SPCR

Hi,

Looking to build a new PC, will be used as my main pc for the immediate future but have decided to go with an i3 chip and H55/57 board so that I can upgrade my HTPC in the future.

So looking for a board that can overclock and that supports undervolting, any suggestions?

Many thanks

I have a GIGABYTE GA-H55M-UD2H LGA 1156 with a i3-530, which is trivial to undervolt. I started at 1.0V, no problem, but at 0.975V it failed POST. Haven't tried to OC it.

Arguing against the Gigabyte is it's multi-phase VRM's and their excessive power consumption. MSI seems to do better.

For a HTPC, the Gigabyte has VGA & DVI & HDMI & DisplayPort connectors on the back panel.

Came across this review of several H55 motherboards http://www.hardwarezone.com/articles/vi ... id=6&pg=12

MSI comes out best in power consumption (discounting the intel board due to having no voltage options in the bios) with the Gigabyte board fairly close behind...

Hi guys!

The answer I would like to learn is: could that MSi or any other non Intel board be undervolted so that it falls below the Intel reference board?

And I don't mean the CPU voltages. Rather voltages for memory, chipset and other stuff.
Can any one try and see how much lower than his current setup can you go on these H55 boards?

correct me if i am wrong but cpu undervolting has become irrelevant since the introduction of the c-states allowing as low as 0.9V setting in idle being done by default, which renders any further undervolting completely useless except for experimenting purposes, so it is all boils down to how overcumbered with fruiless crap and inefficient is the board's design in the first place. with intel you get the basic clean design, lately no legacy floppy and the whole chip responsible for this madness is gone like in the case of p55, you can expect that kind of thing.

so the gigabyte on my opinion is most suitable for other than cpu undervolting

CPU 0.5-1.9
Memory 1.3-2.6
QPI/VTT 1.05-1.99
PCH 0.95-2.0
CPU PLL 1.6-2.54

PLL and PCH doesn't do much, being 5 watts at default, memory and qpi maybe 5 watts (at least that was possible with the p45 which helped by the latest bios does lower cpu to 0.9V on its own in idle,. so why would i want to undervolt that, nehalem does the same thing, that's what we see on all those overclocked cpuz- screens, namely cpu sitting at 4Ghz and 0.85V in idle)

One of the things you can experiment with on Gigabyte mobos is to change the CPU voltage from Auto to Normal. There is a setting (I think its DVID) on the same page that applies an offset voltage. This allows the voltage to go up and down with the C states, but follow a lower profile than stock. It may be necessary to explicitly enable turbo and all of the C states once you start making changes to any settings. Make sure LLC is disabled.

My I5-750 runs a 20% overclock at normal voltage with zero offset and all turbo modes and C states enabled, so at stock clock, a negative voltage offset ought to be possible.

and what about the ECS H55H-M ? looks quite basic, and probably low power consumption.

What about Asus?