Factorio: The ultimate hardware tester?

[NineNine]

I had this happen to me, and I've seen this happen to countless other people in Technical Help. It seems to me to be one of the most common types of technical problems have trying to play Factorio.

In my case, I had a motherboard that needed to be replaced (I don't know if it was defective or poorly designed). It was flaky in smaller ways previously, but I wasn't sure if that flakiness was hardware or software, since I'm running Linux, which I'm relatively new to. At some point, when I was looking at my largest space platforms in Space Age, my entire computer just shut down. No logs, just off, instantly. It kept happening. It happened only when I was playing Factorio. Some nice people here helped me find my logs, and they indicated it was something with my graphics card. I replaced that, and it didn't fix the problem. After that, I replaced my motherboard. Since I've replaced my motherboard, with few dozen hours of playing since, it's not happened. All of the minor annoyances from my previous motherboard are gone, too. (FYI: MSI MAG B650 TOMAHAWK WIFI --> Gigabyte B650 AORUS ELITE AX V2)

My question is, does Factorio have a future as an effective (and fun) hardware stress tester?

[Tertius]

All of the minor annoyances from my previous motherboard are gone, too. (FYI: MSI MAG B650 TOMAHAWK WIFI --> Gigabyte B650 AORUS ELITE AX V2)

What minor annoyances? Usually, instability and malfunctioning hardware is visible without special diagnosis tools if you observe your system carefully and don't tolerate any kind of instability. App crashes and computer crashes (with reset+reboot) indicate this. For example, good hardware simply doesn't bluescreen (on Windows 11). Zero. I run Windows 11, and it didn't hang the PC even once since I installed it (2023 - no bluescreens in 2 years). The same for the laptops I use for private and corporate use.

Additionally, if you encounter app crashes now and then, and it's not specific to just one and the same app, and you know that app isn't notorious for its crashes, you can be sure your hardware is malfunctioning.

(Windows 10 was slightly less stable, it's not that good for diagnosis. I had about 1 bluescreen per year with Windows 10. Windows 7 about 1-2 bluescreens per year. Windows XP about 1 per 2-3 months, Windows 2000 about 1 per month as far as I remember. Windows 95 once per week, Windows 3.1 once per day by the way).

[mmmPI]

My question is, does Factorio have a future as an effective (and fun) hardware stress tester?

I don't think that's the case for"effective with all the hardware", because you can't push your GPU all that much with it i feel, you can fill its memory, but it doesn't have much calculation to do, it's mostly 1 CPU core work and memory latency between RAM and cache, and to lesser extend hard drive i think.

But i also think i could still be valuable in some context, because many times when "bugs" occur, they can be diagnosed thru factorio, the game is so stable, when you have a bug it's likely to be identified, and the cause be found and attributed to some hardware.

It's fun for sure ! x) It would make the game even more stable if people spread the word about testing their hardware on factorio, due to the additionnal feedback, and it could create a positive circle

I have between 43 and 78% positive answer to that question, if i try to think like a machine