386SX wrote:Hi,
I was reading in the Asus A7Pro based manual the part about I/O voltage settings and there's something I'd like to ask. There're three options: 3,35 / 3,56 / 3,69v and a default of 3,56 as my sensors read during running. Is this right for an AGP1/4x and PCI Athlon based machine? Or I should set it lower to be sure nothing will break?
Thank
Iirc ASUS (could've been another manufacturer but I think it was ASUS) had the habit of using slightly higher voltages to increase stability.
I don't know the long-term problems it may have, except that higher voltage usually means shorter life, but it depends. If you'd decrease it's life from 10 running years to 5 running years (the numbers are a bit hypothetical btw) then I don't really see a reason to put up with decreased stability as you'd probably not use 5 running years on a not-even-rare-part anyway.
But like I said, it depends.
3.69 seems a bit high though, I would opt to give 3.56 a try if I ran out of other options. For sA boards of that age (mainly the Thunderbird/Palomino SDRAM boards) I'd prefer to use a good quality PSU with lots on the 5V and use good cooling and not too many different components. My experience with some of these boards was that they tended to be rather picky and needed a lot of TLC to get them running within pleasurable parameters 😀