Hi guys,

I'm working on my HTPC currently and I'm using an Athlon 2000+ with the Asus A7V880 motherboard. I bought this motherboard pre-SPCR and didn't bother with the fact, that the lowest VCore in the BIOS was 1,65V.

Well obviously that is a bit too much, so I started look for alternatives in lowering the VCore. After reading about the pin-mods I decided to try it. My original plan was

- Try cutting all of the L5 bridges and adding a jump-wire to the socket
- Declare the CPU as toasted
- Take one of my backup Athlons, bundle it with the motherboard and give it to my mother-in-law
- Get a new MB and a nice Athlon mobile

Well crap, only the first step came true. I was shocked to find out the mod actually worked and that I managed to lower the VCore to 1,45V

Hmm, maybe I should try next to unlock the multipliers...

MUHHAAHHAAAA

(The point of this post? Well, just to show that even us unlucky ones get a break once in a while Btw, I used the OCInside Interactive Pin Mod Guide

Took some measurements from the motherboard:

Vcore setting in BIOS: 1,70V
BIOS voltage monitoring shows it at 1,63V
Measured with a DMM from the FETs on the motherboard: 1,80V

Vcore setting in BIOS: 1,45V
BIOS voltage monitoring shows it at 1,42V
Measured with a DMM from the FETs on the motherboard: 1,58V

So it seems my motherboard maybe overvolting a bit on the Vcore

Hah! I never figured the socket wires trick would work, but it did in my old pc as well! Old Kt133 mobo didn't go higher than 12.5 multiplier, so some wires and I got 15 multiplier and 2100mhz! Quite a simple and doable trick.

any tips from you two how to do the wire-in-socket mod? I'm hoping to unlock the multiplier on my Sempron 2400 and I'm a bit confused by all the different info (cutting bridges, closing bridges, joining pins etc)

cheers
matt

sorry, double post

Hi Matt,

to be honest, I was also more than confused when I started researching. It seems there are more than one working solutions. The website http://fab51.com/index-e.html seems to have a quite a complete list of different L-bridge functions.

From quick reading, it seems that Semprons may not be modded as easily as Athlon XP's. So the link in my first post doesn't seem to apply in your case

I'll try to look around to see if I could find instructions for the Semprons. It seems however many people haven't really fiddled with the Semprons.

nuts, didn't realise I'd double posted.

Agree with you there Aleksi, there doesn't seem to be much info about unlocking Semprons - most people wanting to do so are pointed towards mods for Athlon XPs. I was figuring that a Thoroughbred B being a Thoroughbred B, the same tweaks would apply. When I get a moment (Sunday most likely) I'll whip the HS off and compare bridges/ cuts with the ones I've seen on the net for Athlons, and proceed very tentatively from there!

With the wire in socket mod, did you just bend a tiny bit of wire into a U shape and stick it in?

Hi,

I took one thread from multithreaded wire, you probably understand what I mean. At first it seemed way too little as the thread was very small, but when trying to fit the CPU in to the socket, it did feel tight, so I figured it's enough. And it works, so seems to be OK.

Please note, that if you want to do a VCore mod, the lowest you can go with the wire-trick is 1.45V, but by cutting/joining bridges you can go as low as 1,1V IIRC.

Hope this helps!

If you double post, and realize you did, edit out the 2nd post to indicate that you'd like one of the mods to delete it. It's easier for us to spot than a double post.

something like that sthayashi? Still finding my feet in this forum, it's quite a lot different from the mtbing one I used to visit (less a***holes for one, which is a bonus!)

Yup... Though I'll leave it in, as otherwise, our posts won't make as much sense to anyone else reading.