So many voltages

[lex-luther]

I have multiple ways to read my VCore but since they all vary slightly how do I know which one is the most accurate? Im overclocking a Q6600 on a Gigabyte P35-DS3R. In the "Motherboard-Intelligent-Tweaker". I can set the voltage at say 1.25000 Volts but when you read the values under the "PC Health" section they are lower. When I boot up my PC and run cpu-z to check settings, it also says something different.

At the moment I am running the VCore setting in the BIOS at 1.3125 Volts and cpu-z lists that at approx 1.232 Volts. I just set up my first liquid cooling system and am impressed what a major improvement it has been over air cooling. I'd like to push the system to a safe overclock without destroying the chip in under a year or two. From what I gather the max recommended voltage is 1.372v but I'm not sure if that means to limit the BIOS setting to 1.372v or the effective value from either the BIOS or cpu-z.

 

[Evilonigiri]

The maximum safe voltage is 1.5V for the Q6600. 1.372V would be like the safe limit for the newer 45nm cpus.

The reason why the windows shows lower voltage is due to Vdroop and Vdrop. Vdrop is just an offset from the bios to windows and Vdroop is a voltage droop to prevent the voltage from spiking over the VID set in the bios.