Refurb Stress Test?

Just ordered my 3rd refurb from Newegg, had RMA'd the previous 2 for various fairly obvious defects - failing screen, frequent BSOD, etc. With only a 90 day warranty, I want to be sure of the quality before I'm stuck with it - I'll likely void any warranty I would've had with mods anyway, but that doesn't mean I want to settle for something faulty from the onset. Is this an unreasonable expectation to have when dealing with refurbs?

Anyway, at this point I'm wondering if there's any particular program(s) that I can use to run the newest refurb through its paces to ensure that it's up to par with what I'm expecting? Something with output that I can submit to Newegg if/when they challenge my 3rd RMA claim if it comes to that would be great too!

Any advice is greatly appreciated!

 

Prime 95 Large FFT + MSI Kombustor (part of MSI Afterburner) overnight, or at least several hours, simultaneously for max heat and stress

Memtest86+ for for several hours, preferably at least two full test runs (can take hours) to test RAM

Make recovery discs, use chkdsk to check HDD for errors. To go extreme, use killdisk to write 1's and 0's across the disk several times (don't do this if it's an SSD), then reinstall with recovery media or fresh install.

Cinebench for CPU and GPU run several times

Play some games, encode some videos, go nuts.

 

Thanks, 'Nut - I'll be accessing a lot of your posts in the near future, as the newest refurb is a Pavilion dv6-6135DX

Appreciate all the info you've made available!

 

Well, sure enough - tried Prime 95 and Kombuster simultaneously and went to bed and woke up to blank screen - fan going full blast and keyboard/touchpad lights glowing, but no response from the system. Powered it down for a bit and tried again, this time with only Kombuster running. Made it about 3.5 hours before I noticed the same thing - blank screen, unresponsive system. The temps I observed seemed to be peaking out at the low 90's, but never saw what it was at before the screen blanking occurred.

How do I proceed from here? Call up HP tech support and tell them that my new refurb doesn't seem to be able to pass a decent run of Kombuster?

 

What is the model of the system you have actually ordered? Some HPs cannot take the stress for too long.

 

Pavilion dv6-6135DX

 

I would just call them and tell them you were running a 3D game and it keeps crashing, using stock system from the factory.

Running low 90's isn't good news, expecially running stock speeds. But most likely means it needs a thermal paste redone, which seems to be the case for most of these machines. This, of course, would void the warranty, but not sure how thoroughly they'd check it. But if you're running stock clocks then there's definitely something wrong.

 

After nearly an hour on the phone with tech support at HP, they begrudgingly admitted that the laptop was probably not "operating at optimal levels".

This was after numerous laughable suggestions, my favorites of which included:

"You shouldn't let a stressful program like Prime95 run on a system for that long - you could inadvertently damage your system and void your warranty."

and

"Well then don't play any games that utilize the video card that heavily and you won't have any problems..."

Yes, I bought a system with a 6750m so that I could opt to not play games. *chuckle*

At this point I think I'll try returning it to TigerDirect and hope for a better unit the second time around. Wish me luck!

 

Good luck. Yeah unfortunately it can take a few times to find someone with some common sense.

 

#2 has given the correct answer and there's hardly anything I can add.

Sometimes LinX (with latest Intel Linpack Library) can stress a bit more than Prime95.

 

The HP's 'reasons' were dumb (to say the least).
A laptop should be able to operate on maximum load for extended periods of time because that's how a system is supposed to be designed.
New laptops for example have no such issues (for the most part).

So their reasoning that using WPrime for so long is idiotic to say the least.
If the system can't handle it, then they sold you a lemon.
Plain and simple.

However, I would definitely argue that a re-paste would be necessary given the temps you experienced.
I don't think that doing a re-paste would void the warranty (you could check though).
If it doesn't then open it up, re-paste and test the system again.

 

I think technically it does void the warranty. You have to literally completely disassemble the laptop to access the CPU and GPU. But there are no "warranty void if removed" stickers or anything, so if you were careful about it they'd be none the wiser. A repaste is a good idea, but if at stock temperatures are that bad it could be something with the heatsink/fan assembly. I did some modding of my heatsink / fan assembly and ended up replacing it through HP parts because I screwed something up, but the replacement hs/fan assembly improved temperatures right out of the gate. I think the quality control of some of their components is a bit lacking, causing variability in that regards.

 

I managed to talk TigerDirect into refunding me for the laptop, so all is well - back to shopping for a suitable replacement! (Leaning towards avoiding refurb if at all possible now, lol)

 

cpuburn for thermal stress test.

memtest86+ overnight for memory stress test/error test.

badblocks + SMART self-tests for HD testing.