Incorrect Vcore - have I been conned?

[magnate]

I'm somewhat belatedly investigating why my PCs run hot. Here are the
specs of the two machines:

1. Asus A7N8X with Barton 3200+ running at 11x200 FSB. 2 x 512Mb DDR400
RAM, and 2 x 160Gb Maxtor SATA HD (6Y160M0), striped using on-board
RAID.

2. AsRock K7VT4APro with Sempron 2600+ running at 11x166 FSB. 1Gb DDR
400 RAM running at 333 (synchronous with FSB). 2 x 250Gb WD SATA HD
(WD2500JS), using Linux software RAID.

All four SATA HDs run very hot to touch, though the WD JS series has a
known firmware bug which reports incorrect temps. This is good because
they're reporting 70c and 76c! I can't really tell the temp of the
Maxtor HDs because Speedfan reports 5 different temps and doesn't tell
me which two are the HDs: -1, 25, 35, 63 and 127c! I kind of hope the
Maxtors also have buggy temp sensors because 35 is too low (they feel
way hotter than that) and 63 is uncomfortably high. (Though all SATA
drives I've ever had have run noticeably hotter than all PATA drives I
ever had, and none have died on me yet.)

Anyway, that's all a sideshow - this isn't about the HDs. Both CPUs are
running high (Barton 57c idle, Sempron 60c idle), and I've been
investigating why. (Yes they are both properly cooled with thermal
compound, heatsinks and fans.)The Barton is supposed to run at 1.65v
Vcore, and the Sempron is supposed to run at 1.6v (these from AMD
official specs). But they're both running at 1.81/1.82v !! Neither
board's BIOS will let me lower Vcore below 1.8v, suggesting that the
chips are reporting that as their minimum required voltage.

I'm forming the nasty conclusion that I have been sold doctored
(overclocked, relabeled) chips. I bought them from the same place,
albeit a year or two apart. Is there any other explanation? Does anyone
know a way to reduce the Vcore on either board?

Thanks in advance,

CC

 

[The little lost angel]

official specs). But they're both running at 1.81/1.82v !! Neither
board's BIOS will let me lower Vcore below 1.8v, suggesting that the
chips are reporting that as their minimum required voltage.

Have you tried flashing the BIOS to whatever is the newest available?
Usually the BIOS doesn't care what the CPU reports as the lowest temp
if you are fiddling with the voltage manually. They just give a range
you can choose from, whether the CPU burns or doesn't work is your
problem pP

 

[magnate]

Have you tried flashing the BIOS to whatever is the newest available?
Usually the BIOS doesn't care what the CPU reports as the lowest temp
if you are fiddling with the voltage manually. They just give a range
you can choose from, whether the CPU burns or doesn't work is your
problem pP

I just flashed the A7N8X BIOS to the latest, and it still only gives me
the choice of 1.800, 1.825 and 1.850 vcore

The manual tells me it should let me choose anything from 1.100 to
1.900

I have all the BIOS settings on "User Defined" or "Expert".

I installed Sisoft Sandra and it tells me I have a genuine AMD
AthlonXP3200+ CPU which *says* it wants to run at 1.65v

So why is my motherboard running it at 1.8v??

What on earth is going on??

CC