Risks of undervolting

Your-Amish-DaddyYour-Amish-Daddy The heart of Texas
edited June 2007 in Hardware
My processor is rated at 1.25 volts, but it's running at 1.28. What are the risks of undervolting a processor?

Comments

  • ThraxThrax 🐌 Austin, TX Icrontian
    edited June 2007
    Overvolting, you mean?

    There are no risks if it's done in moderation. Same for undervolting.
  • Your-Amish-DaddyYour-Amish-Daddy The heart of Texas
    edited June 2007
    I'm overvolted now, but I'm gonna slowly crawl down to 1.25, and I just wanted to know if anything bad would happen if I went too low too fast or something.
  • ThraxThrax 🐌 Austin, TX Icrontian
    edited June 2007
    Your computer will stop POSTing long before you ever do any real damage. As long as the chip can do a few hours of ORTHOS at the voltage you specify, you're in the clear.
  • Your-Amish-DaddyYour-Amish-Daddy The heart of Texas
    edited June 2007
    What is that anyway...
  • ThraxThrax 🐌 Austin, TX Icrontian
    edited June 2007
    ORTHOS is an application that locks all available CPU cores at 100% usage with math-intensive computations. It also pages this information back and forth from memory to hammer the RAM as well. It checks the CPU's calculations against the correct answer to whatever number it's crunching, and verifies that it's correct. If the number is not correct, the CPU is not calculating properly, and is therefore one of three things:

    1) Receiving too little voltage
    2) Receiving too much voltage
    3) Clocked too high

    It's a stability test, really.
  • Your-Amish-DaddyYour-Amish-Daddy The heart of Texas
    edited June 2007
    Well, I'm down to 1.2500V and it didn't help any. I'm still just shy of 50C at 60% load.
  • ThraxThrax 🐌 Austin, TX Icrontian
    edited June 2007
    Lowering the voltage doesn't alter the temperature much, unless it's a large swing in VCORE (Like 1.3v -> 1.1v as in the case of my Core 2 Duo).
  • Your-Amish-DaddyYour-Amish-Daddy The heart of Texas
    edited June 2007
    Oh. That blows. Well, 11 minutes of OTHROS or whatnot, And I stayed pretty close to 54, but it took roughtly 20 seconds to hit 35 again. I think I'm SOL and JWF'd until my heatsink gets here.
  • lemonlimelemonlime Canada Member
    edited June 2007
    That small amount of overvoltage in your vcore is totally normal. It is likely well within the margin of measurement error--nothing to be worried about.

    My 4200+ X2 runs at 1.35V default and is consitently at 1.32V without issue. Don't bother trying to manually compensate, it will not drop your temperatures by a single degree likely.

    IIRC from your previous thread, your high temps are likely the result of your HSF or mounting.
  • Your-Amish-DaddyYour-Amish-Daddy The heart of Texas
    edited June 2007
    Well chief, it's the stock heatsink, and it couldn't be mounted any better if Leonidas did it for me. I just think I got a bum heatsink since I can go up to 54C, and cool down to 38 in mere seconds.
  • lemonlimelemonlime Canada Member
    edited June 2007
    Your Amish Daddy wrote:
    Well chief, it's the stock heatsink, and it couldn't be mounted any better if Leonidas did it for me. I just think I got a bum heatsink since I can go up to 54C, and cool down to 38 in mere seconds.

    Yep, more than likely not totally flat on the bottom. I had an old barton heatsink like that--idle temps were about what load temps should have been. Hopefully your replacement will do much better :)

    Btw, in regards to cooling in mere seconds, the A64 based chips with their internal thermal diode behave that way for some reason. I remember back in the socket A days, it would literally take a couple minutes to get back to low idle temps, but mine behaves the same way--it goes from 39'C at load to 29'C at idle in several seconds.
  • Your-Amish-DaddyYour-Amish-Daddy The heart of Texas
    edited June 2007
    I just hope I don't rip any pins out when I pull up the heatsink.
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