Our desktops machines are almost exclusively Dell OptiPlex machines that are up to 5 years old. This generally puts us in a very good position with relatively few hardware failures however we can’t rule out problematic hardware causing some of the issues that people are experiencing.
We brought a machine used in a meeting room back to our offices to take a further look at it. This was a machine which we’d had multiple reports as running slowly and generally being problematic so it was felt to be a good sample machine for us to review. One of the tests we’ve been running is a tool that stress-tests the machine to ensure reliability of the system. This includes running components like the CPU and RAM at 100%, playing high detailed graphics and thrashing the hard disks. Basically absolutely hammering the machine and seeing if it survives. Having left these tests running for 10 hours the good news is that it behaved perfectly with no scorch marks or fires, much to the relief of my colleague whose desk I had borrowed for the experiment. Gibson Building survived another day.
So, we haven’t found any immediate issues but we’ll continue testing in the background and widen the net to include some performance benchmarking tools. This will allow us to check the hardware performance, comparing the results with other computers with the same components.