Voltage drop?

snakefood · 29 Jul 2009 at 20:30

Hi..I'm just in the process tweaking my i7 to see what i can get out of it, without running it @ silly temperatures.

My first changes are to turn off the extra multi, increase the bus to 160 and drop multi to 19 (3GHz clock), I also raised the cpu voltage from auto to 1.2.

When i run cpu-z, or cpu-id they both show my vcore at only 1.17 tho, is this bad?

Also, on a seperate note, every time I go back into my bios, the setting for my cpu fan keeps being reset to disabled, instead of set enabled/PCM?

See pikkie for my temps, and vcore (after about 5 mins):

Are my temps OK, and should i be concerned about the difference in voltage?

Any ideas as to why the fan setting might keep reverting to default?
My rig is the 4GHz i7 bundle, but it won't do 4GHz, not unless I move to the north pole and make like an eskimo

RJC · 29 Jul 2009 at 20:39

Volatage drop is vdroop or vdrop, this is normal on all motherboards.

Temps look ok, what cooler are you using, I do 80c full load at 4ghz.

JonJ678 · 29 Jul 2009 at 20:54

Vdrop <> Vdroop.

Vdrop is the difference between the voltage selected in bios and that detected in software. Cpuz tends to agree with multimeters. Most people take the voltage shown in windows to be the one that features in the intel spec, not the one asked in the bios.

Vdroop is the difference in voltage reported in software between idle and load. When under load the voltage drops as more current is being drawn, all components do this and it's nothing to worry about. It leads to instability after a period of load when the voltage drops too low.

Vdroop is countered by enabling load line calibration in the bios. Be aware that while this allows you to use a lower voltage in the bios to keep stability, it is also operating out of Intels spec. Forcing the voltage to remain constant while load changes causes ringing which may be harmless, think of it as the voltage briefly spiking much higher. There's a good article on it by anandtech. I don't think load line calibration is something worth using. I'd rather have a higher voltage at idle and a correct one under load.

A bit more than I intended to write, it was meant to be reassuring

snakefood · 29 Jul 2009 at 23:16

Cool, ta for the info.

My cooler is the titan fenrir

EDIT: RJC, what cooler do you use to get this temp? When i initially recieved my bundle at 4GHz, it soared to 90 after about 30 secs of prime, wasn't gonna push it any longer, so I just put it down as a failed OC. I know the i7's are said to run hot, but i wouldn't really wanna see it go too far over 65, 70 tops.