Soleron on 21 October 2009
| nordlead said: If I buy a processor that is too powerful for what I need can I underclock it to save energy and heat? I know how to build a PC, but I've never messed with overclocking or anything like that. |
Yes. There's almost no risk (CPUs, in general, don't fail) but be aware that you aren't covered by the warranty on that part anymore if you do. All you do is adjust the multiplier in the BIOS downwards. Also, all CPUs downclock to very low speeds anyway when not being used. Recent AMD ones could go as low as 800MHz. It should use a half to two-thirds of load power in this state.
I would undervolt rather than underclock however. You have to go down in very, very small increments of voltage but it will still have the same performance and will be down another 10-20% in power consumption.
Ask on a more specialised forum like techreport.com for specifics.
