Best burn-in tests for new DAW?

[ElSilva]

Greetings, folks. Just rolled my own DAW and looking for advice on burning it in. I'm looking for tests that would uncover flaws in any of the components, benchmarks and the like. Free if at all possible! I ran the trial SiSandra burn in test overnight, and it ran straight without complaining about any problems.

For the curious, here's what I put together:
Lian-Li PC68 case
Soyo KT333 Dragon mobo (platinum edition)
AMD Athlon XP 2100+
Samsung 512MB PC-2700 DDR RAM
2 80GB Seagate Barracudas
3 new Panaflo case fans to replace the Lian-Li stock noisy fans
Zalman quiet flower cooler (6000 model) to replace noisy CPU cooler.

Bought everything from newegg.com except for the fans, which came from various sources.

Already had:
Audigy
Delta66
LITE-ON LTR-401255 CDR (40x write)

I'm not into overclocking or anything, but once I get the system fully tested I may try to push some of the components. I'm just not sure what to push just yet. The Soyo is pretty flexible.

Mostly I'm looking for tests that might uncover problems before I put this into service as a DAW.

Thanks!

ElSilva

 

[Emeric]

The best thing you can do to test this DAW is use it as a DAW!

If the OS install went fine (no hangs, blue screens or other oddities). The OS after install operates fine (no hanging, performance what should be expected), then just run it the way you intend to run it. The ultimate test. Hope I don't sound sarcastic, but digital audio is a good stress test, especially as track count and plug-in usage increases. Just push the limits with it's designed purpose in mind.

Those Lian-Li cases are supposed to be pretty nice. Seagates great choice as well.

BTW, thanks for the comments in the clinic.

 

[WATYF]

Dude... nice system... ('cept for those Seagate drives.. but hey.. nobody's perfect... )

I'd try extreme multitracking... lots of dummy tracks each with lots of effects... just to see where your limits are.


P.S. How well does that Zalman cooler work? What are your temps?

WATYF

 

[ElSilva]

Zalman and stuff

The Zalman's on order, should come in on Wednesday. I put the Panaflos in last week, they sound... well... they don't sound at all! The noisiest thing going is definitely the CPU fan right now. There's also a northbridge mobo fan, but I couldn't even hear it over the CPU fan.

Hey, what's wrong with Seagates?!

Emeric, yw

I'll try some of those suggestions.

-ElSilva

 

[Evildick]

I've had no problems noise-wise from my Seagates. However, the older ones tended to sound like a box of rocks anytime the read/write head started moving.

No bad sectors either. Wait, where's a damn piece of wood!

 

[WATYF]

I'm just messin' with ya aboot the Seagates... yeah.. they used to have a pretty bad rep.. they're OK now.. but I still (highly) prefer the Maxtor D740X series. The WD 1000BB's are also great. Both are at the "head of the pack" as far as standard 7200RPM HD's go.

WATYF