• Competitor rules

    Please remember that any mention of competitors, hinting at competitors or offering to provide details of competitors will result in an account suspension. The full rules can be found under the 'Terms and Rules' link in the bottom right corner of your screen. Just don't mention competitors in any way, shape or form and you'll be OK.

So, anyone had any good underclocking results?

DavidB

DavidB

DavidB

Associate
Joined
20 Jul 2007
Posts
1,364
With the rise of electricity bills, and the fact that i've just realised my E2140 had been running at stock 1.6ghz for the last god knows how long (yes it had had a 10 hour+ stability check). I'm now really considering if its really worth having a CPU massively overclocked, mine was set to a 100% overclock ( which i just set it back too) and there actually isn't THAT significant a difference.

Its noticeable, but not unbearable, admittedly it will probably make a fair old difference in games, but then im using it for computer games less and less anyway.

At the moment i'm testing 1.6ghz at 1.22v, and was wondering if anyone else had decided to underclock, and what results they had come up with.

Intresting to see what people might come up with if they gave it a shot.
 
I am running my E6320 @ 1.05 v on stock clocks (1.86GHz) ... this is for 24/7 use as my media and development server. Family use it for web and general stuff.
 
Last edited:
I think i'm going to leave mine at ~1v, and then see how much i can overclock it from that point, guessing not much lol
Might try running it fanless too, seeing as 28c max load isn't too huge
 
Have you tested the power consumption of your rig to see how much you're actually saving?

I can imagine that it isn't a lot of difference :p

That said, I'm sure that the energy(money) saving, isn't the whole point.
 
Not yet, but its on my to do list, we have one of those energy monitor thingys lieing around. Ill try a range of voltages and try to calculate the savings / expense per year.
 
It'll be interesting to see :)

I take it that you'll be saving not only on the vcore, but also voltage on fans?

Are you going to try and underclock your RAM? Possibly graphics card?
 
RAM is already underclocked as its 1:1 ratio, and set to 1.8v(crucial ballistix). Hopefully i'll be able to run the heatsink fanless, which will help i suppose. But then theres another 3 fans in my system......that probably arent all that needed when your running a cpu at 30c. I'll see what i can remove without overheating the graphics card ! lol
 
with a good after market cooler you can run overclocked fanless *goes to turn his fans off and show some prime load*

Ok Idle @ 2.4 (Speedstep) - No Fans Left it for a couple of mins

Idle-1.jpg


And Load @ 3.2 - Not for to long granted but I doubt that your trying to run a folding rig 24/7 if your under-volting and clocking..

load.jpg


And I realise its not totaly fanless with the aftermarket graphics cooler fan going but then I can't be arsed to take the case apart and put it on a 3pin connector on the board that allows speedfan to control it :p
 
Last edited:
Ben M said:
Have you tested the power consumption of your rig to see how much you're actually saving?

I can imagine that it isn't a lot of difference :p

That said, I'm sure that the energy(money) saving, isn't the whole point.
Click to expand...

Stock is 180 w, overclocked is 230w, @1,05v it is 142 W

My case fans are OFF at this setting!
 
Once in one of my old Athlon 64 rigs, when doing something on the mobo, I accidently moved the CPU fan cable onto the cpu cooler and didnt notice it - resulting in blocking the cpu fan from doing even a singe spin.

I noticed after like 2hrs that the fan isnt spinning at all, the temps were just about 60c,
and the CPU was heavily overclocked with 1.52volts.... and fan not moving at all, also there were no other fans in this case ;). And the cooler wasnt that great in comparisson to some newer ones.

So I would say if you had some good cooling like TRUE or Tuniq, and runned it passively without fan on underclocked CPU, the temps shouldnt go above 40c :o.


The fanless GPU coolers are great as well.
 
Assuming 15p/KWH.
  • 15/1000 x 180 = 2.7p/KWH x 24 = 64p per day or £233.60 per year
  • 15/1000 x 230 = 3.4p/KWH x 24 = 82p per day or £299.30 per year
  • 15/1000 x 142 = 2.1p/KWH x 24 = 51p per day or £186.15 per year

So the difference between undervolted and overvolted in a year assuming 24/7 power on, shown in red is £113.15 That is quite a lot but not enough for me to be concerned with. But I guess some are greener than others.
 
Surely just enabling speedstep and setting it to clock down to like 1% is going to do just as much, if not more, than all this other faffing around? It would also mean you're not losing any performance when you really need it.
 
Surely you mean undervolting not underclocking?

Anyway, I'm running an Athlon Xp-M at 1.1v, at 1.2GHz, stock it's 1.8GHz and 1.35v.

It runs passive and stays pretty cool.
 
Surely just enabling speedstep and setting it to clock down to like 1% is going to do just as much, if not more, than all this other faffing around? It would also mean you're not losing any performance when you really need it.
Click to expand...
What im saying is that it ISNT really needed for me, its no more faffing around than overclocking. Also "setting it to clock down too 1%" ? what you on about, speedstep isn't variable it just reduces the multiplier and voltage (slightly).

Surely you mean undervolting not underclocking?
Click to expand...
Nah, was intrested in both.
 
z0mbi3 said:
Surely just enabling speedstep and setting it to clock down to like 1% is going to do just as much, if not more, than all this other faffing around? It would also mean you're not losing any performance when you really need it.
Click to expand...

You can have speedstep enabled aswell ;)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom