How far can you undervolt?

[neokill3r]

I've been trying to build a quiet computer system, so I've been undervolting the cpu to try and make it cooler. The thing is that I'm not really sure how low I should be aiming for , or what happens when I undervolt too far.

I have e4300 with a 965-ds3. I've lowered it to 1.200 from 1.325 stock. About how low should I expect it to go? Has anyone ever gone down to 1?

 

[accord99]

E6600, overclocked to 2.65Ghz, undervolted to 1.1v.

 

[jackluo923]

If you have 60$, then just buy a Tuniq Tower 120 and lower the fan speed to minimum. It will be 5x quieter (meaning 10DBa less) than running the stock cooler at minimum.

 

[EscCtrl]

Keep trying one interval at a time til the system starts having problems then increase the voltage back to a stable setting. That should work.

 

[MU_Engineer]

My X2 4200+ Manchester has a stick 1.350 V Vcore, but I undervolt it to 1.225 volts. If I go down to 1.200 volts, it will fail the MPrime test after about an hour, but it will run forever at 1.225 volts and be just fine.

 

[neokill3r]

Well I got down to 1.125 but I gotta go to work so I'll have to mess around with it more later.

Also, I was looking at cpu-z and noticed the voltage was different. Is the Bios voltage right or is cpu-z?

 

[jaguarskx]

If you buy the right components you will not need to underclock and undervolt your PC to make it quiet. The two things that will make the most noise are fans and hard drives. You just need to buy the right parts.

Seasonic PSUs are very quiet and reliable, a good choice for building a quiet PC. Corsair PSUs are also quiet and reliable as well and they are modular. Plus they are built by Seasonic.

You need to choose a good case that has good sound insulation like the Antec P180. But it's harder to find a good small quiet case that can fit a large quiet HSF.

Speaking about the HSF, you'll need to a good one. Personally I use a Scythe Ninja which is 150mm or 5.9" tall. There are plenty of better ones out there now though (and bigger). For a "small" HSF look towards the Zalman 7000 or 7700. If I remember correctly, the 7700 is a little louder than the smaller 7000.

I don't know what type of GPU you are looking for, but try and find one that exhaust the hot air out the back of the card. This means the card will take up two slots. Since hot air is being exhausted out the back, the inside of the case will not be as hot which means the fans can spin slower to cool things down.

Anywaste, it's a good idea to take the time to plan out your quiet system.

 

[MU_Engineer]

I'll be getting a laptop with a Core 2 Duo Ultra-Low-Voltage chip in it in a few weeks. I'll undervolt that and tell you how well I do. The top-speed Vcore is something like 900 millivolts and it idles at somewhere around 700 mV, and change, so it will be some numbers that are much smaller than what you guys are dealing with

 

[derek2006]

When my E6400 is at stock (2133mhz) I can get it at 1.08V stable.

 

[SuicideSilence]

i agree with most here, just buy a better HSF