Ultimate Guide to CPU Stress Test – Best Tools for Windows 2022

This post lists the best free CPU stress test programs you can run on your Windows PC or workstation to test its limit and how far it can go! If you’re gaming enthusiasts or have everything to do with building a PC then you may need to do CPU stress testing. Probably reading this blog post, you should have a basic idea of what it is but may not know how to test your CPU performance under heavy load?

You’ve absolutely come to the right webpage which is dedicated to testing your PC hardware using the free online software.

What is CPU Stress Test?

PC Stress Test guide for beginners

CPU Stress Test also known as Stability test primarily checks how your PC, workstation or server would perform under heavy load to test your hardware by stressing all resources of your PC under heavy loads such as CPU, RAM usage, hard disk, network, and operating system to check the stability of the CPU and the L1/L2/L3 processor cache.

It is a really useful test before using your PC for professional work or after overclocking CUP to check its potential, system stability, and to avoid overheating issues when used intensively.

How to Stress Test PC?

It is a lot simpler than you may think! There are already tons of freeware on the web that do these type of hardware tests and PC benchmarks.

What this software do is simulate a heavy processing load on the specific part of your hardware to stress CPU using the heavy use of the processor’s integer and verifiable workload by performing more complex tasks to test the stability of the CPU using all cores of a multi-CPU / multi-core system to ensure a intensive stress test environment.

Caution!! Do it at your own risk! As CPU torture testing can blow up PC components and therefore your should carefully monitor CPU, GPU max temperatures using a hardware monitor software like, “Core Temp” or “HWMonitor” while running these tests.

Dos and Don’t before you begin:

  1. Torture tests are done over a longer period of time (minimum 3 to 6 hours), and you may need to adjust your settings to disable sleep mode.
  2. Make sure your PC is cool and ventilated before running any of these tools.
  3. Close all running applications. You can do it using the Task Manager to end task all currently running processes.

That’s it, and you are ready to go.

Are you intrested in learning about the Best CPU for VR Gaming in 2022?

Best Stress Test Tool and Programs for your PC

Finally, here is the list of best stress testing CPU tools that you can use to do a complete analysis of your system hardware and components.

1. Prime95

It is one of the most popular tools for using CPU torture test, but the downside is you’ve to keep it running for a longer time to get the required results and stability of your system.

Apart from Windows, Prime95 is available for all major platforms including Mac OS X, Linux, and FreeBSD.

Prime95 has the following 3 pre-defined tests, and you can also run a custom test if you’re an expert:

  • Small FFTs (maximum heat, FPU stress, data fits in L2 cache, RAM not tested much)
  • In-place large FFTs (maximum power consumption, some RAM tested)
  • Blend (Combination of all tests at minimal rate, lots of RAM tested)

You can run all tests if required or choose any of the mentioned-above, most users would simply prefer the blend test which tests almost everything at average, but more RAM is used.

How to use Prime95 Guide:

Step 1: Download the latest version of Prime95 v28.10. Choose the version based on your system 32-bit or 64-bit.

Step 2: Unzip the files using WinRAR or any other software.

Step 3: Open unzip the folder and run the prime95.exe file.

Step 4: On the next screen, Click “Just Stress Testing” as shown in the screenshot below:

Step 5: Finally, leave the default options to run a well-balanced stress test by clicking “Ok.”

As I said earlier, you can install Core Temp any other software for checking system temperature simultaneously to avoid any danger of component failure while running torture test on your PC. Please note that majority of the modern PCs do respond instantly by restarting before crashing the system in such cases.

Also, make sure that you check Performance tab under Task Manager tab as shown in the screenshot below. While running Prime95, it should be 100%.

Step 6: You can stop the test at any instance from the menu and start a new test as well.

Now let’s move on to the 2nd efficient tool IntelBurn that requires less time in comparison with Prime95.

2. IntelBurnTest

The IntelBurnTest is another tool which according to some sources is officially used by Intel during the quality test before making their products available for sale in the market. AMD users should not be disappointed as it also works on AMD CPUs.

It is quite faster and can perform usage of Intel(R) Linpack a lot quicker versus Prime95 and can be used as the same way as we already did a step-by-step guide for Prime95.

Using the IntelBurn software make sure that your CPU temperature does not exceed 80 degrees Celcius for an extended period of time. As I said earlier, modern PCs responds instantly to any consequences before it damages your hardware components.

Additionally, it is compatible with Windows XP, 7, 8, Windows 10 and Vista edition.

How to use InterlBurnTest?

Using this CPU stress test tool is similar to Prime95 but anyway here is the step-by-step procedure for newbies:

Step 1: First, download the zip file.

Step 2: Unzip using Winrar

Step 3: Run IntelBurnTestV2.exe from the folder.

Step 4: It has also similar options to run different level of stress tests:

  • Standard (Uses 1 GB RAM)
  • Maximum (All available RAM)
  • High (Uses 2 GB RAM)
  • Very High (Uses all installed memory)
  • Custom

Here is the screenshot of user-interface of IntelBurnTest:

 

Other Tools:

When writing this post, my main aim was to include the best possible tools that are perfect and are recommended by top PC experts from sites like Tomsguide, PCmag, YouTubers like Austin Evans and Linustechtips.

So here other tools you may want to try:

Let me know if you have other recommended tools, I would love to include to my list!

GPU Stress Testing

Now let’s talk about another important part of this ultimate guide; GPU stability test. This section will show a few other dedicated tools for doing VGA stress test.

1. 3DMark

It is one of the most popular speed testing tools for GPU performance used professionals, gaming enthusiasts, and overclockers.

The basic edition is free to use but to use the advanced features you’ve to buy the premium version using $29.99.

You can learn more about using the link here.

2. FurMark

FurMark is another OpenGL benchmark application for checking the stability of your Graphics card using fur rendering algorithms.

Fur rendering is specifically used push your graphics card to its limit to overheat the GPU and that’s why FurMark is considered as a perfect stability and stress test tool.

It is absolutely free to download and compatible with almost all versions of Windows XP, Vista, Windows 7, 8 and 10.

You can download FurMark and learn more it using the link.

That’s it. I hope you’ve found a useful tool for stress testing your CPU. Don’t forget to share your favorite tools and feedback in the comment section below. Your feedback helps us to improve the quality of content.

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Imran Aftab
 

Hello, I'm Imran Aftab, a tech enthusiast using Android, iOS, and Windows. Hardware expert for Gaming & Crypto mining rigs. I have been writing on tech since 2013, starting with ohguideme, then Androidcentral. I have written and published several guides and tutorials on how to root Android, flash custom ROM, recovery, and jailbreak iPhone, and have written several guides on how to bypass FRP. I also worked in a phone repair shop, so I have pretty good experience with mobile software and troubleshooting. So, all the guides you see here have been tested and confirmed to work.

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