Do modern processors still need a burn in period?

[Jeff_pony]

Well my processor seems to be working fine now, I decided to leave it on most of yeasterday to allow for the burn in period. But then I am not sure that this period even exists as I thought it was only old electronics that needed to be burnt in. So was this what the processor needed time to settle?

[old Harry Waldron]

Hi Jeff -- I would say no as basically you're just stress testing to see if anything is going to malfunction, rather than helping sync up the processor. It shouldn't hurt anything one way or the other.

Years ago, I used to work more closely with our Dell reps and we haven't seen this need, at least in the corporate world. This testing (analogous to breaking in a new car) was more prevelant, when I first started back in the good old days on IBM PCs in 1982 -- before a lot of our members were born -

I'm thinking this type of stress testing was mainly to see if was a good OEM build rather than doing anything beneficial to the electronics.

I could be wrong on this, but as a large Dell shop I haven't heard about this need in particular.

[johann_p]

Well my processor seems to be working fine now, I decided to leave it on most of yeasterday to allow for the burn in period. But then I am not sure that this period even exists as I thought it was only old electronics that needed to be burnt in. So was this what the processor needed time to settle?

Huh? Never heard about "burning in" a processor - why should that be necessary (or have been necessary?). Sounds like a myth to me.

[old Harry Waldron]

Huh? Never heard about "burning in" a processor - why should that be necessary (or have been necessary?). Sounds like a myth to me.

Hi Johann -- This idea might come from the solid 24 to 48 hour testing some OEM vendors used to do on PCs from a QA perspective. A faulty motherboard, hard drive, etc., would hopefully fail here rather than in the customers hands. The precision, hardware, and manufacturing techniques have all greatly improved. I've read about this in the past but it's been quite a few years ago.

[ehume]

It was real, all right. But it was indeed more of an extended smoke test. The notion that it accomplished something was a carryover from the days when you had to go easy on your car for a the first 500-1000 miles to get it to run smoothly, and not cause premature wear. That was real, too.

[old momokatte]

I only do CPU burn-ins for the sake of testing how well the heatsink/fans cool the system at maximum load. Prime95 for 4-6 hours does the trick, although it's a good idea to keep a close eye on the temperature for the first twenty minutes or so.

The two systems I've built appeared to benefit from the burn-ins (by dropping a few degrees in operating temperature), possibly because it gave the heatsink and thermal compound a chance to settle soon after they were affixed to the CPU.

[Jeff_pony]

Well allowing my processor to run at half its capacity for a day seemed to do the trick as it now runs fine. Before it kept crashing....

[daihard]

It was real, all right. But it was indeed more of an extended smoke test. The notion that it accomplished something was a carryover from the days when you had to go easy on your car for a the first 500-1000 miles to get it to run smoothly, and not cause premature wear. That was real, too.

I didn't even know there was such a myth about CPU. About cars, though, I still believe they need a bit of a break-in period. The owners manual of my car specifically recommends that the rev not exceed 4,500 RPM for the first 1,000 miles.