CPU Burn contains several benchmark applications for stressing Intel P5, Intel P6, AMD K6 and AMD K7. The benchmark tools can run without root privileges.

These programs are designed to stress x86 CPU's as heavily as possible for testing a system. The goal of the programs is to maximize heat production from the CPU, which results in stressing the CPU, cooling system, motherboard and power supply. The programs have been optimized for different processors.

The programs CPU Burn contains are the following:

- burnP5 - is for Intel Pentium (with and without MMX processors);
- burnP6 - is for Intel Pentium Pro, PentiumII, Pentium III and Celeron;
- burnK6 - is for AMD K6;
- burnK7 - is for AMD Athlon and Duron;
- burnMMX - is for testing cache / memory interfaces on all CPU's with MMX;
- burnBX - is an alternate cache / memory test for Intel CPU's.

To run the desired program in the background (repeat the command to stress 100% for SMP) type:

burnP5 || echo $? &

You can use ps to monitor progress of cpuburn. When you're done testing (with benchmarking and checking temperatures and / or system voltages with lm-sensors for example), you can kill the burn processes (with kill, of course).

If your CPU is undercooled, your system may lock up after 2-10 minutes. You should fix this as soon as possible, the burn programs are just unpriviliged processes, so this should never happen. A power cycle can reset the system in such a case.


WARNING:
These applications are designed to stress CPU chips. With undercooled, overclocked or otherwise weak systems may crash, which can result in data loss (filesystem corruption) and even permanent damage to electronical components. Use at your own risk!