Overvolt = Cooler temps?!?

I hope some of the gurus here can enlighten me - running a q6600 @ 9x378 for a 3.4ghz overclock - running vCore @ 1.425, Fsb +0.1, pci & mch @ +0.2 - getting temps in the 56-61C range on idle - maybe high 70s-80 under load.

for an unrelated reason (my onboard lan adapter hiccupped), had to reset the OC and thought I'd try the the bios "advice" to set voltage control on auto "to optimize the OC" - I assumed this would provide only the minimum voltage increases needed and at the worst the system would lock up. What actually happened is temps skyrocketed into the 90s and the system went into emergency shut down - clearly the auto feature sucks, but why it tried to fry my system is what puzzles me.

any insight would be welcome.

It's not uncommon for Vcore set to Auto to be higher than what's required for a stable clock, which is why we always recommend setting the Vcore manually.

redduc900 said:

It's not uncommon for Vcore set to Auto to be higher than what's required for a stable clock, which is why we always recommend setting the Vcore manually.

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I would expand on that and say that it is very common for Auto to put way too much voltage to the CPU.

Thanks - makes me wonder whether such "built-in" OC "features" aren't dictated more by marketing than engineering...

Angelicus said:

Thanks - makes me wonder whether such "built-in" OC "features" aren't dictated more by marketing than engineering...

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Auto Overclocking has to try and "fit" the masses and that usually means higher than normal voltages, so more people with the many types of hardware, may stand a chance to succeed with an overclock.

i'm sure you're correct - law of lowest common denominator strikes again....

some boards have just bugged BIOS and update sometimes helps ... often beta versions are better than official ... on the other hand I don't remember if I saw auto oc/voltage settings running without issues on gigabyte boards

i'm not a programmer or even any kind of a hard science guy - but I've done enough amateur overclocking to know that its not magic - basically just a methodical iterative process (happily bowing to the role of experience and judgment in squeezing the ultimate out of a rig - qualities I do not personally possess) - I cannot understand why a well-designed program could not produce very acceptable results for 90% of users and that would automate all but the final tweaking for the experts...