Undervolting affect Motherboard's built-in protection?

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oneleaf
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Joined: Thu Aug 23, 2007 8:54 am

Undervolting affect Motherboard's built-in protection?

Post by oneleaf » Thu Aug 23, 2007 9:00 am

Hello,

I have underclocked my GA-G33m-S2 Gigabyte motherboard (G33 series) on my E4400 chip from 1.325 down to 1.125, and got the temperatures under load down by about 5-6 degrees. I changed the CPU voltage in the BIOS to do this.

I was wondering if setting my own voltage will disable any of the motherboard's built-in CPU/system protection? For instance, if the heatsink falls off, will the motherboard still decrease the core frequency and voltage to protect the system from frying?

I still have the protection services enabled in the BIOS (EIST and TM2, for instance) and it doesn't say anything about it being overridden by a user-set CPU voltage. But I thought I would ask here to see if anyone knows otherwise.

Thank you very much!

davidrees
Posts: 42
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Location: Austin

Post by davidrees » Thu Aug 23, 2007 10:16 am

I think the thermal protection shuts off the PC when it gets too high.

That said, if the HSF falls off, I doubt you have even 1 second before the chip is destroyed - no matter how low the voltage.

drees
Posts: 157
Joined: Thu Jul 13, 2006 10:59 pm

Post by drees » Thu Aug 23, 2007 1:34 pm

davidrees wrote:I think the thermal protection shuts off the PC when it gets too high.

That said, if the HSF falls off, I doubt you have even 1 second before the chip is destroyed - no matter how low the voltage.
Heh, you've got my name. :)

While the case of CPUs blowing up if the HSF came off was possible with the old Athlons without heatspreaders, I know that the Intel chips were very resiliant to this and would be surprised if the current crop of processors were also not able to protect themselves.

That said, with the HSF retention systems these days, there really is no chance of the HSF falling off unless you take a sledgehammer to it!

oneleaf
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Joined: Thu Aug 23, 2007 8:54 am

Post by oneleaf » Thu Aug 23, 2007 1:45 pm

drees wrote: Heh, you've got my name. :)

While the case of CPUs blowing up if the HSF came off was possible with the old Athlons without heatspreaders, I know that the Intel chips were very resiliant to this and would be surprised if the current crop of processors were also not able to protect themselves.

That said, with the HSF retention systems these days, there really is no chance of the HSF falling off unless you take a sledgehammer to it!
Yea, I guess the HSF falling off is pretty unlikely!

However, I'm still curious whether the motherboard protection would be disabled with a user-set CPU voltage? I know the EIST and TM2 protection involves undervolting the CPU when it gets to high loads or temperatures, but not sure if the user-set voltage overrides it.

drees
Posts: 157
Joined: Thu Jul 13, 2006 10:59 pm

Post by drees » Thu Aug 23, 2007 1:50 pm

oneleaf wrote:However, I'm still curious whether the motherboard protection would be disabled with a user-set CPU voltage? I know the EIST and TM2 protection involves undervolting the CPU when it gets to high loads or temperatures, but not sure if the user-set voltage overrides it.
I don't have any direct experience with it, but I doubt that it would affect it.

jaganath
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Location: UK

Post by jaganath » Thu Aug 23, 2007 3:14 pm

I think undervolting in BIOS disables EIST? btw, EIST is not an overheat protection function, it just saves evergy in normal use.

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