[ZircularLogic]

Hi, folks! I'm new, and I figured I should get started by sharing what I've been up to recently.

Right now my only machine is a 3.5 y/o Dell Inspiron 700m w/ 1.6GHz Pentium M. I've been thinking about building a newer machine but in the mean time I may as well fiddle with this one. So that's how I discovered undervolting, which is how I spent my last couple of afternoons.

The baseline on this machine is pretty scary from a thermal perspective. Running P95 at default settings pushes the CPU to 79C in short order, which seems quite hot based on what I've read here. Idle temps are closer to 50C, which is reasonable for a notebook I guess but still not great. (Default is .988V for 600MHz all the way up to 1.340V running full speed.) Stepping down methodically landed it at a significant reduction. (Used RightMark.) It's been stable running between .700V and 1.020V (two steps above crash voltage for each of the ten FIDs, all set manually). Temperature improvement is dramatic. Here's a before and after (or in this case an after and before):

**click**

That trace starts off at the new settings, with an idle around 44C on up to full load/full speed in the 55C range after the cooling fan kicks in. After that I set it back to the default and let it ramp up to its peak at a thoroughly toasty 79C. After killing P95 it went back down to an idle in the 50C range. Not bad for my first time out I guess. In order to test stability, it will spend the next few days folding for 10-12 hours at each FID. After that I guess I'll just run with it, eh? And did I mention how nice it is to have a machine that idles without the stupid fan humming away?

Here are the settings I'm using:
6.0x...0.700V (~600MHz)
8.0x...0.716V
9.0x...0.764V
10.0x...0.796V
11.0x...0.828V
12.0x...0.860V
13.0x...0.892V
14.0x...0.940V
15.0x...0.972V
16.0x...1.020V (~1.6GHz)

Maybe this isn't really what gets OCFers fired up but I'll get to the good stuff next. Gotta build something better to connect to the new Flatron. Something that can run more than one 3DMark test...