Can Sandy Bridge be undervolted?

So far the majority of the threads focus on the gpu. A few have mentioned giving the component more voltage. However I have yet to see anyone mention undervolting.

I remember undervolting on my xps m1730 and once you find that sweet spot, the temp difference is HUGE. Nothing that pasting can do (but sure can help lower the temps some more). I think I managed to lower my extreme processor by 15-20c from stock voltage to my safe undervolted numbers.

I know most people are trying to squeeze as much power out of the parts as possible but surely some of us just like seeing super low temps.

 

Bump. And I get a feeling people aren't very interested in the weird topics I bring up.

 

After reading numerous topics regarding Intel SpeedStep, I fooled around with enabling and disabling it from the BIOS. My results were the following:

(Used CPU-Z for the numbers)

Enabled (Default): Core Speed will turbo to 3ish GHz with just about any activity and the Core Multiplier will hit x30.0 to x34.0.

Disabled: Core Speed will turbo to the 2.20 GHz and the Core Multiplier will hit x20.0 to x22.0.

I never looked at the voltage in both cases but perhaps you could replicate my tests and see if it satisfies what you're looking for!

 

Hmm, well that's a start. However the purpose of undervolting for me is to maintain the current performance and clock speeds, while creating less heat for each multiplier. Seems that your method would just lock out certain speeds.

Speaking of which, when I fire up cpuz (64 bit) it just crashes upon start up. Same for hwmonitor. Is there something I'm doing wrong?

 

For CPU-Z, that happens to me once. I just kept trying and trying until it started, but maybe someone else here has a solution for this issue.

 

There is no known way to undervolt the Sandy Brigde. The only way you can lower the voltage is to lower the multlplier (lock it in, using e.g. ThrottleStop etc), and that also means less speed, in turn means less performance, not really ideal.

 

Ah, well guess the only way to drop temps is to do a good pasting job.