Vcore low warning on AB9 Pro

[andybray]

My recently installed AB9 Pro started to beep at me today in a high low pitch warbling sound. But the PC seemed to be working fine and so I just disconnected the speaker at the motherboard and carried on.

Some time later I wondered if it was trying to tell me something but I knew that nothing was running hot but noticed that the Abit Guru was flashing a red voltage warning. The Vcore voltage was jumping between about 1.13 and 1.29V. The acceptable range was set at 1.14 to 1.5. The beep, therefore, I believe was coming from the low Vcore.

As if by magic the acceptable range dropped a bit later to 1.06V and so the beeping stopped (well I couldn't hear the beeping as I'd disabled the beep in Guru and disconnected the speaker anyway).

But my point is this. Is this fluctuation of the Vcore and it dropping to the lower level of 1.13V anything to worry about?

Andy

[EllTheGamer]

Just trying to look at all possibilities here, does it happen under heavy load and not whilst idle or are there any noticeable patterns. If it is random it may wortg considering a new psu what psu are you currently running and what else are you running in the system.

[BUFF]

it could be Intel EIST running

[Richh]

Could well be. When you say the system is "recently built" Andy, how recent are we talking?

If you built the system an hour or two before it started beeping, that's one thing (most likely EIST dropping the voltage as BUFF suggests). If you built the system a fortnight ago, and it only started beeping yesterday, that tends to signify a different range of causes, so it'd be good to know the timeframes you're working in.

[Papa Lazarou]

It is to do with the power management I believe. So EIST, C1E etc. EDIT - in fact I think it is specifically C1E which does this. Put it under load and you should see a pretty constant 1.29v being indicated.

Mine does exactly the same (you will also find it drops the CPU multiplier by itself, when not under load if you have software that detects this like CPU-Z) :

[andybray]

I built it just under a week ago. Have to say I wasn't paying much attention to the Vcore as I was not overclocking. It was only yesterday when the beeping started. It was under no load at all at the time.

Just checked again and the Vcore still is constantly changing between 1.13V and 1.29V.

The power supply is an Antec 450W SmartPower 2.0 unit which was fitted as part of the Antec Sonata II case.

Nothing else appears wrong - the system works fine and had the alert range not been set at 1.14V then I might never have spotted it. Should my Vcore be rock solid?

The processor is an Intel E6300 Core2Duo. No tweaks. Does that processor use EIST? Would EIST kick in and out in this way on an otherwise idle system? Can I turn it off to see if it makes a difference?

Andy

[Richh]

Yes, this processor uses both EIST and C1E, and you can disable both of them in the processor features section of the BIOS.

You could also do worse than download Throttlewatch here, this will give you a direct insight into what the onboard throttling functions are doing.

[andybray]

Gave the CPU(s) something to do with a bit of video encoding and consumed 70% of the processor (according to Task Manager) and then checked the Vcore and it was pretty much static at 1.29V (did see it move to 1.28V!)

So nothing amiss.
Thanks
Andy