Underclocking a CPU?

[BlackWyvern3]

I have a 1.1 ghz athlon and it runs a bit soft, but that is not my concern. My real concern is that it locks up after several hours on.. I can be on for 8 hours then it will lock up, or 3 hours then it will lock up. It quite baffling. I was wondering if underclocking a CPU is a way to make it more stable... or is it a waste? will it matter

 

[Oni]

If I were you I'd make sure I had case fans circulating air. It sounds like your just overheating it with excessive CPU usage at certain times. I think if you didn't touch it for 3 weeks it wouldn't restart as long as nothing was running on it cept maybe an IRC server or something. Try getting a new heat sinc for it with some thermal paste and add in case fans if possible, if not maybe some cd rom bay coolers that blow air out of your empty CD rom bays.

 

[Oni]

oh yea and if you underclocked it might run a tad cooler as well. But that'd be wasting the money you paid for a 1.1 GHz machine

 

[BlackWyvern3]

well, the thing is my CPU never gets over 50 celcius on heavy loads... so I dont think it is a heat issue. Perhpas I am wrong and this is enough to make it lock up without warning... I really dont know

 

[Guest]

I read somewhere that this guy was like "I dont like noise and therefore fans" so he underclocked his PIII 1GHz (133MHz FSB) to 250MHz (33MHz FSB) and found it would run with just a passive heatsink. Don't know about the performance, though. Pretty lame, I would have thought