• 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.

What effect does lowering voltages have on wattages.

Admetos

Admetos

Admetos

Soldato
Joined
19 Jun 2009
Posts
4,060
I'm running my i5 750 at stock speeds, but was curious of how low voltages could go while staying stable.

I'm using a Gigabyte P55M-UD2, QPI and Chipset are both down as low a they go in BIOS. CPU is set 6 steps down from stock, and showing 1.008v while performing Intel Burn Test. Memory is down to 1.4 volt also. Currently everything is stable, but not tried going more.

I do this because at stock speeds the i5 750 does everything I want, and other then CPU cooler, running near silent with a low rpm 140mm case fan. The fan on the x-650 does not spin. In a years or so time i'll look into overclocking when I want to extend system life.

Incidentally I use to use a OCZ 600w, however that only allowed 2 stops down on CPU voltage while staying stable, as mentioned i'm 6 stops down on the X-650.

Can anyone speculate what effect running low voltages has on CPU wattage use? Anyone else here running like this, on an overclockers site guess not really..
 
Interesting responses, I'm down at least 0.2v at the moment. Some point i'll try even more.

As said it's down to the Seasonic X650, my previous OCZ 600w would only drop maybe a 1/3 of the voltage in comparison before system crashed on load test.
 
Rroff said:
Due to the inefficencies of most power supplies and a few other things its pretty rare to see any meaningful gains from undervolting to reduce power useage - unless your folding 24x7 or something like that and then you probably don't care about the power useage anyhow.
Click to expand...

I kind of agree. I was really only doing this to how low I could go on all voltages really, also don't like excess heat / noise if it's not required, and I guess it all adds up. The biggest waste of energy in my system is the GTX260 thats always stuck in 3d mode due to dual monitors.

Just took the CPU down another notch - 7 steps down from stock, still stable on the burn test.
 
Well i'm down 9 stops down on the voltage now. CPUZ is reporting 0.992 volt under burn test load - everything still fine. If system is still running well in a week, i'll try some more.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom