So who has underclocked their computers?

SexyGreyFox

SexyGreyFox

SexyGreyFox

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I thought this would be best here but the Mods will shift it if they feel like it.

In the old days underclocking was quite common.
Many a time computers would be switching off and a main culprit were Cyrix processors.
I remember the Cyrix 120 was a bugger and had to be jumpered down to 100 to get it stable after 12 months.
Years have gone by, I'd forgotten about such processors and I've now got an AMD loaded PC in front of me that keeps turning off.
I've just underclocked it by about 200 and it's now stable.

Anybody else had to underclock PC's before or perhaps maybe you've just realised that's what your problem might have been?
 
I underclock/undervolt my CPU and GPU for the few days a year the temperature gets over 30C, simply because I can't stand the amount of heat the computer dumps into the room at stock.
 
No need to, it is happy in its box. Seeing as its a fanless 1.2Ghz and the whole mb meant to use 7W, seems a bit pointless.
 
K1LLSW1TCH said:
That's brilliant! :)
Click to expand...

I am on a look out for a proper case for it (its in the same box as it came in), but cannot find one that doesn't take up half of a bus and can take 2 HDD's. If you want to find more, google for "VIA CN700 + 8237RP" and the second result is where I got it from. OcUK should stock such things really (At least, I didn't see them when I was buying that).

Low power consumption is really the way to go, cheaper bills. Its fine or everything other then processor intesive tasks and flash. But you can get around flash problem with terminal based tools and I am pretty sure there are some gui ones too. Got it to play 720p (although uncompressed) perfectly fine and happy.
 
I have an AMD 2500+ which had an intermittent shutting-itself-off issue.
I changed it so it's running as a 1900 and it's been fine since.
Didn't realise it was a known thing with AMDs.
But those low-power PCs are great!
 
Underclocking does not exist in my dictionaries!

And as such my Q9550 sits neatly at 3.6GHz 24/7 with the fans running at half the speed for ultra quietness mated with ultra speediness!

Temps don't budge much at all between seasons, on a hot night the idle temp is 36, on a cool night it's 33.

Meh!
 
BiGT- said:
When people say idle do you mean nothing is running?
Click to expand...

Idle as in general usage, surfing, watching movies, burning a DVD etc - stuff that does not use any amount of the cpu.

So anything but gaming, folding and video encoding = idle on a quad core.
 
Did it accidentally once. No idea how. My computer was unstable for a year and checking the clock speed in windows I thought I had been ripped off with a cheaper CPU from the guy I had bought it from. Bought new PSU and alsorts trying to work out why it was unstable. Once when it crashed it killed my ipod that had been transferring files.

When I reset the bios trying to fix a different problem the windows suddenly started reporting the expected clock speed and the computer stopped crashing!
 
I used to run old Athlon XPs at slower speeds sometimes without realising. Back in the days of el cheapo unreliable motherboards the bios would reset itself and revert to the slower bus speed, so an XP2000 would be running at 1250mhz or something. XP's used to overclock quite easily but after a while they used to become unreliable and you'd have to go back to their designated speed.
 
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