Reduced volage damages CPU?

[carstos]

Hello,
I have an Athlon XP 1800+. I reduced its core voltage from 1.75 to 1.6 v. The temperature got down, but how this will influence my processor? It will damage in time? Is is good what I've did? Please tell me is this is a good solution and what is the optimal voltage for may processor.

 

[slvr_phoenix]

Run it through a torture test. If it's still stable, then all is peachy keen.

Heck, even if it isn't stable, it probably won't harm it any. You'd just have to up the voltage a bit more.

<pre><A HREF="http://www.nuklearpower.com/comic/186.htm" target="_new"><font color=red>It's all relative...</font color=red></A></pre><p>

 

[carstos]

Why should I increase the voltage a little bit? 1.6 is to small? Which number should I use?

 

[carstos]

Why should I increase the voltage a little bit? 1.6 is to small? Which number should I use? And what do you mean by torture? I played 4 DivX at the same time. It worked.
What do you recommend?

 

[AMD_Man]

Why did you lower the voltage? Were you having heat problems? There's really no reason to lower the voltage.

Intelligence is not merely the wealth of knowledge but the sum of perception, wisdom, and knowledge.

 

[lhgpoobaa]

i did exactly the same thing!
i got my XP1800+ down to 1.625v. i could also run it at 1.600v...but i got the odd bluescreen.

basically if it doesnt lockup, crash or give you bluescreens its OK!

just to test though, i suggest you run PRIME95's torture test routine.
make sure its stable under load.



<b>My CPU cooler is so Massive it bends Space and Time! </b>

 

[Slowlearner]

I think that reducing the voltage would improve the processor's characteristics somewhat, at least to a point. When you reduce the voltage, you reduce the power dissapation in the traces (the small wires on the processor connecting the transistors together, I believe), when this occurs, the processor cools, the traces cool, improving conductivity, and also reducing electromigration. The downside to this, is that your operating the nano-metre sized transistors on your cpu using characteristics that become less and less favourable, as the gate (that part of a Transistor that turns it on and off), has less energy in which to "influence" the state of the transistor into an either "on" or "off" position, causing eventual data corruption, and you then have your Blue screens of death

In any case, I'm running my XP1600 at 1.44V (1.425v BIOS), rock-solid stable, using a Globalwin WBK38 cooler, and have been doing so for nearly 8 months, so I doubt you have anything to worry about as long as you believe your system is stable...

 

[Simon5]

Exactly!
You can't damage a processor by lowering the voltage.
You only need to be sure that you're giving enough voltage to it or it won't work correctly.

 

[Crashman]

LIke the other guy said, you won't hurt a thing. The lower the better, unless you lower it so much that it starts giving you errors, which still won't hurt the thing, but would lock up your computer until you rebooted it. So play as much as you like, you won't hurt a thing. When you get it so low that it no longer works right, raise it back up one setting.

<font color=blue>You're posting in a forum with class. It may be third class, but it's still class!</font color=blue>

 

[SidVicious]

I'm not in the AXP league yet, but i've been running my AHHAA Duron 1GHz @ 133MHz x 7.5, undervolted to 1.375V since april 2002 on a A7V333-RAID with a CyberCooler P-20000AC full cooper heat sink. I never encountered any stability problems unless I dropped the Vcore to 1.350V. I assembled another system for a friend with a AHLCA Duron 1.2GHz @ 166MHz x 7.0 undervolted to 1.5V since june 2002, using a A7V333 with a Thermaltake Volcano7.

The main reason to lower the Vcore is to lower core temperatures, which will lower the total heat output of the system and, by a small margin, total power consumption. A 0.2V drop is enough to see a difference in Vcore temperature.

Most CPUs can run fine with a lower Vcore. As for overclocking, all chips are not created equal, some will run stable even with a 0.5V undervolt, some other will be unstable with a 0.1V drop.

As a rule of thumb, you can't damage any consumer electronics ( CPUs, GPUs and RAM chips included ) by feeding them with a lower voltage. Lowering it too much will most likely cause unstabilities and crashes or, in a WORST CASE SCENARIO, data corruption when a 1 get writen to an important system file instead of a 0 or vice-versa without causing a system crash but preventing further OS reload.


Fok Speling Misstake