Underclocking for energy savings.

[genz]

Okay, I'm travelling out to Africa for a period and working in a place recording audio and a few magnetic frequencies over an extended period with very unreliable local power. We're talking cut-out's daily for a couple of hours at a time. I've bought a few UPS units chained to tide me over because I really need to keep this machine on for data gathering purposes, but now I know that my 3930k is quite OP'd for the job I'm actually going to do with it I'm wondering if anyone knows how safe it would be for me to drastically underclock it for power savings. Could I go as low as 1-1.6Ghz safely and keep it stable, and if so, can I get a passive or extremely quiet cooler for it to save on having to buy acoustic damping etc?

 

[MajinCry]

Underclocking can't damage your computer.

Just make sure to undervolt it as well. Undervolting will net you the biggest gain in energy savings.

 

[genz]

Underclocking can't damage your computer.

Just make sure to undervolt it as well. Undervolting will net you the biggest gain in energy savings.

Thanks Majin. Do you know if it's at risk of cutting out etc when underclocked that low though. I really don't want to the system to shut down during the operation because something isn't getting enough power.

 

[MajinCry]

You'll get it cutting out when you undervolt it to the point where the CPU is starved of energy, just like overclocking. Just run Crysis after underclocking and undervolting. If the computer restarts after, like, 10 minutes, bump the voltage back up.

If it doesn't, undervolt it further; to the point where it will restart when playing Crysis. Bump up the voltage a couple tads, and you'll be dandy.


I say Crysis because it's horribly optimized and will eat up anything that can be thrown at it. If you download CryEngine (free), you can get a demo-thing that will function just as well for testing the undervolting.