What you're looking to do is called a 'burn-in test', and is of debatable necessity. Google "free burn-in test software" for a listing. I've used PassMark in the past and can vouch for their trustworthiness, but they're not free. The rest are unknowns to me.
In my experience, though, here's the thing: a burn-in test period is only useful in large-scale environments, when you're deploying, say, 100 PCs over the weekend and they need to be absolutely rock-steady as of Monday 8am. For the home user, though, if you're using it as a gaming machine, then you're going to stress-test it anyway well within the warranty period of any of the components (the CPU, for example, often only has a 30-day warranty if you've purchased it OEM and installed it yourself).
If you're paranoid, a quick memory test (Memtest works) and maybe leaving it running a high-intensity game until the temperature stops climbing are good tests. If the temp passes safe limits, if you blue-screen/crash/etc, or if the magic smoke comes out, you've found a bad component.
--sofaspud
--"Listening to your kid is the audio equivalent of a Salvador Dali painting, Spud." --OpMegs
In my experience, though, here's the thing: a burn-in test period is only useful in large-scale environments, when you're deploying, say, 100 PCs over the weekend and they need to be absolutely rock-steady as of Monday 8am. For the home user, though, if you're using it as a gaming machine, then you're going to stress-test it anyway well within the warranty period of any of the components (the CPU, for example, often only has a 30-day warranty if you've purchased it OEM and installed it yourself).
If you're paranoid, a quick memory test (Memtest works) and maybe leaving it running a high-intensity game until the temperature stops climbing are good tests. If the temp passes safe limits, if you blue-screen/crash/etc, or if the magic smoke comes out, you've found a bad component.
--sofaspud
--"Listening to your kid is the audio equivalent of a Salvador Dali painting, Spud." --OpMegs