Tool to test AMD CPUs?

[ComputerDave]

Intel has its own tool. OCCT is all over the place and has proven to be unreliable. What are you guys using to test AMD CPUs?

 

[frase]

Put it in the oven at 200 Degrees Celsius for 5 minutes.

Have you tried Prime95, works for me on Intel & AMD.

Here is a guide I found may be helpfull, not on Prime95 though in general.

 

[timeshifter]

Sorry I don’t have any advice, but I have a question: why are you testing CPUs? I don’t do much hardware troubleshooting these days so maybe that’s why I don’t do it. Are you building machines? Or is the test part of broader troubleshooting?

 

[ComputerDave]

Sorry I don’t have any advice, but I have a question: why are you testing CPUs? I don’t do much hardware troubleshooting these days so maybe that’s why I don’t do it. Are you building machines? Or is the test part of broader troubleshooting?

We have a gaming rig that I highly suspect has a faulty AMD CPU. I would just like to have a smoking gun instead of guessing.

 

[ComputerDave]

Put it in the oven at 200 Degrees Celsius for 5 minutes.

Have you tried Prime95, works for me on Intel & AMD.

Here is a guide I found may be helpfull, not on Prime95 though in general.

Thank you for that. I will check out the Prime95 and see what happens.

 

[phaZed]

I've gotten to a point where I keep a few spare CPU's in the shop (or I'll order one of whichever generation/Brand needed). If I think a CPU is the problem - I plop a new one in, assuming I've exhausted everything else.

 

[ComputerDave]

I've gotten to a point where I keep a few spare CPU's in the shop (or I'll order one of whichever generation/Brand needed). If I think a CPU is the problem - I plop a new one in, assuming I've exhausted everything else.

Yes, this is a very valid point. That probably would be best. The only drawback is I might get stuck with some CPU's that, by the time the opportunity arrives for me to move those, I might have to take a loss.

 

[phaZed]

I Just keep one of each of these CPU's which covers most modern equipment (not the top-enders):

AMD AM4 - (Most boards support 3000, 4000, 5000 series) - Ryzen 5600G - ~$130
AMD AM5 - (Most board support 7000, 8000, 9000 series) - Ryzen 8500G - ~$148
Intel LGA 1700 - (Most board support 12th, 13th, 14th gen) - i5-13400F ~$145

I like to get the G-Chips, "With Radeon Graphics" for the AMD's so I can test without dedicated graphics.
In the end if I feel it's getting "too old", I'll build a system with the parts and sell it, usually (at a reasonable discounted price of course) and recoup the raw costs. Honestly, though, with the time and effort saved by having these here for testing, it pays back in spades!

 

[Sky-Knight]

The Intel tool works on anything.

 

[ComputerDave]

The Intel tool works on anything.

Have you received the results you felt were accurate using the Intel tool, even with AMD?

 

[Sky-Knight]

Have you received the results you felt were accurate using the Intel tool, even with AMD?

A CPU is a CPU... it either runs the operations and returns the expected result or it doesn't.

Math doesn't stop being math because the calculator's brand changes!

There are a few misalignments in the instruction set tests, but otherwise... yeah... let it rip!

 

[nlinecomputers]

CPUs rarely fail, assuming they were not mishandled. Most CPU failures I encountered were because some fool built his own PC and didn’t apply proper heat sink transfer paste, or something similar.

 

[GTP]

If we're resurrecting old threads, I'll add something...
I've used the intel Tool a few times but results were pointless. Still didn't prove the CPU was at fault.

I've only ever had 1 CPU failure in over 25 years. It was a Pentium 4. I don't remember specs now - so long ago - but modern CPU's only fail if mishandled.

Even with extreme overclocking, there are safeguards built in to throttle or shutdown.

 

[sapphirescales]

CPUs rarely fail

CPU failure is a LOT more common than it used to be, unfortunately. They've gotten so complex and the memory controller is even inside modern CPUs. Diagnosing CPU failure is also a lot harder nowadays unless it's REALLY bad (like, won't boot Windows bad but isn't degraded so badly that you can still boot into diagnostic software like Eurosoft's PC-Check). I've seen even really bad CPUs pass all the standard tests. The only way to really diagnose a failing CPU nowadays is to replace it. It's also not uncommon for memory tests to fail and have it be the CPU itself, not the RAM that's the culprit.

OCCT is all over the place and has proven to be unreliable.

Eurosoft's PC-Check or Ultra-X. I can't personally recommend Ultra-X because I've never used it but I've talked to other techs who have and they say it's good at catching a lot of stuff.

 

[lan101]

CPU failure is a LOT more common than it used to be, unfortunately. They've gotten so complex and the memory controller is even inside modern CPUs. Diagnosing CPU failure is also a lot harder nowadays unless it's REALLY bad (like, won't boot Windows bad but isn't degraded so badly that you can still boot into diagnostic software like Eurosoft's PC-Check). I've seen even really bad CPUs pass all the standard tests. The only way to really diagnose a failing CPU nowadays is to replace it. It's also not uncommon for memory tests to fail and have it be the CPU itself, not the RAM that's the culprit.


Eurosoft's PC-Check or Ultra-X. I can't personally recommend Ultra-X because I've never used it but I've talked to other techs who have and they say it's good at catching a lot of stuff.

Yeah it's so complex it seems anymore with CPU's.

I had a pc gamer a while back that kept getting crashes etc...long story short we ended up under clocking the amd a bit and then it was stable and ran great. I really don't mess with things like that often but I just did some searching around on that specific cpu model and a bunch of youtube tech videos talked about that. Figured no harm in trying it out and it seemed to fix it.

One of the few times where I talked to someone younger that's a gamer that actually spent some money lol. Rarely happens here. They all want a rolls royce for the cost of a junk yard clunker lol.

 

[Rigo]

They all want a rolls royce for the cost of a junk yard clunker

Yep, I get plenty of those
They buy something off marketplace and want it to run like in some random youtube show

 

[HCHTech]

We purchase the new version of PC-Doctor every three years or so, and run the suite of tests on almost everything that crosses our bench - including new units before setup. You'd be surprised at the number of things detected over the course of the year that we would have otherwise missed. Since we're a time-and-materials shop, this is all billable as part of the setup or diagnosis. Win-win, IMO. We also run FurMark on anything with a discrete graphics card.