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Help! Voltage Droop: What is considered "normal"?

T

Torsten

Weaksauce
Joined
Dec 4, 2006
Messages
114
Greets all,

I just threw together my new system last night and it has been about 3 years since my last build. It consists of an E6400 and a single 8800GTX.

I retained my previous PSU, a 550w enermax. Despite being powerful enough, it lacks a 24pin primary mobo connector (has a 20pin) and it lacks an 8 pin secondary mobo connector (has a 4 pin).

The mobo manual (evga 680i) strongly recommended an 8 pin secondary connector.

Despite this, the system appears to run fine at stock everything. Voltages in the bios appeared dead on. I have not tested voltages in XP yet as I just finished the build at 3am last night.

Anyhow, prior to attempting to overclock, I launched CPU-Z and noticed something funny. The voltage of the cpu would change every second, varying from 1.1v's to 1.3v's depending on the activity of the computer. I thought this was odd, but being 3 years since my last build, I thought this might be a "power saving" feature of the conroes to throttle the voltage as it needs it.

With some searching on these forums I have seen hints at something called "voltage droop" but I am not sure if this is what I am seeing. I am concerned that my 4-pin 12v connector is what is causing the varying voltages under load.

BOTTOM LINE: Is this varying cpu voltage reported in CPU-Z normal, or do I need to dish out for a new PSU?
Many thanks for any feedback.
 
Vdroop is a difference of about 0.05v between what the BIOS reports and what CPUz reports (or other tools of course).

This is normal.



The only way to check why you're going down to 1.1v would be to install CPUz, and check your current clockspeed at various levels of activity. IF your clockspeed fluctuates by a significant margin (like more than 100mhz at a time) the voltage drop you're noticing is due to the power saving technology. Additionally, if temperatures fluctuate alot too, there's some power saving going on.

You can disable this in the BIOS by shutting off the C1 Halt State (Ithink?)

And for the record, I use a 20pin +4pin P4 psu too. Runs FINE on my P5B deluxe (sig).
 
Arcygenical said:
Vdroop is a difference of about 0.05v between what the BIOS reports and what CPUz reports (or other tools of course).

This is normal.



The only way to check why you're going down to 1.1v would be to install CPUz, and check your current clockspeed at various levels of activity. IF your clockspeed fluctuates by a significant margin (like more than 100mhz at a time) the voltage drop you're noticing is due to the power saving technology. Additionally, if temperatures fluctuate alot too, there's some power saving going on.

You can disable this in the BIOS by shutting off the C1 Halt State (Ithink?)

And for the record, I use a 20pin +4pin P4 psu too. Runs FINE on my P5B deluxe (sig).
Click to expand...

Lol. I'd recommend against doing that, since CPU-Z is known to read voltages funny, for example, CPU-Z says my PD950, set at 1.35V in bios, is at 2.013V, which it obviously isn't at, or I wouldn't have a working computer right now. if you want accurate readings, just go get a multimeter and measure it out.
 
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