[A31] Programs to Stress CPU

[Paul Pennington]

I'm doing a CPU upgrade from 1.6 to 2.0 on an A31. I have MobileMeter to read the CPU temperature. Can anyone recommend a program to stress the CPU and graphics chip, and possibly the hard drive, to see what the maximum temperature would reach under a full load?

[rkawakami]

SuperPI is what I used a little while ago. It only should affect the CPU temperatures:

http://files.extremeoverclocking.com/file.php?f=36

As far as heating up the hard drive, about the only thing that might do that while still under Windows (so MobileMeter can report the temp), is to do a disk defrag.

[Paul Pennington]

Thanks Ray, SuperPi was just what I needed. It takes the CPU speed right up to the max and stays there. A quick download too -- only 71K ! A comparison:

My A31 2652-P5U 1.9 GHz unmodified ran at 65 degrees C after 7 minutes running SuperPI.

My wife's A31 2652-C5U 1.6 GHz upgraded to 2.0 GHz ran at 60 degrees C after 7 minutes.

I guess my installation was not too bad if the 2.0 with regular fan runs cooler than the 1.9 with the enhanced fan! My wife says it feels zippier now, so that's what matters.

The 2.0 CPU was only $17.50 with shipping on eBay. It was from a Toshiba Satellite.

The instructions in the Hardware Maintenance Manual were excellent as usual. The A31 is easy to work on -- first time I'd been inside it, although I've worked inside lots of other ThinkPads. Thanks to all who helped.

Paul Pennington
Augusta, Georgia