What is the lowest safe idle voltage (i5-2500k)

Tomtom3989 · 14 Sep 2011 at 11:32

Hello, for those overclocking using offset, i would just like to know how low i can go with the idle voltage.
Thankyou

weird_dave · 14 Sep 2011 at 12:01

You can go as low as it will let you.

Tomtom3989 · 14 Sep 2011 at 13:28

At the moment im sitting at 0.976 idle which is nearly the same as stock
but i could go as low 0.95v
i just wanted to know if this is ok and how low you can go that is considered safe
i can't find the anwer from googling

chigley · 14 Sep 2011 at 13:34

Tomtom3989 said:
At the moment im sitting at 0.976 idle which is nearly the same as stock
but i could go as low 0.95v
i just wanted to know if this is ok and how low you can go that is considered safe
i can't find the anwer from googling

Prime95 is a good tool to test how stable your system is.
Most people are happy if their system can survive 8 hours of blend stress testing

MooMoo444 · 14 Sep 2011 at 13:35

Theres no unsafe voltage downwards, its only upwards. Just keep dropping it until it no longer works during testing

Would the juice you save by undervolting outweigh all the juice used during all that testing however? Swings and roundabouts..

Tomtom3989 · 14 Sep 2011 at 19:53

its not about saving juice (however it will)
its because setting the offset to - (minus) 35 for me results in 0.976v idle and about 1.33v at load at for 4.6ghz
but i don't need that much voltage at load so i can lower it by setting the offset to - (minus) 40 or 50 for example and i didnt know if it was safe for the idle voltage to be lower than 0.96v

Temi_D · 15 Sep 2011 at 13:35

I use offset as well and mine drops to 0.896v and I've tested it to be both prime and IBT stable

Tomtom3989 · 15 Sep 2011 at 21:06

wow, didn't think you could below 0.9v, i will easily be safe then, thankyou

logi-cat · 15 Sep 2011 at 23:43

It's all about trial and error. different chips and motherboard will give you different results.

Tomtom3989 · 16 Sep 2011 at 21:55

The reason i asked is because i want to set my ram to its rated settings (1600, 9-9-9-27 2N,) - Kingston HyperX 8GB
However when i do the bios increase the cpu voltage for some stupid reason to 1v at idle and 1.3 at load so i experimented with offset with the overclock because most games don't need it at the moment

Stock - No Overclock
Memory - Auto (1333 , 1.5v)

offset - Auto
idle - 0.968
load - 1.184 - 1.192

Stock - No Overclock
Memory - 1600mhz , 9-9-9-27 2N , 1.55v

offset -0.010
idle - 0.992 - 1.000
load - 1.288 - 1.296

offset -0.030
idle - 0.976
load - 1.264

offset -0.060
idle - 0.944
load - 1.232 - 1.240

offset -0.080
idle - 0.928
load - 1.224 - 1.232

offset -0.090
idle - 0.912 - 0.920
load - 1.208 - 1.216

offset -0.100
idle - 0.904
load - 1.200 - 1.208

What i am using at the min
offset (minus) -0.110
idle - 0.896
load - 1.184 - 1.192 - 1.200 (flucuates between)

just wanted to know if this was ok
the idle and load voltage will obvivously be higher for an overclocked cpu