Safe to underclock?

I use both Asus q fan and cool and quiet at the same time and it automatically changes the processor speed depending on how much load there is. I was wondering if this is safe and will it decrease the life of my cpu like overclocking does?
Thanks

 

Sure, it's safe. Underclocking will not damage anything.

 

may ask why u want to underclock anyway ?

 

lol i was about to say the same thing

Yes its safe to a POINT, like overclocking, and will increase the life of the cpu as long as the voltage is DECREASED to the cpu for underclocking. However todays cpus are designed to be run 24/7, its the constant surge of booting up that actually decreases the life of a cpu.

I used to work with CPUs on my NVQ electronics course and i experimented with external clocking using a square wave generator, i injected the signal directly over the the cpu clk input on a test board which was a display driver and robotic arm controller, you CAN UNderclock to a degree before the cpu just isnt possible to act in the fashion it was designed for and it would also increase the Heat coming from the cpu, over clocking has the same effect but for different reasons. remember the components on a cpu are very small indeed. if the power being carried to one of those components was held too long ie ON (1) for more than the designed time the component will burn out and will permamntely damage the cpu. the opposite is for overclocking, the component is only designed to switch to a certain speed if this speed is exceeded the component will fluctuate in switching and cause the cpu to fail temporarily, this is usually counteracted by increasing the voltage to the cpu for overclocking and you can see the potential hazzard by increaing the voltage (those tracks are like tiny fuses and will blow if too much voltage is applied for too long)

 

"booting up that actually decreases the life of a cpu."

I've heard this before but I don't get the logic behind it, I mean if the surge in power lowers the life of the CPU .. with that logic so would booting up a game like far cry. After all it takes alot more CPU horsepower to boot up Far Cry than it does to boot windows XP.

 

AMDxp, dude, could we have that in English? You know, for us Navy guys, that are only Lieutenants?

 

....... Any way underclocking is basicly the exact opposit of overclocking ...again with my car motor analagy .....the faster a moter ( CPU ) is running the more gas ( volts ) it will need to run ...and in the opposit a motor that is running slowly needs less gas to run at that slower speed........now if you take a motor ( your CPU ) and make it run at a slower speed with out changing the gas flow ( voltage ) then it will not run as well as it could....

In overclocking you make the CPU run faster ( you normaly need to up the voltage to do this making the cpu run hotter and in theroy not last as long )

In underclocking you force the CPU to run slower then stock ( making it run cooler but at a near unnotacable amount ) now to make the bigest dif you need to lower the voltage from stock to the min. voltage that the CPU still runs stable only then will you see the biggest dif. in temps and the biggest dif. in power consumption ...runing a CPU underclocked at stock voltage is pointless its consumming the same amount of power and running vary vary close to the same temp....
( on a side note underclocking is growing as a hobby as well as overclocking even thow it has less benifits.... I beleave the record is a P4 3GHz running at 100MHz on a modded mobo )

The first question that comes to mind is are you underclocking by FSB or by maltiplier ?? If its by FSB you are killing your memory bandwidth when you underclock ( slowing down every thing a great deal ) now if your underclocking by X then you loose nothing but CPU core speed ( witch doesent make a great deal of dif.. in normal apps... surfing the web email etc... )

What are your exact system specs ??? Is this a laptop ???? What CPU are you running ??

 

I think underlocking is not good for CPU when you run it for a long time, and one day you set it run DF it will not stable any more.
like OCing somtime I will fore my computer run at DF.

 

Thanks for the good responses guys!
Stich, maybe reading my actual post may answer that question. Underclocking saves on energy, keeps things cooler and quieter and like someone said increases the life of the computer.

Anyway, I didnt actually manually underclock, its my motherboard which does it because i have 'cool and quiet' and 'q-fan' both enabled. The v-core also adjusts itself automatically, and is lower than normal i think..currently switching withing 1.0-1.1v. My processor is currently running at 1ghz, when its normal speed is 2.2ghz.
Its not fsb thats decreasing, its the mutiplier.

My pc specs are:
Athlon 64 3500+ Venice 939pin
Asus A8n-e n-force 4 ultra
768mb ram (might get some more soon)
160gb Maxtor
Asus 6600gt
XP Home

 

Exactly! Laptops do this too. For example: Athlon XP Mobile chips are the only Athlon XP chips with an UNLOCKED multiplier, which was designed specifically for mobile applications where power consumption is important. The motherboard can then therefore change the overall speed of the CPU when say a power cord is plugged in.

When underclocking you must change the VCore as well!!! For the same reason you don't up the VCore while running at stock. You'd actually make it run HOTTER if you ran it slower without adjusting the VCore to compensate.

 

Like I said its running between 1 and 1.1v when i think normally its 1.3-1.4. Is this enough? If not I'll find a manual setting in bios..
Right now my cpu temp is 28c and mb temp is 33c. Seems good to me, but I still have a fan which is making a fair bit of noise which annoys me. Overall my tower is pretty quiet just still not quiet enough!! I think its the fan on the back which is just under the psu. Its a big one. Maybe I should change this for equal performance but so its quieter?

 

sorry lol i usually come on here late and am very tired (not a good time to offer help) the guy that compares it to a car is much what i was trying to say appologies again , (hides and peeps through jacket)

 

you could change your case for an acoustic dampening one, expensive, but does the job