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My Core Voltage In CoreTemp, What Does It Tell You?

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jamespage17   11-07-2009 at 10:55:40 PM

My Vcore is set to ~1.48 in BIOS. Sorry for the lack of accuracy. However under load using small FFTs in prime95, coretemp reports a ''core voltage'' of ~1.36. Any ideas if this is normal?.


Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 OC'd 3.42Ghz.
XFX 780i Motherboard.
Kingston HyperX RAM 1066Mhz.
Zotac GTX260 216 Edition.
Corsair 450W VX Power Supply.
Western Digital Blue 320GB Hard Drive.
Antec 900 Gamers Case.
Arctic Cooling Freezer Pro 7.
DVD/R Drive.
6 case fans

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shabbir010   11-08-2009 at 01:08:22 PM
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one of the reasons of decline in core voltage may be the cpu cooler
but u already have an aftermarket cooler so it may be coz of loose screws

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Bronze CPUs badge jsc   11-08-2009 at 03:08:03 PM
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It's called voltage droop. A little is normal - like around .05 volts or so.

 

.12 volts is a little excessive. It points to relative poor voltage regulation in the motherboard CPU power regulator.

Message quoted 1 times
Message edited by jsc on 11-08-2009 at 03:10:49 PM
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jamespage17   11-14-2009 at 03:56:59 PM
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jsc wrote :

It's called voltage droop. A little is normal - like around .05 volts or so.

.12 volts is a little excessive. It points to relative poor voltage regulation in the motherboard CPU power regulator.


What can i do about it, anything?

Reply to jamespage17
lok   11-15-2009 at 06:21:39 AM
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Take a look at http://extreme.outervision.com/PSUEngine. I made some assumptions about your system and arrived somewhere between 450 and more than 600W, depending on settings.

Your issue may simply be that the PSU is not big enough, which explains the voltage drop. Get a 650W one and you'll probably be fine.

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jamespage17   11-15-2009 at 12:43:57 PM
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lok wrote :

Take a look at http://extreme.outervision.com/PSUEngine. I made some assumptions about your system and arrived somewhere between 450 and more than 600W, depending on settings.

Your issue may simply be that the PSU is not big enough, which explains the voltage drop. Get a 650W one and you'll probably be fine.


Ah, ok thats useful to know, i think i might go for the 750w corsair PSU, what do you think. ( im planning on expanding eventualy).

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Bronze CPUs badge jsc   11-15-2009 at 12:48:39 PM
- -1 +

lok wrote :


Your issue may simply be that the PSU is not big enough, which explains the voltage drop. Get a 650W one and you'll probably be fine.



I said "droop". it wasn't a misspelling or typo. Google it.

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lok   11-15-2009 at 03:09:38 PM
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jsc wrote :

I said "droop". it wasn't a misspelling or typo. Google it.


I did. And found you're wrong. "Droop" is defined as the normal (Wikipedia defines it as "intentional" ) voltage drop that results from V = V(idle) - I/R. That is certainly not what we have here. If you exceed the maximum output of a power supply, its voltage starts to drop (in a non-linear way), not droop.

Thanks for the linguistics lesson, though.

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lok   11-15-2009 at 03:12:27 PM
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jamespage17 wrote :

Ah, ok thats useful to know, i think i might go for the 750w corsair PSU, what do you think. ( im planning on expanding eventualy).


That's a good unit. When you say "expanding eventually", you're hopefully not thinking of a second graphics card, are you? Another 260 might bring your new PSU to its limits as well.

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jamespage17   11-15-2009 at 05:06:41 PM
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lok wrote :

That's a good unit. When you say "expanding eventually", you're hopefully not thinking of a second graphics card, are you? Another 260 might bring your new PSU to its limits as well.


Yeah i was actualy, i thought 750W would be plenty.... Its this one incase you were wondering--http://www.ebuyer.com/product/134677

Reply to jamespage17
lok   11-15-2009 at 06:11:59 PM
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At full load, your graphics card alone wants almost 300W, so that 750W supply may still not be enough. I'd go for an 850 or even 1000.

Reply to lok
hunter315   11-15-2009 at 06:26:28 PM
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lok what are you talking about? The TDP for a GTX260 is about 180 for the 65nm ones and 170 for the 55nm ones, no where near the 300 that you think it takes. I put his specs into the PSU calculator, not including his fans, with 25% capacitor aging and it came out to slightly less than 400 which is about what i expected.

The average person has no need for more than a 750W PSU, a good 750 will power 2 high end cards with no problem, 850s are needed for 3 card setups, and 1kWs are usually for quad Fire or quad SLI.

What you are getting james, is exactly what jsc said, its called voltage droop, or v-droop, the voltage that you set a CPU to is not the voltage that it will run at, that is the max voltage it can run at, as long as it is still stable when the voltage droops you are alright, if its not then you may want to consider a motherboard with better voltage control or just bumping the voltage up a tiny bit higher.

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lok   11-15-2009 at 06:43:18 PM
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I'm referring to http://techgage.com/article/ati_hd_4870_1gb_vs_nvidia_gtx_260216_896mb/6, which shows that this card consumed 295W at full load in actual testing (measured power consumption, not specs). If the system struggles at 450W now, it will struggle again at 750W with an additional graphics card.

You're right in principle with your comment about what typical systems need. However, here we have a Q6600, which is pretty power-hungry, and 260's that eat 590W between the two of them. Whether you prefer to refer to voltage drop or droop - the point remains that if you overload your PSU, the mobo can't do a thing to keep voltage levels from falling too low.

Reply to lok
hunter315   11-15-2009 at 07:10:47 PM
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1. That is wattage at the wall, so only about 80% of that is actually being used by the computer, or about 236 watts.
2. That is also the power being used by the processor and every other component in the system.
3. What that actually proves is that a 450 watt PSU is more than enough for a significantly more power hungry system than what he has, they were running a QX9770 in that system.

Power charts have subtleties that you have to be aware of when reading them, some of them arent acknowledged by the author, like the efficiency of the PSU meaning that power results scale non linearly.

Reply to hunter315
lok   11-15-2009 at 07:20:59 PM
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You're right. My mistake.

Reply to lok
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