Increasing SOC voltage beyond recommended settings, discussed below, would have the effect of damaging the IMC and the APU GFX component’s overclocking ability. For AMD, we might instead talk about SOC voltage – that’s our topic today. Some easy examples would be the System Agent voltage for Intel CPUs (VCCSA) increasing VCCSA to, for example, 1.4V is inadvisable for modern platforms, and will inevitably damage the IMC. When we talk damage with parts, we’re talking long-term degradation. What matters most is that the disparity between actual Vcore (in this example) and input Vcore isn’t great enough to seriously damage anything. That’s partly on motherboard makers to achieve through LLC tables, but there will always be some disparity.

Without that specificity, the best to hope for is that all of these numbers are reasonably close. We might mean 1.4V as read through HWINFO or AIDA. It could also mean 1.4V input into BIOS or UEFI. In this instance, we have not clarified what “1.4V” means – it could mean 1.4V going into the CPU, period, as measured in the most accurate way possible (e.g.

For instance, suppose GN recommends a safe Vcore of 1.4V for 24/7 on Processor X. When manufacturers, media, and overclockers provide guidance of “safe voltages” for 24/7 use, they may be referencing different numbers. Also critical to today’s story is the understanding of what a “safe voltage” is.

Vddp voltage control