A7V volt mod - how safe?

[Rob Cork]

Ok, I know we're all overclockers here, and so 'safe' for us would probably be 'downright stupid and reckless' for most sensible people - but I was interested to see what everyone thought about the volt mod. Specifically, is 2V+ safe for a duron/tbird? My duron 600 has maxed out at 918, with 1.94V as reported by Asus Probe. I'm sure with 2-2.1V I could get the gig, probably higher, but how high can I go before burning up? At the moment I'm watercooled, absolute maximum temp is 40C - and that's only after a day's use, as it heats the ambient temp up by a few degrees C! I reckon then I could keep load temps under 50C with 2-2.1V (and I'll be adding a few more case fans in the next week). I'm pretty confident I can do the mod without frying my lovely A7V, and I think it would be fun, I just need to hear from some people running at/above 2V to convince me it's 'safe'

 

[Big Mike]

I wouldn't worry too much about the voltage, damaging the board doing the soldering is my big fear. You will shorten the CPUs life by raising the voltage but in todays market i dont think it matters, unfortunately noone has really long termed a cpu with this much juice...I wouldnt be extremely worried about it, Tom's hardware said 2.1 was as high as they would go, id say thats a fair limit, temperatures are probably your biggest concern with this mod.

 

[Rob Cork]

Thanks for the reply Mike - I read that bit over at Toms Hardware about 2.1 being the max, and he was still talking about aircooling (but pretty damn good aircooling admittedly). With watercooling then I ought to be ok. I figure in six month's time or so I'll probably have upgraded to DDR and palomino os something, so my main worry as you say shouldn't be the life of the chip. I'll practice soldering on my bro's old isa sound card when he upgrades, just to make sure I can do it - my main concern was frying my chip straight away, but I guess as I've never heard of anyone frying a socket a chip with 2.1V (or higher) it should be ok. Cheers for the encouragment

 

[AZZKICKER]

i did the voltage mod today

with room temps at 75 F my t bird 850 was only stable to 1016mhz and my cpu was 95F @ 1.85 volts

now at same room temp im running the t bird 850 @ 1063mhz @ 2.14 volts

its even more stable now and its FAST !!!

 

[Rob Cork]

Nice overlock Azz - I'm assuming you're watercooled with 95F under load - what sort of temps do you get at 2.14V?