Checking a Dell Outlet Laptop

I recently bought a latitude through dell outlet, and I'm wondering if there are any tests I can/should perform to make sure it's completely functional, and that there's nothing wrong with the hardware or software. I've read that dell outlet can be a hit or miss type thing, so if anyone had any suggestions that would be awesome.

Thanks!

 

Depending on what you use your notebook. I usually test system stability with a combination of "prime95" (choosing max power combustion option) and "furmark" to stress the gpu. With those two you will see some wild temperatures and in some notebooks even throttling. I run those tests combined (run at the same time) but if its for your personal use and everything is working as it should - run them 1 at a time so you dont place necessary stress on your components. Those tests will stress cpu, gpu and a cooling system to the limits as i havent seen any game/aplication that can heat up system like those two can. Around hour of testing without errors should suffice. Make sure you lift up backend of the notebook to get required airflow. For memory i would suggest "memtest".

example - my desktop i5 760 overclocked to 4.0 ghz with radeon 7850 overclocked to 1200gpu/memory left at stock - reached max temps of around 55-58c after few hours of battlefield3 or when girlfriend was using my pc to render some videos. When running prime95 and furmark combined max temperatures went all the way up to 70-72c.

 

Great, thanks! So ideally, the machine should be able to handle the stress without an errors. What kind of errors would I find if there are any? And would it damage the laptop? I didn't buy any warranty so I'd like to avoid that, and if I damaged it I probably couldn't claim a return, haha

 

Both prime and furmark will display an error inside application itself if something goes wrong. Those applications shouldnt do any damage to your system if system is working properly. They can only help pinpoint possible issues. If you dont know how to start memtest from dos you can run "windows memory diagnostic" its not as accurate but you can run it from windows and should be of assistance.

Alternatively you can run 3d mark 11 few times to test the gpu if you dont want to run furmark - as furmark is most hardcore gpu stress utility out there. Running 3d mark 4-5 times in a row will produce similar results - but with a little bit less stress.

 

OLDER systems, hit or miss. Newer ones, they are solid.

 

Sounds good. I just got my machine today so I'll probably run the tests once I get a chance.

And yeah that's good to hear. Thanks for the info

 

Don't forget to use something like hwmonitor or openhardwaremonitor to check temperatures as you run the CPU and gpu tests.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD

 

It comes with full warranty support. I wouldn't care if anything fail.