So here’s a weird one: yesterday I used Intel Extreme Tuning Utility to undervolt my CPU by .035v. I only changed the voltage, I left all other settings at the default (53x P/42x on E). Everything was stable and working as it should.

Later in the evening I was watching videos on YouTube and began to notice that with every video the audio would start fine, but get progressively out of synch after a few minutes. It only did this using my mobo’s audio outputs and was fine using my interface audio via USB. My motherboard is an Asus Z790P Wifi. Finally, I got fed up with the problem and just rebooted my system and low-and-behold: no more issues.

This evening, after having watched an hour of videos without a problem, I again used the hotkey combo to undervolt in ETU in the middle of watching YT videos. The audio immediately began to go out of synch after a couple of minutes. I turn off the undervolt and the audio is fine.

So, anyone have any explanations for what might be happening? It feels like what would happen if a clock frequency is slightly off, but no clock frequencies were changed.

  • DoctorKomodo@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    Undervolting can make the CPU unstable. If it doesn’t have enough power for its internal components they can start malfunctioning in various odd ways. This is why it is important to thoroughly stability test an undervolt.

    One common approach is to stress test the CPU with Prime95. Prime95 touches many of the functional units inside a CPU and since it verifies the calculations done are correct it can detect a lot of CPU errors.

    So if you haven’t already, I’d say you need to test the undervolt. Both that it doesn’t outright crash the computer but also that Prime95 doesn’t report any calculation errors. For the last bit you need to let it run for a while, the longer the better. I’d go for at least an hour personally.