AMD Voltage

[dumdum8684]

I have a question just to be safe....well two

1) I'm under the impression that it doesn't matter how high the volts are on any device (processor included) as long as it doesn't get to hot.

2) What is a good temp to be running an AMD Athlon XP 3200 with no o/c. Also what is the max temp before the chip gets damaged...please no opinions on the max i would like some facts or pros.

Thanks.
-Aaron

 

[TheMajor]

no, too high voltages can destroy just about anything in yer comp...heat and too much voltage are very dangerous for all components including HD, PCI cards etc

i don't know about the AMD

 

[Cappy]

1.5 look - at your manual

 

[Nubius]

ehhh its partly right. It is mainly heat that is the main destroyer, but still pushing too much voltage through shortens the lifespan and stretches the limits of the transistors...it'll increase your thermal expansion....so whenever you shut your computer down and it cools it shrinks...that repeated process also wears down your computer so if you have extra voltage in it...that'll just cause it do to the thermal expansion and shrink worse.....also theres a thing called electromigration and the actual microscopic paths can be destroyed by the force thats going through them basically.

Your motherboard should have a failsafe feature for a shutoff at a certain temp. AMD's run hotter than intels as it is...so having temps in the 40's is good, but my XP 2400+ runs hot or something. I got a tornado on the CPU as my fan with a few case fans and am at 50C Idle...but on load it'll only go up like 2 or 3 degrees....if your processor starts getting up in the 60's then I'd start worrying.......what are your current temps? If you're sitting in the 40's idle and maybe high 40's up to mid 50's under load you should be aright although some people will still tell you 50 is too much for their comfort....somewhat personal pref......I was at 64C with just no fans and the side open...gonna do some major renovations though with AS5 compound, lapped SLK-900A and fans galore...so I'm hoping for high 30's idle.

Anyway...yeah if it's not getting anywhere near 60s or even mid 50's then you're safe as far as max goes. If you're at 55C at idle you might want to look into some better cooling

 

[DaShizNit609]

my amd 3000+ is overclocked now and runs stable at like 55 under a load i have stock cpu fan/heatsink. if i upgraded those do you think the temp would drop alot? my case temp is anywhere from 28-30 which i know is fine.

 

[Nubius]

if i upgraded those do you think the temp would drop alot? my case temp is anywhere from 28-30 which i know is fine.

Depends on what heatsink, fan, and compound you got..you can easily gain a 10 degree drop in temps if you get a good solid copper heatsink a strong fan and Arctic Silver 5 (which remember takes like 200 hours to completely settle in so a rough estimate of perm temps would be like a week after you applied it) I just received my SLK-900A yesterday and I believe I am going to lap that beast for the mirror finish. I've heard nothing but greatness about this heatsink...plus with lapping you can get like 2-3 degree temp drop plus with AS5 you get also 2-3 temp drops, but the heatsink MAINLY performs under loads...meaning you might see only a 2-3 drop on your idle temps..but a 10 degree drop on your loads cause the heatsink can absorb more heat ya know? Also that heatsink comes with no fan so I'm putting on a 80mm Vantec Tornado....should get some nice cooling. To give you an idea

My first case had stock heatsink and fan on this 2400+ XP, with just the side panel open...no fans nothin...sat at 64C Idle....now I got a rear intake...a mediocre heatsink (temporarily) and the vantec tornado on there running at half speed and 2 80mm stacked fans on the side as exhaust and I'm sitting at 50C idle....I assume after my case mod I'm looking to be in the 30's...but that'll be another thread

 

[dumdum8684]

Thanks for all your replies. Here is some info that some of you requested. At rest depending on the case temp my CPU runs at 46-50C and at a higher load at about 53-57C. That is during the day with out a/c. The default vcore setting was 1.6 but that is when it was blue screening. I increased it to 1.65 and the blue screens were less freq. so i increased it again to 1.7 and they have gone away (4 now). Cappy-I was asking because i don't have a manual because i got an OEM. The "perm" time...is that not running the computer. I ran it less than 24 hours after putting on the thermal compound. Thanks for all your help guys.

-Aaron

 

[Cappy]

you can download the MANUAL in pdf format