Question about underclocking a AMD FX-6300 on a Gigabyte GA-970A-D3P board

[ja227]

I tried underclocking this CPU to get the temperature down a bit. I set the cycle to 15.0 from 17.5 to get a target speed of 3.0 GHz on this processor. From what I can tell it can boot and run fine, but I am worried about a small delay upon boot. It happens from either pressing the power button to start or rebooting. The fans spin and LEDs light up for a split second, then turn off, and then after a delay, it starts up as normal. With the processor set to factory default settings, it doesn't seem to do to this. It only happens when I set it under the default speed.

Is this a normal thing for this board and CPU, a voltage problem, or something else? I have not changed the voltage at all. All the voltage settings are "automatic". I read on another thread here that in order to overclock on this board and processor, one needs to disable the power saving settings. Is this required for underclocking as well?

Also, would it damage a USB drive if plugged in on boot? I have already killed two on this machine, but I think it was due to IOMMU settings that were shorting out the USB ports. I'm hesitant to use USB sticks on this computer ever again.

 

[ja227]

I think I already solved this. I just rebooted with it set to 3.0 GHz, and it didn't do the delay this time. I think it is some function of the motherboard. I remember it doing this when I first built the computer.

 

[photonboy]

USB - fine, in fact it's very common to install Windows or run Memtest or other diagnostics from a USB stick.

IOMMU - no idea what you mean, but changing settings in software can't physically short out USB ports. Did you "kill" them or simply format them incorrectly?

 

[ja227]

USB - fine, in fact it's very common to install Windows or run Memtest or other diagnostics from a USB stick.

IOMMU - no idea what you mean, but changing settings in software can't physically short out USB ports. Did you "kill" them or simply format them incorrectly?

I think they were reformatted somehow. I looked at the raw images of the disks and they still had the files on them.

It looks like the problem with the LEDs and fans starting, stopping and then starting again still happens when I boot with the power button. The CPU is currently underclocked and seems to be working fine. I just don't know what is causing the power-on delay.

IOMMU is a setting in the Gigabyte BIOS that I changed to get my USB keyboard and mouse to work. They would flicker and turn off before changing the setting.