Upgrading an AMD Athlon processor, Help with core voltages.

[cheese_sandwich]

Hi,

I'm new and need help with ungrading my processor.

I currently have a AMD Athlon 3000+ Newcastle processor. I'm on a budget and am upgrading to an AMD athlon 3200+ Venice chip. The reason being the Thermal Design Power of the chips are 89W and 59W respectively, this hopefully means less heat will be dissipated by the Venice meaning I can use lower fan speeds on my cpu heatsink (possibly even fanless as I believe some fanless heatsinks work up to 65W). I'm doing this mainly becasue I need a silent pc.

So with this upgrade the Newcastle has a core voltage of 1.5V, and the Venice 1.4V. My question is can I just changes the chips over and everything will work fine automatically, or do I need to set the voltages in the BIOS?

I might be wrong on everything I have just said, so any input appreciated.

Thanks for any help

[Fred Jodry]

The motherboard will automatically drop the CPU core voltage from nominally 1.5 volts to 1.4 volts and be responsible for much of the lowering of CPU wattage you named. Also, The Venice core might be prone to lower amperage from improved design. If you can locate any information on ways to adjust core volts lower on the Motherboard, you would probably find you can lower the core voltage about 0.1 volt or maybe 0.2 volts, especially if the MB (no, whole computer) isn`t being run at odd temperatures. A CPU fanning unit that sucks upwards off the MB is a chronic help. I`m using probably the same CPU and a similar machine as you successfully and quietly so I`ll see if I can throw you some tips this week but here`s the biggest one. Borrow and hand- test fans and fins to find out what works.