash but in doing so they can also
reveal weak points in your system that
could have led to bigger problems like
instability or even data loss but of all
the options out there for cpu stress or
burn applications which one is actually
going to hit your cpu the hardest
the answer spoiler alert is prime95
at least in terms of heat but the whole
story is a lot more complicated than
that and we just couldn't tell it
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below like test driving a vehicle stress
testing is an important part of savvy pc
shopping and maintenance but let's say
you've never done it before you head on
over to google smash in some keywords
and
oh
that's a lot of options you got your
blender cinebench r20 and cinebench r23
occt prime95 cpu expert heavy load linux
intel xt rise and master intel burn test
id 64 linpack extreme
and that's all just for the cpu the
unfortunate reality is that there is no
silver bullet best test and depending on
your hardware software and what you're
trying to accomplish you could end up
with completely different answers so
yeah we spoiled the conclusion prime95
runs the hottest but even then which of
the five tests 10 if you include the av
x2 checkbox should you run
to find out we built up two identical
pcs with just two differences
motherboard and cpu here's the thing we
suspected that team blue and team red
might behave differently under extreme
conditions and we're really glad we
tested both because they absolutely did
on both platforms though we also locked
our cpu clock speeds core voltages and
fan speeds leaving just our cpu
temperatures as our stress indicator
time to show them the graphs given the
graph editor
intel first two tests didn't work at all
rise and master we saw that one coming
and intel extreme tuning utility
we didn't see that one coming it ended
up erroring out the same way in windows
11 that we saw in our recent dragon
canyon nook video
among the tests that did work prime95
small fft stood absolutely alone beating
out the next highest score by 10
freaking degrees
there's just no other way to put this
we did not believe our results
so thinking that maybe intel's turbo
boost power management was
bunging up the other tests or something
we re-ran the entire suite with our
voltages and our clock speeds back to
stock and
to say i'm shocked would be putting it
mildly it was like witnessing a brutal
beat down in slow motion
again
we have some theories here but first
let's get to the rest of the results our
10 middle performers had just a six
degree overall spread then we had our
under performers intel burn test cpu z
and occt's cpu large dataset extreme
benchmark
at this point you can probably see why
we declared prime95 best in heat but
looking at thermals alone would be a
huge mistake
check out the heat profile and power
consumption profile of prime95 small fft
huge spikes then they just hold
indefinitely it achieves this by
repeatedly performing demanding
mathematical calculations but on a data
set that's so small it fits right in the
cpus on die cash
no bottlenecks
maximum burn but obviously no real world
application behaves like that even
notoriously demanding professional
workloads like cpu rendering and blender
or video encoding will generate very
different profiles so if i was
validating a thermal design for a
demanding client and i wanted to see an
absolute worst case scenario prime95
needs to be part of my toolkit but if i
care more about stability in real world
applications i need to look elsewhere
enter linpack the most used stability
stress testing tool of all time
it was originally created for use on
super computers in the 1970s and in a
nutshell it's a software library that
performs linear algebra this equation
specifically on repeat and it still
behaves the same way today except it's
been rehashed multiple times to keep up
with modern computers which is pretty
important considering that it was
written in fortran a code language that
is so old it was originally input via
punch cards
fun fact by the way because linpack is a
library not an application it's easy for
developers to integrate it into their
own test suites and six of the tests we
used are actually linpack linpack-based
but even then not all tests are equal
because there are multiple linpack
versions and any of those can be
combined with other methods to create a
complete hodgepodge of stress for your
poor cpu this is what a linpack load
looks like on our thermal graphs a spiky
wave gets produced as each equation is
solved then there's a brief pause
between calculations and now that we
know this it's really easy to spot this
shape in many of the tests that we ran
now if we switch from temperature to
power consumption we see
well the same thing these swings in
power are really tough on not just your
cpu but also your motherboard vrms and
your power supply which is a perfect
combination for evaluating stability
which we're definitely going to check
out on amd's new 3d recache cpus so get
subscribed so you don't miss it also buy
a shirt or a water bottle haha
lttstore.com on that note let's take a
look at our amd results here we didn't
see anything that seemed anomalous so we
left our voltages and clock speeds
locked per our original test methodology
to start with amd ran much cooler
overall with delta t's so that's the
temperature difference between ambient
and our cpu peaking at just 39 degrees
compared to intel's 56.
man 12th gen performs but
lordy is it ever hot
now prime95 still came on top for
thermal stress but only barely just half
a degree behind was ida 64.
then the middle of our chart doesn't
have the same flat middle zone as intel
instead there's a fairly consistent
decline with a spread of about 10
degrees
note by the way that ryzen master did
run but it's right near the bottom of
these thermal stress loads we don't know
for sure why that would be but my
tinfoil hat says that maybe amd doesn't
want you to cook your cpu i don't know
though
even ignoring ryzen master we can draw
some interesting conclusions here if you
want to hit it hard it's prime95 for
maximum heat output with ida 64 fpu as a
close runner
as for stability well we already learned
that this is not what we're looking for
we want a rapidly oscillating power load
so let's have a look at one of our
linpack loads occt linpack 2021 and
oof
look at that power draw porcupine right
there
35 watt spikes roughly six times per
minute how about lin x
again very nice
very stable clock speeds which we expect
since we locked it but we still saw some
intermittent clock drops and
huge swings in power draw from 82 watts
all the way to 170 watts
this is probably the best example we
could have hoped for to show you why you
need to test with multiple pieces of
software every one of these is a valid
part of your stress test toolkit yet
each is different sitting down and
inspecting these results though lead to
some pretty tidy conclusions for you to
take with you if you want to get in and
out quickly prime95 is going to give you
thermal results on air in about 15
minutes and on an aio water cooler in
about 30 to 40 minutes as for stability
a lin pack load like linux occt linpack
or linpack extreme are the best bang for
your time bucks
unfortunately for those ones i can't
give you a firm guideline for how long
you need to run them though because it
comes down to personal preference for a
gaming test bench i might be comfortable
with 10 minutes but for a video editing
workstation that i want years of service
from 24 to 48 hours isn't out of the
question
also
none of these synthetic loads excuse
ignoring real world ones if you've got
the time and if you're serious about it
a blender render or continuous cinebench
run followed by a few rounds of puget
bench would absolutely be a good idea
now it may not be common knowledge but
the tools that we use to log and review
our data today are both free for
personal use hw info and generic log
viewer and you can check them out at the
links in the video description hw info
allows you to log all your sensor data
while generic log viewer gives you a
perfect tool for quickly and easily
charting that data and comparing against
other runs what i hope is common
knowledge though is our sponsor
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only thanks for watching if you're
interested in this sort of thing why not
check out whole room water cooling that
was a stress test on us haha that's very
funny i like your joke that you wrote