Undervolting Q6600

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l3ender

Supreme [H]ardness
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I am currently in the process of undervolting my Q6600 (G0) because I would like it to run cooler than what it is at--high 40s or low 50s while idling (°C, stock clock speeds and voltage).

In BIOS I set the voltage to 1.125, and when I load up CPU-Z reports 1.072. Now I know this is normal for the reported to be different than the set. What I'm wondering about is if a value such as this is ok, as the Intel Processor Spec sheet reports that the processor's vcore range is 1.100V-1.372V and the reported value of 1.072 is obviously below that.

I am in the process of running Prime95, but providing it proves to be stable, is an undervolt like this ok?
 
I thought that undervolting was not risky to your processor compared to overvolting. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong, don't take this as Gospel truth.
 
Its perfectly ok. As long as it stays stable. You wont damage your CPU from under volting.
 
Under volting won't harm a thing, worst case, if you put it low enough, it won't boot into Windows. No big deal, just go into the bios and increase it. So, under volting is good, less volts=less heat
 
so how did it go with the prime95 run? power consumption is the one thing holding me back from a q6600 and waiting for penryn. g0 + undervolting might be enough for me to say screw it and squeeze in an extra upgrade cycle
 
Well it won;t hurt, as you know when you are not using your cpu it undervolt it self automatically and lower the speed to0.
 
fluxion said:
so how did it go with the prime95 run? power consumption is the one thing holding me back from a q6600 and waiting for penryn. g0 + undervolting might be enough for me to say screw it and squeeze in an extra upgrade cycle
Click to expand...

6 hours Prime95 v25.2 stable, so I decided that was fine. I might do some other testing with Orthos later today.

Temps are currently in the low 40's, though the computer has only been on for 20-30 minutes (was storming last night! :S).
 
From my experience, i think cpu-z isn't all too accurate reading the voltages.
It's either that or my motherboard has a crazy vdroop. o_O


By the way, why is your idle temps high?
Have you placed the tuniq correctly? with the right amount of thermal grease?
Did you use the one provided by them? or use a brand such as arctic silver?

I'm currently at 3.2 ghz, with 1.3650v, and my idle temps are 38~41 ish.
 
enyceexdanny said:
By the way, why is your idle temps high?
Have you placed the tuniq correctly? with the right amount of thermal grease?
Did you use the one provided by them? or use a brand such as arctic silver?

I'm currently at 3.2 ghz, with 1.3650v, and my idle temps are 38~41 ish.
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I don't know why they're so high. I used AS5, and used the recommended procedure for amount (one strip, etc). I've thought about re-seating it but it'd be a lot of work to take out the mobo and everything (I think it'd be difficult navigating around without doing so), and I'm lazy. :S

Everything else is fine, cable management and all is good. It's been running a week+. I'm pretty sure it's installed correctly, is it?

computercabling2vx3.jpg
 
The issue of having a cooler installed correctly or not can only be determined through actual temp testing. Sadly you can't just look at the HS and see if it works or not. I've seen some hardcore guys reseat their HS's about four or five times just to see if they can keep posting lower temps. Of course, this a heck of a lot of work, but if you really want to make sure you have the perfect fit... :D
 
SonOfMore said:
The issue of having a cooler installed correctly or not can only be determined through actual temp testing. Sadly you can't just look at the HS and see if it works or not. I've seen some hardcore guys reseat their HS's about four or five times just to see if they can keep posting lower temps. Of course, this a heck of a lot of work, but if you really want to make sure you have the perfect fit... :D
Click to expand...

I guess I was referring more to the layout of the Tower 120 and if the way I had it oriented had the fan blowing in the correct direction.
 
zmjone2992 said:
the little ripple things on the sides of the heatsink. the fan is sandwiched in the middle, they are perpendicular to where they should be
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...that doesn't make any sense. The fan would then be blowing up/down. Every guide I've looked at has it the same way I do.

I thought my fan might be blowing the wrong way but it's blowing out the back.

