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3.3V 5x86 on 3.45V motherboard

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First post, by smevans526

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My first-gen IBM Aptiva mobo seems to support only 5V 486 CPUs, but I want to put a 3.3V IBM/CYRIX 5x86 into it. A possible adapter converts a 5V board to accept 3.45V CPUs.

I'd really like to know more about this adapter by TrinityWorks, but can't find anything. So, assuming this adapter's engineers had 3.45V CPUs only (and, yes, some degree of tolerance) in mind when they designed it, will a 3.3V CPU be safe on it?

Yes, I found a lot of this on Vogons, and I will probably laughed at for posting this question, but bottom line is I'd like an explicit answer, which I couldn't find.

Reply 1 of 1, by Deksor

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Most of these CPUs are made with a certain tolerance on the CPU voltage (motherboards weren't always very precise). For example, a Pentium MMX processor is rated at 2.8V. But intel also guaranteed it to work at +0.1 or -0.1v.

But often, people discovered that CPUs of that age can take up much bigger voltage differences (some people run K6-2 cpus at 2.5V for example. Once I met a computer that was designed with a pmmx in mind ... What was my surprise when I discovered it was a K6-2 inside ... powered at 2.8V instead of the 2.2 🤣) As for your 5x86, it should be fine at 3.45 even though it's designed for 3.3

If your board was only 4V or even 5V, that would be much more bothering ^^

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