BurnInTest

Description

A computer that crashes from time to time is harder to diagnose than a computer that fails regularly. Hardware faults — a RAM module with marginal stability, a CPU that overheats under sustained load, a hard drive with developing bad sectors, a GPU with a thermal issue — may not cause errors under normal light use but manifest themselves under heavy, sustained stress. BurnInTest exposes those faults by running configurable workloads on all the hardware components at once, pushing the system to high utilization levels for long periods of time and monitoring for errors, failures and instability that would only appear under those conditions.

BurnInTest was developed for the PC hardware testing and quality assurance market by PassMark Software, the Australian developer of the most well-known benchmarking suite, PerformanceTest. System builders, hardware repair technicians, IT departments receiving new equipment, and overclockers use BurnInTest to ensure that hardware is stable before being deployed or after being modified.

Simultaneous Multi-Component Testing

BurnInTest simultaneously runs multiple stress tests on different hardware subsystems. Available test modules include CPU (floating point and integer workloads), RAM (sequential and random read/write patterns), 2D and 3D graphics (rendering workloads that stress the GPU), disk drives (sequential and random read/write operations), network adapters (loopback data transmission), optical drives, USB ports, sound cards, and tape drives. Running all tests at the same time stresses every subsystem at the same time, which uncovers thermal and power delivery issues that single-component tests running in isolation might not trigger because they don’t stress the power supply and cooling system as badly.

Error Detection and Logging

BurnInTest tracks each test module for errors during the test run. RAM errors, disk read/write failures, GPU rendering errors and communication errors all log with timestamps, error codes, and the test that caused them. The error log is accumulated during the test run and is stored to a file for review. A test that completes without errors suggests stability under stress for that component; errors detected identify the component to be investigated further.

Test Duration and Cycles

Tests run for a user-defined duration — from minutes to hours — or for a configured number of test cycles. Burn-in testing for quality assurance purposes is often conducted overnight or for 24-hour periods to detect intermittent faults that only manifest themselves after prolonged thermal cycling. Short tests find obvious failures; longer tests find marginal components that pass short stress but fail under sustained load.

Temperature Monitoring

BurnInTest shows the CPU, GPU, and motherboard temperatures during the test run, and logs them along with test results. Rising temperatures during a long test run that approach or exceed safe operating limits are indications of inadequate cooling rather than component failure. Thermal monitoring is useful for differentiating between a component fault and a cooling problem that might harm otherwise healthy hardware.

Custom Test Profiles

Test configurations are saved as profiles that repeat without reconfiguration. A system builder who runs the same test on every machine they build saves a profile with the specific tests, duration and intensity settings used, loading it on each new build without setting up the test manually each time.

Disk Surface Scan

The disk testing module contains a surface scan which reads all sectors of a drive and checks for read errors, identifying sectors that return errors or take unusually long to read — early indicators of drive failure. The surface scan covers the entire capacity of the drive at the intensity level the user sets, ranging from a quick test of a sample of sectors, to a full sequential scan.

Results Report

After a test run is completed, BurnInTest produces a results report that summarizes the outcome of each test module, the number of errors, and system specifications. The report is exported as an HTML or text for documentation purposes. System builders provide the test report with customer systems as proof of pre-delivery quality testing.

BurnInTest Professional

The Professional version includes additional advanced features: USB device testing, testing of a RAID volume, more detailed test configuration per module, and command-line operation for scripted integration into automated testing workflows.