Originally Posted by
Anubi
To completely understanding the reference voltages is complicated. But a basic understanding of what to do with them is pretty easy.
Adjust it in one direction until you get a failure. The failure criteria can be anything, as long as it's consistent. Booting to Windows is a pretty good test. Fine tune it down to one step = pass, the next step = fail. Then adjust it in the other direction and fine tune in again. You'll end up with a min and max number, usually referred to as you margin window. Then you simply pick the number in the middle of the window, and set your final value at that middle point. That will be your best stability point, at the voltages and frequencies that you tested at.
You don't need to do long term stress testing to find the absolute min and max stability points, your not going to be running out there, you just want to use a consistent, and quick test to fine min and max, so you can then calculate the middle point.
As you increase frequency the min and max numbers, your margin window, will shrink down. The min might shrink faster than the max, so you might start failing because your negative margin, adjustment range below default, has collapsed down to nothing. But you might still have positive margin, adjustment range above default. You could raise your reference level to recenter in the margin window that is remaining.
If you jump too far on the adjustment and cause a hard no boot failure, you'll have to pull power from your power supply and move the BIOS jumper to get back going again, so go in small steps :)
