Does voltage mod improve overclocking?

[Aman99]

I was wondering, any of you that have voltage modded your motherboards, how much overclocking improvement did it give you?

Aaron

 

[David]

when you OC a processor it needs more power to run stable. When you increase the power you increase the stability. Too little power and the system will be unstable or may not boot at all.

UNfortunately upping the voltage does increase the heat production of the CPU so you need a good HSF and at least one good 80mm case fan (excluding the one in the psu)

 

[oc jason]

It can help you get to that needed voltage to hit over a gig or get to the multiplier max of you chip-the higher voltage creates much more heat-so be prepared to have good cooling

 

[Aman99]

I plan to have good cooling (via swiftech MC462) and I know that CPU's need more voltage to be stable at higher speeds, but I want to know what kind of improvements people are getting by doing voltage mods, how many more Mhz are they gaining?

Aaron

 

[Kryten]

I think your question has been miss understood maybe you need a little bit more info or rephrase the question like.... i.e. I've maxed the board at 1.95 volts and I have 1.123 GHz how much more could I expect from make a voltage mod?

 

[David]

Kryten (May 23, 2001 04:22 a.m.):
I've maxed the board at 1.95 volts and I have 1.123 GHz how much more could I expect from make a voltage mod?

WTF! 1.95volts ! Heat is no longer the biggest problem - a good Watercooler or a hell of a good HSF will keep it cool, but the voltage your putting thro that CPU is going to cause electromigration - in short you are giong to irrepearably damage ur CPU if u take that much further!!!

 

[Kryten]

nelly I'm not running 1.95 volts I was giving an example 8)

 

[proze]

i, however, am running at 1.94v and have been doing so for 9 months now. my little duron 600 is still merrily cruising along at 1102mhz after all that time...

arman, in reply to your question: many people have used the voltage mod, and gained a lot more mhz by upping the vcore to 2.1v or even above. i myself modded my a7v, but the extra volts didn't help the duron mentioned above at all. i would say that whether the voltage mod helps you or not depends entirely on what chip you have and what situation you're in. cross that bridge when you come to it, and think of the vcore mod as a last resort.

 

[Justy303]

I gained some 50 MHz when I did the mod. But right now I've backed down from 1 [email protected] to 945 [email protected]. Upping the vcore from 2.12 to 2.25 didn't improve the oc-ability at all (it just produced more heat, I guess that's the limit for my cooling system)

 

[LesterP]

I have a 1gig tbird on an A7V133. w/ 1.85v and watercooling i can do 1.5 stable. w/ 2.1v i can do 1.6 stable. i have tried 2.3v for grins and 1.65ghz was stable, but the heat produced by the mofsets on the VRM riser was unbelievable. i am comfortable w/ 2.1v but only time will tell if this will impact the lifespan of it.

 

[Hoot]

As long as you adequately cool the chip, by the time electromigration takes its toll, you won't want the chip anymore anyway. There's the issue of toll on your PSU also. Above 2.0V, with a Tbird, you should be running a 350 or 400W unit. Tbirds guzzle power above about 1.95Vcore. All CPUs have a sweet zone for speed and core voltage. Once you get outside the sweet zone, it takes a disproportionate increase in core voltage to get a misorly increase in speed. IE, my 1.0G/266 will run 10x145 2-2-2 at 1.75V (top of the sweet zone), but to get it solid at 10.5x145, it takes 2.00V.

Hoot

 

[LesterP]

I second what HOOT says about tbirds over 1.95v taking a toll on the PS. i have a photron source 350w that puts out about 4.95v on the +5v at 1.9v or less which is great. once i jump above 2v it drops to 4.89 or slightly less. had an enermax 300w that would drop to well under 4.80v under the same conditions and was most likely one of the leading causes of instability.

 

[GOD]

i think the enermax psu`s arn`t that good considering the the voltage drop.
my aopen 300W psu .
when the vcore is set to 1.95v,the 5v line is 5.05v.
and when the vcore is set to 2.17v the 5v line is at 4.9v.
and ohhh.
when my chip is at 2.17v i can get it to +1.7gig but it will crash due to the temp..(+65DegC).
when i get the water cooling setup then i`ll try it again.

GOD...

 

[Yomama]

Aman99 (May 22, 2001 12:59 a.m.):
I was wondering, any of you that have voltage modded your motherboards, how much overclocking improvement did it give you?

Aaron

Yes there definitely is a sweet spot - typically between 1.8 and 1.9V. Above that spot increases in voltage render only minicule speed improvements, but require effort not only in modding the board, but also in enhancing the cooling.

Yo

 

[Colin]

I have found the sweet spot on my Birds (800, 1 gig, 1.2 gig and two 1.33 gigs) to be 2.06 volts. An Enermax 651 has no problem dealing with it. I usually pick up 100 mHz or more over the maximum stock voltage on a KT7 series board.

 

[Aman99]

Hoot (May 23, 2001 01:00 p.m.):
As long as you adequately cool the chip, by the time electromigration takes its toll, you won't want the chip anymore anyway. There's the issue of toll on your PSU also. Above 2.0V, with a Tbird, you should be running a 350 or 400W unit. Tbirds guzzle power above about 1.95Vcore. All CPUs have a sweet zone for speed and core voltage. Once you get outside the sweet zone, it takes a disproportionate increase in core voltage to get a misorly increase in speed. IE, my 1.0G/266 will run 10x145 2-2-2 at 1.75V (top of the sweet zone), but to get it solid at 10.5x145, it takes 2.00V.

Hoot

So if I use a Swiftech MC462, and an Enermax 431 W PSU, then it is probably a safe thing to do? Also, to do the mod, tomshardware recommends a 24 K ohm resistor at 1/4W rating, is it ok to use a 22 K ohm resistor at 1/4 W rating?

Aaron

THANKS FOR ALL REPLIES SO FAR!

 

[Colin]

Aaron,

What motherboard do you have?

 

[GOD]

Aman99 (May 23, 2001 11:33 p.m.):

Hoot (May 23, 2001 01:00 p.m.):
As long as you adequately cool the chip, by the time electromigration takes its toll, you won't want the chip anymore anyway. There's the issue of toll on your PSU also. Above 2.0V, with a Tbird, you should be running a 350 or 400W unit. Tbirds guzzle power above about 1.95Vcore. All CPUs have a sweet zone for speed and core voltage. Once you get outside the sweet zone, it takes a disproportionate increase in core voltage to get a misorly increase in speed. IE, my 1.0G/266 will run 10x145 2-2-2 at 1.75V (top of the sweet zone), but to get it solid at 10.5x145, it takes 2.00V.

Hoot

So if I use a Swiftech MC462, and an Enermax 431 W PSU, then it is probably a safe thing to do? Also, to do the mod, tomshardware recommends a 24 K ohm resistor at 1/4W rating, is it ok to use a 22 K ohm resistor at 1/4 W rating?

Aaron

THANKS FOR ALL REPLIES SO FAR!

use a pod so u can adjust the ohm`s.

GOD...

 

[Subzer0]

HEY! who cares about life span? i dont [as long as were talking about years not days!] man we do up our cars dont we? and when we do up the engines we dont ask "how many miles will we get out of it "do we. so overclock the asses off em and play with voltage if it will help and broooooooom away man!.........ali

 

[Aman99]

Colin (May 24, 2001 12:58 a.m.):
Aaron,

What motherboard do you have?

Well right now I have a Abit KT7A-RAID, but I'm gonna be switchin to an Asus A7V133 I think over the next week. I will also probably get an Iwill KK266 for a secondary system in the next week too, so I could swap to that board if needed.