I know that I am way outside the common accepted thinking on this site, but I don't think unnaturally stressing a componenet to see if it is stable is particularly necessary for non-critical apps.
I suppose if you were folding/crunching and didn't want to lose WU's, or if you had a comp used for competition gaming where a crash could cost you a win, then it might matter.
This is somewhat like the furmark/4870 debacle... the app put an unnatural load on the cards, something that they NEVER would see in a real life application, and it caused them to fry.
I may be 4Ghz game stable with my stock bare mosfets on my mobo, but running Prime95 for an hour may cause smoke to come out of my machine whereas if I would have just left well enough alone I would be happily gaming along.
I don't mind the existence of heavy stress tests for records and to make standards, but for my personal use I prefer medium ones rather than heavy, such as a couple hour gaming session in Crysis, or maybe a few 3dmark runs. A lack of stability will usually present itself without the need to unduly stress your components.
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