P4C-800E Deluxe Voltage Drops

Hi there
My P4C-800E is hooked up to a Q-TEC 550w Dual Fan Gold PSU, at 3.2ghz with 266FSB and 1.675vCore it shows full load voltages in MBM5 as 1.55-1.58 vCore and 11.55 to 11.67v on the +12v line. At idle it is nearer 1.65vCore and 11.81v on the 12v - my question is does my PSU suck or is this indicative of most OC'd P4C-800E's?
My thought is that my PSU may be holding my OC back...

I've noticed the same thing. I have a 550W PSU and the Vcore @ 1.65. It will go down to 1.52 at it's lowest. I thought it was an Intel thing.

Yeah, its not meant to be like that by design IMO.
If you have the same results then it is likely to do with the voltage regulators on the board, although AFAIK the P4C-800E power stages were redesigned to handle Prescott so I am a bit confused.
Thing is that as we both see voltage drops down to about 1.52-1.55 volts under load, the CPU is basically running at default voltage under load. In order to achieve a higher OC I reckon we may have to set the voltage as high as 1.8 in the BIOS to get 1.65v actual under full load.
Maybe 3.2ghz is not the limit of my chip then!
Cheers
Mark

I have the same issue. It must be something with the volt reg on the board. I see drops as great as 1.3V at times under heavy load. It is killin my OC'in with the 2.6C. I have been as high at 1.85 and man that bothers me being on air

Sucks eh! I have the same prob on my P4B-533E and I did on a P4T-533C but I RMA'd it. 3.2 is ok so I am not complaining too much, but maybe when I do the VDimm mod (have most bits I need) I should replace some voltage regulators with better ones - although I dont know if this would be easy!

What do you think about wear on the cpu at idle with volts 1.8 or greater? That is my only concern. I hate to kill cpu's by pumping them with to many volts.

Yeah, that is something I had thought about, thing is as my rig is a SETI crucnher mainly, I am never sitting at idle, SETI loads on startup.......IMO the main thing is that it is cool when it is subjected to these voltages, I am seeing idle temps of around 30c, and even on the hottest days with system temperature at 33 my CPU does not exceed 50c. This is with an Intel 3.06 HT chip heatsink with the huge copper insert....
I am sure others who have experienced SNDS will tell you that high voltages are bad, but it really depends if you are an honest RMA'er or not as to whether this is a concern. Many people dont worry too much about blowing their CPU's as they can just return them and act dumb...honest RMA'ers will lose their investment if they blow their chip.

Did you check the voltage levels with a multimeter? Sometime the mobo reports lower voltage than what it really is.

Did you check the voltage levels with a multimeter? Sometime the mobo reports lower voltage than what it really is.

Click to expand...

Nope, dont have a multimeter but I need to buy one soon to check the vDIMM reading when I mod the board, I know you check the VDIMM on a particular MOSFET do you have any idea where to check the other voltages?
I doubt you could check the vCORE anyway which is the important one, as there would be nowhere to touch with the multimeter....

You can't check vcore with a multimeter.

I don't have the E version, but mine is running pretty good with a 420 watt supermicro psu. At 3.5GHz and 1.6 volts vcore it reads about 1.585 under load. The 5 volt line is 5.02 and the 12 volt line is 12.1. I did notice that my Enermax psu was not quite this good. It may just depend on the psu.