The word "undervolting" might infer some sort of compromise to some users, but with modern hardware, it's actually anything but. You obviously get less voltage and less heat, and you might think you get less performance, but the truth is almost the opposite. For modern CPUs and GPUs, dialing in a smart undervolt can actually make your system faster, quieter, and more consistent under load.

What undervolting actually does

Most chips don't need as much voltage

Undervolting is the act of lowering the voltage that a processor or graphics card uses to maintain a given clock speed. Every chip ships with a conservative factory voltage curve that guarantees stability across all units, and that includes even the worst silicon samples that rolled off the line. That means most chips are running at much higher voltages than they otherwise would need to by default, wasting power and generating unnecessary heat.

Reducing that voltage doesn’t change your target clock speed or performance level; it simply makes your hardware more efficient. Less voltage equals less power draw, which in turn equals lower temperatures and quieter operation. On the GPU side, you typically do this with a curve editor in software like MSI Afterburner or Radeon Software. On CPUs, tools like AMD’s Curve Optimizer or Intel XTU let you tweak per-core voltage offsets in small steps.

This isn’t the same as underclocking. Underclocking lowers your performance ceiling; undervolting just improves how efficiently you reach it.

Why undervolting unlocks more performance

The same clocks at lower voltages gives performance headroom

The part that may surprise most people, is that undervolting can increase real-world performance in a very tangible way, especially in sustained workloads. The reasoning is simple: lower voltage means less heat, and less heat means your CPU or GPU won't have to throttle itself to stay within power or temperature limits. Not only does this mean lower temperatures and less noise, but also boost clocks can go higher for longer, which means higher and more consistent framerates in theory.

My GPU is an excellent undervolter

The RX 9070 XT is known for this

My Radeon RX 9070 XT has been the best example of why undervolting is worth it. Out of the box, it performed well, and didn't run loud or hot, but there was definitely room for improvement. Fan speeds spiked into the 1800 RPM range under heavy gaming, and GPU hotspot temperatures would regularly hit the high 80s. Not terrible, but not ideal for a card with this kind of efficiency potential. In Battlefield 6 on Ultra settings, I would see anywhere between 200 and 160 FPS on average during gameplay with my default voltage curve.

After some trial and error, I found that my card could comfortably handle a -80mv offset, and with the power limit set to -10%, my FPS was the same, but my clocks were a bit higher, fan speeds and temperatures were lower, and most importantly, my FPS was exactly the same. Total board power fell by over 30 watts as well, which explains the lower temps and fan speeds. If I were to increase the power limit back to 0%, or even offset it by +10%, I could see some pretty significant performance gain, as we've seen with 9070 XTs in the past. These graphs are from HWiNFO .csv files that were put into a website called Log Visualizer, which is handy when trying to quickly get a comparison of benchmark runs.

My CPU doesn't show as big of an improvement here

The 7800X3D doesn't show huge gains, at least in my system

Not every piece of hardware reacts the same way. My Ryzen 7 7800X3D, as great as it is, doesn’t seem to benefit from undervolting in any meaningful way. AMD’s X3D chips already run on the razor’s edge of efficiency, thanks to their relatively low power limits and smart boosting behavior.

Using AMD’s Curve Optimizer, I applied a -30 offset across all cores, which is basically the most aggressive undervolt most of these chips can handle. It's likely not stable if I were to hit the CPU extremely hard for an extended period of time with something like Prime95, but I digress. I expected at least a few degrees off the top, but temperatures barely moved. During the test, my temperatures were largely the same, and power draw hardly dipped. Your mileage will certainly vary depending on what chip you have, and which architecture it comes from.

Undervolting is definitely worth a try

Every chip is different. Some silicon samples are golden and tolerate huge undervolts, while others barely move before crashing. And outside of that, from SKU to SKU, the undervolting potential will be wildly different. The potential payoff makes it worth experimenting with, especially if your system is constrained by a SFF case or is prone to overheating. Start in small steps with something repeatable, like a synthetic test, and as you decrease the offset, be sure to try your favorite games as well. Different loads will stress the GPU and CPU in different ways, so having it be stable in Battlefield 6, for example, might not mean it's stable for everything else.