Is it safe to move up my cpu voltage on my motherboard?

[Motero]

I want to overclock a little. When I raise the FSB in the BIOS of my Epox 8K7A too far, it gives errors in Windows. I thought that maybe I could raise the cpu voltage a little...maybe from 9.0 to say 9.5 or maybe even 10? Is this safe? Will it fry my cpu? Do you think Windows 2000 would give me the same errors?

Thanks.

 

[pm]

No matter what anyone on here says, it's not particularly safe. There are margins built into CPU's but it's risky to push them very much. A little nudge probably won't make much of a difference, but a jump larger than 10% will result in a drastic reduction in operating lifetime. I design these CPUs for a living and I can tell you that I never run mine higher than the spec - I've blown up too many at work in the reliability labs.

Patrick Mahoney
Microprocessor Design Engineer
Intel Corp.

 

[John]

pm is correct.

On the contrary.....many of us "geeks" that do not care about losing a few years of cpu life. We upgrade every year or two, and would rather get the most out of a cpu now, not later.

 

[OpalFrost98GT]

I've done it before with no problems...Just raise it in small increments until the errors stop...Like the others said dont go to far or the smoke will come out and then youre in trouble...

 

[Motero]

Thanks for the input.

 

[bacillus]

also just remember that more voltage equals more heat so make sure your cpu cooling is up to scratch.

 

[Justorq]

I have a K6-3+ 450 MHz and my default voltage is 2.0V and I upped the voltage to 2.2V to make it stable while overcloaking at 577MHz (105 x 5.5). All I want to know is if it's ok for the CPU to stay at that voltage or should I put the voltage down to 2.1 (thus also undercloaking for stablility)?

 

[Motero]

I'll plan on giving this a try...I'm putting together another system with a 1.4 ghz processor in it...rather than a 10.5 voltage, I'll aim for 11...Just for curiosity...I think the errors in Win 2k came when my FSB was way too high....I was at 139 for 1251 mhz and then tried 145 or 146 for 1301 mhz...after a few times of rebooting, the explorer.exe error just kept appearing. But if I up the voltage from 10.5 to 11, the processor speed will already be at 1463 mhz. So hopefully I won't have the errors...