Undervolting VS Underclocking

[emad_ramlawi]

Hello all, and thanks in advance for reading this.

I am wealthy prince with 20.000.000$ that needs your help, see i ....

Just kidding, i am planning to build a small server, regardless of the components which i will list them only so you can get an idea of what i am asking about, please do not report me suggestions of alternatives setups, cause living where i live i have other factors that you may not need to encounter (i don't have the option to RMA a product cause my brother will purchase the products and deliver them to me when he comes by for a visit, and i cant grab a risky motherboard that needs a BIOS update + i don't support Israel so Intel is out of the question)

Also note from the reading the above you should be abit grateful, cause living where you guys live, you have the wonderful chance of experimenting with all those neat and wide array of products, and having them delivered to your door steps easily, i truly believe that if you want to innovate, you need to have the tools to experiment with first hand, you should now that the hassle of my bro purchasing from newegg, then deliver the products to me is far far far much easier and cheaper, then purchasing here in jordan where i live, and those products are not even listed in jordan.

But aside from the above rant, i hopefully wish to change that, cause i am trying to start a new thing, like newegg here in jordan (http://jordanemarket.com/) don't hack it yet its still not in production

okay back to the question:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819106013

Liano, trusted Athlon, with true 2 singular dual cores, downside is that i dont need that internal GPU that much, but i know i can limit its RAM usage from the BIOS, instead sucking 512MB i can make it use 32 or 64.

Secondly it consumes 60~90 Watts, and if the IGP was not used it will auto shut itself, maybe in Linux Environments without a Desktop Environment this will be added value.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813130641

And a basic Mobo.

and yes my budget is ~100USD max ~120, big dreams and small steps i know, but we need to start somewhere.

The above setup will be a Webserver with MySQL (completely dedicated) no other stuff running, were talking about Debian headless environment so while its humble products, but they will be fully utilized to there main purpose.

okay lets say in the future or present i want to make the server more power efficient and consume less wattage, what is the Pros and Cons of the following solutions:

1) Easy Method : Go to the Bios, but not change anything regarding Voltages, simply change the max multiples if the A4-3300 is 2.5GHz something like 25*100Mhz, i would make the multiplies 20, thus it will 2.0GHz.

2) Harder for me method : mess with the Core CPU voltage and lower it down a notch?

Sorry for the long article, just wanted you to grasp the full scenario.

 

[manofchalk]

If the goal is a lower power consumption, the lowering the CPU voltage is what will have the most effect. Downclocking it will to some degree, but not nearly as much.
When overclocking you have to raise the voltage to keep the clock-speed stable, same thing going backward. You need enough voltage to keep your clock speed stable, so you might have to downclock the processor to hit lower voltages.