Edit: My temps have also gone back up to mid-upper 40's. This can't be normal for idle temps.
 
i guess mine is different then, mine definitely blows in the direction the ripples go, right to my exhaust fan.

edit: i had a dumb attack, mine is mounted the same way.

cocaine is a helluva drug :)
 
l3ender said:
Do you think mine is just seated poorly then? Horrible temps :(
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that would be my guess, did you follow arctic silver 5's instructions for applying the grease? i did mine wrong, and my temps went down 30c afterwards (i was spreading it). What is your room temperature?
 
zmjone2992 said:
that would be my guess, did you follow arctic silver 5's instructions for applying the grease? i did mine wrong, and my temps went down 30c afterwards (i was spreading it). What is your room temperature?
Click to expand...

When applying the grease, I did a line, and then a little (read: barely any) of a blob in the middle. Nothing over the top, anyway.

Ambient temps are around 80ºF. As of now, my four cores (using SpeedFan and CoreTemp) are at 49ºC, 48ºC, 45ºC, 45ºC.

This is pretty rediculous, I'm going to re-seat tomorrow, hopefully it help! :S
 
I have mine OC'd to 3.2ghz and the voltage at 1.344v reading from CPU_Z and Speedfan. It idles at 30 degrees. I have a case that allows good airflow though. Not sure what you have.
 
It's supposed to be pretty good for cooling (it's a fairly popular case on this forum, I believe). I don't currently have a front fan in, but I plan on adding one soon. This shows how it works (click on cooling), I have the top, back and bottom middle ones in (they come with the case...lol). I plan on adding the front middle one, and you can actually add a middle middle on as well. I do think I'm going to re-seat, though (tomorrow).

Even without the other fans, I have a decent heatsink and it's not blazing hot in my room, nor am I OC'ing--I'm fricken undervolted to 1.125V right now! I think that's why I'm so pissed. :( If the heatsink looks quite bad (uneven), I'll run to my hardware store to get some sandpaper to lap it.
 
I'm getting about the same temps as you and I'm using the stock fan. I put the ac5 wrong on mine but I'm just gonna wait to re do it until I get a new cooler. I'm curious to see what temps you get after you reseat the tower as I'm thinking of getting one of those.
 
zmjone2992 said:
the little ripple things on the sides of the heatsink. the fan is sandwiched in the middle, they are perpendicular to where they should be
Click to expand...

You mean he should have it going up/down? Not like it matters, either way he has a 120mm fan taking the hot air out, and the way he has it, I think he has better intake.

But up/down isn't bad per se:

http://i19.photobucket.com/albums/b164/jaguar4192/Computer Build 07/DSC00624.jpg
http://i19.photobucket.com/albums/b164/jaguar4192/Computer Build 07/DSC00611.jpg

But I think that is one's preference...

With my Thermaltake V1, I load around 45C, idle around 35-30C. (using Coretemp)
 
Update: I'm still getting shat on. Lapped my Tower 120 (400, 600, 1000, 1500 grits) and reapplied AS5 and put it all back together. I've been running for 20 minutes now and my cores are as follows: 47, 47, 43, 44 (recorded using SpeedFan with offset and CoreTemp). All of this on a G0. I'm still undervolted to 1.125V!

What is going on?!!?
 
so do your modified speedfan and coretemp readings match? Because my unmodified speedfan temps are exactly the same as the ones i get from core temp. I was freaking out when i first got the q6600 because I thought it was running so hot
 
l3ender said:
They match :(
Click to expand...

wow that sucks, tat? try reseating again? it took me 3 times to get it right. You put it on then tighten the screws a little bit at a time so it is even. Also remember that your temps will go down over time with as5.
 
Yeah, this pisses me off quite a bit. I'll try re-seating again, who knows. When you say "re-seating," you mean reapplying AS5 every time, correct?

Other than that...anyone? Why do I always get the shaft on this type of crap.
 
l3ender said:
Yeah, this pisses me off quite a bit. I'll try re-seating again, who knows. When you say "re-seating," you mean reapplying AS5 every time, correct?

Other than that...anyone? Why do I always get the shaft on this type of crap.
Click to expand...

yea that is what i would do. good luck
 
Sigh...re-seated and both CoreTemp and SpeedFan read 45ºC (highest core, lowest is 42ºC) after computer being on just 5 minutes.

What does your BIOS temp read, zmjone? I'm not sure how accurate they are, but mine read 32ºC on startup.
 
30ish, cores are around 40 during startup and general usage. the cpu die temp should be a little lower than the cores but not like 15c. What about your mobo maker's temp probe?
 
I don't know of a temperature program that came with my mobo (in sig). I quickly looked on their site and could find nothing, either.

