I built a PC for a friend and chose an Asus motherboard. Posted the first time and wanted stability. I set up the build with very little customization, particularly: no EXPO, no overclocking, basically motherboard defaults. I saw a agree to overlocking screen in BIOS and escaped out without agreeing.
However now I see all these stories about crazy Asus defaults frying components, and then I see “CPU Core Voltage: 1.424v”, and now I’m wondering, do I have anything to worry about? Is my buddy’s machine safe to run stuff on? When we peg the cores with the workload we get to 62-66º on the CPU and rarely more.
The “spooky” item back at launch was SoC voltage, with some boards initially throwing 1.35+v at the SoC, which toasted a few chips. Got corrected in fairly short order with BIOS updates.
If you are worried about the voltage, you can manually lower it. I am using the last AM4 or AM3 (I can’t remember which) for the previous three years in the default settings, and it is still going strong. I don’t have an AM5, but I have heard AMD has too high voltage for those systems. Some people claim that if you leave the default voltage on the AM5 chipset, your CPU will not last as long. So, running the AM5 chipset at its default voltage requires replacing your CPU sooner. How soon is still being debated.
