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undervolting

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wolfman11

Member
I've been experiencing temps at idle of 37-38C and under gaming load (after 2 hours) of 52-53C on my Opteron 185. From what I've read these temps aren't too far out of whack for the stock cooler, stock settings. However, I've noticed that the default vcore for the chip is a range, 1.3-1.35v. I had everything set to auto in the bios of my ASUS A8N5X. The BIOS hardware monitor showed the CPU was getting 1.37v. I overrode it to manual and set it down to 1.3v and have been using the machine and gaming, etc and all appears to be working fine. The idle temp has dropped to 35C and under the same load as before, same ambient temp, etc, the CPU temp maxes out at 46-47C. A solid 6C drop in temps under this load.

So is it normal for MB companies to overvolt on auto settings like this? I was able to verify that when I override the BIOS auto setting for vcore and set it to 1.35v it still showed in hardware monitor as 1.37v after a reboot. Is this normal for ASUS boards / in line with what others are seeing? Thanks.
 
You can't trust any of those readings so there's no point sweating over them. They are only approximate. The only way to get an accurate reading is to use a high quality volt meter.
 
Originally posted by: Zim
You can't trust any of those readings so there's no point sweating over them. They are only approximate. The only way to get an accurate reading is to use a high quality volt meter.
Click to expand...

And know where to check on the mobo.

I'd love to know where I could test the vcore directly on my mobo with my DMM. All the software reports my vcore bouncing around by up to 0.07V sometimes so I want to see what is really happening. Don't really feel like randomly poking around with the probe though.

I have an Asus A8R32-MVP btw.
 
OK, that makes sense, thanks. Looks like as long as everything is running fine and the temps have dropped a good bit, I'll just leave it here.

Is there any risk of damage to the cpu from undervolting in general (I see lots of references to this in terms of "silent" pc's)?
 
Originally posted by: wolfman11
Is there any risk of damage to the cpu from undervolting in general (I see lots of references to this in terms of "silent" pc's)?
Click to expand...
No, your CPU will actually last longer the lower voltage you feed it. The only thing that can happen if you give it too low volts is that your computer will get unstable. This will however not harm the hardware in any way.

You could try even an lower voltage, but I don't think you will be able to go much lower. 1.25V is probably the limit, unless your chip is a very good one.
 
When I get a new CPU I always see how far down I can drop the voltage at stock speeds, then push it up and see how fast it will go. It's good because every chip is different and some of them can OC even undervolted (like my trusty old AXP 1700+).
 
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