Edit: Did a bit of googling and found that EasyTune is a Gigabyte monitor. My motherboard came with nothing of the such (that I know of...nothing on the product page either) but I'll give that a shot tomorrow. In the process of moving so computer is shut down. Maybe when I turn it on in my new house it will miraculously have low temps. :)
 
l3ender said:
I don't know of a temperature program that came with my mobo (in sig). I quickly looked on their site and could find nothing, either.

Edit: Did a bit of googling and found that EasyTune is a Gigabyte monitor. My motherboard came with nothing of the such (that I know of...nothing on the product page either) but I'll give that a shot tomorrow. In the process of moving so computer is shut down. Maybe when I turn it on in my new house it will miraculously have low temps. :)
Click to expand...

ha, that actually happened to me once, well kinda anyhow. Easytune was what i was talking about. Also check out the beta version of speedfan, it has some temp corrections in it
 
There is no doubt that the 4 core CPU’s run hot, much hotter then we are used to seeing.

If you look around a bit you will find that TAT has no bearing on Conroe or Kentsfield. It was designed to work on certain laptops and the program has not been updated in a number of years.

I have spent a fair amount of time on the phone with Intel and frankly it was wasted time, they will not divulge a recommended operating temp, but they are quick to remind you that if you don’t use their cooler you have no warrantee. Obviously that was a big help.

After reading our own over clocking / cooling forum I started to hit pay dirt. The newer chips use a different address to obtain the temp info and in fact those addresses are listed in Intel’s tech papers. There is also a ton of information that has been redacted from those same papers, you would think Intel is part of the CIA or something.

My findings were pretty simple. The latest version of CoreTemp Beta happens to use the correct (as per Intel’s papers) addresses to read and account for computing the proper temperatures for Conroe and Kentsfield. You will also find, in the same forum, a program you can download to take readings in hexadecimal and convert those to temperatures as well. What you will find is, after all your hard work with that program, Core Temp Beta gives you the same answers.

Everest comes up with the same temps as Core Temp Beta in their new release. A word of caution. Two people with the exact same processor may or may not get the exact Tj readings, but what you get, if you do the math is right.

Now, as to what is dangerous and or safe. It’s an educated guess at best. Intel makes mention of “thermal limits” a lot in their papers but they also warn you that the thermal limits are not numbers you want to use as 27/7 safe readings.

What I do know, or think I know, is that at 8x1600 on my Q6600 give me 3.2 GIGS at a nice 1:1 ratio between FSB and memory. At my current vcore of 1.3 (still within suggested operating range) and running folding at home 24/7 with water cooling my temps are;

59-56-51-52, all well below suggested max thermal etc etc.

Core Temp Beta no longer supports the P-4 series. Those with Vista 64 and in most cases Vista 32 will find Core Temp Beta will first remind you it’s not digitally signed and proceed to fill your screen with error messages. The good news, there is a cure. When you boot into Vista hit F-8 and under boot options you will see on that says ignore digital signing of drivers. Boot using that setting, take your measurements and use those to calibrate something like speed fan. You make the corrections in speed fan Beta under advanced and select the ISA device, not the win bond. On my quad I have to add 15c for each core. On my E6600 no deviate settings were required. When you are done, reboot normaly.

Hope that helps a bit, and please, if you have any additional info please PM me or share it here or both.

One last thing, Speed Fan Beta, in fact all the previous versions as well were found to be the culprit with unexpected system freezes.

Luck;)
 
Thanks for the information Bill. I am on Vista64 and I found out pretty quickly that I'd have to disable forced driver signing if I wanted to use CoreTemp. I'm not sure if I'm using the beta version or not (not on my PC right now), but I'm probably not so I'll look into that. I'll also give the beta SpeedFan a try too.

With what I was using my temps for SpeedFan were almost exactly 15ºC lower than those of CoreTemp.

It's just frustrating to have a lapped HS (not IHS, I don't want to void the warranty) that is (supposedly) of good quality and can do a good job of cooling--and it's not. Not to mention I'm undervolted from the normal 1.25V to 1.125V. While idling (~30 minutes after turning computer on) I'm getting temps of close to 50ºC. I know it's within the recommended limits, but it really constricts me for OC'ing (which I wanted to do) and such. I don't know if it's a faulty HSF or what, but it's certainly annoying and frustrating.
 
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