General question about undervolting

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26 Jul 2012
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I've undervolted my 5800x and seen an improved cinebench score alongside a 10c drop in temp. I was wondering though, what's the trade off? Surely by getting an decrease in temp and increase in performance I must be impacting something else regarding the CPU negatively? Basically, am I doing anything that will affect my cpu long term? Thanks
 
I've undervolted my 5800x and seen an improved cinebench score alongside a 10c drop in temp. I was wondering though, what's the trade off? Surely by getting an decrease in temp and increase in performance I must be impacting something else regarding the CPU negatively? Basically, am I doing anything that will affect my cpu long term? Thanks
Long story short: hard no, you’re not doing anything that will negatively impact your computer.

In general, undervolting stresses your computer less by reducing power consumption. Historically restricting voltages tended to limit overclocks, however with modern AMD processors power consumption is what forces a processor to automatically slow down, so by over locking you’re actually allowing it to go faster.

But again the headline is that undercoating does not stress the computer. There is no trade off you’ve just made your processor more efficient by investing your time in calibrating it; overall I’d expect it to run better and have a higher lifespan with undervolting.
 
A simpler answer is this: the stock voltage is designed to make every single CPU sold run 100% stable. If you were very unlucky and got a particularly bad chip, you may find undervolting by any substantial amount reduces stability. In reality you'll generally be able to use a decent undervolt without issue.

Think of it as the tolerance in spec - like how a pair of shoes in size 8 is designed to be an OK fit for anyone up for a few % larger or smaller than the standard size 8 dimensions. They could choose to make the shoes incredibly rigid at exactly size 8 but instead allow some tolerance.
 
A simpler answer is this: the stock voltage is designed to make every single CPU sold run 100% stable. If you were very unlucky and got a particularly bad chip, you may find undervolting by any substantial amount reduces stability. In reality you'll generally be able to use a decent undervolt without issue.

Think of it as the tolerance in spec - like how a pair of shoes in size 8 is designed to be an OK fit for anyone up for a few % larger or smaller than the standard size 8 dimensions. They could choose to make the shoes incredibly rigid at exactly size 8 but instead allow some tolerance.

This, all you're doing is fine-tuning for the CPU you have. The only trade-off to undervolting is instability, it's only guaranteed at stock. How much testing you do to guarantee it, is up to you.
 
Thanks for all the responses. By "instability" are you referring to random crashes, stuff like that? I originally put the "All core curve optimizer magnitude" to 30 and the PC wouldn't even boot. I changed it 20 and I've had to problems so far.
 
Thanks for all the responses. By "instability" are you referring to random crashes, stuff like that? I originally put the "All core curve optimizer magnitude" to 30 and the PC wouldn't even boot. I changed it 20 and I've had to problems so far.
Yes, boot failures, whea errors, BSODs, freezes, crashes, artefacts. It can also cause data corruption if it's silently unstable (not GPU, unless using it for rendering or folding).
 
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