Raspberry Pi Overvolting

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Raspberry Pi Overvolting Guide

Not getting the overclock you want out of your Raspberry Pi? Did you get unlucky and your Raspberry Pi won’t overclock past 750MHz? Or maybe you are looking to break the 1000MHz barrier? Well if you’ve tried your best to overclock on stock voltages, you may want to try overvolting!

NOTE: Overvolting your Raspberry Pi WILL void your warranty. HTPCBuild.com is not responsible for any damage that might occur when attempting to overvolt your Raspberry Pi.

Sometimes processors and memory can be pushed farther by providing a little more voltage. However this can reduce the life of the component being overvolted. This is a very common practice in the hardware tweaking scene.

NOTE: Overvolting can cause permanent damage to your Raspberry Pi possibly rendering it useless.

There are a few volt values that you can adjust for your Raspberry Pi:

  • over_voltage  – Sets the voltage for the ARM and GPU processor. The default value is 0. The value range is -16 to 8. For each positive value increment you step the voltage by 0.025V. For each negative value increment you step the voltage by 0.025V. The default voltage is 1.2V, with a range of 0.8V to 1.4V.
  • over_voltage_sdram – Sets the voltage for over_voltage_sdram_c, over_voltage_sdram_i, over_voltage_sdram_p simultaneously. The default value is 0.  The value range is -16 to 8. For each positive value increment you step the voltage by 0.025v. For each negative value increment you step the voltage by 0.025v. The default voltage is 1.2V, with a range of 0.8V to 1.4V.
  • over_voltage_sdram_c – Sets the voltage for the SDRAM controller. The default value is 0. The value range is -16 to 8. For each positive value increment you step the voltage by 0.025V. For each negative value increment you step the voltage by 0.025V. The default voltage is 1.2V, with a range of 0.8V to 1.4V.
  • over_voltage_sdram_i –  Sets the voltage for SDRAM’s  I/O. The default value is 0. The value range is -16 to 8. For each positive value increment you step the voltage by 0.025V. For each negative value increment you step the voltage by 0.025V. The default voltage is 1.2V, with a range of 0.8V to 1.4V.
  • over_voltage_sdram_p – Sets the phystical voltage for theSDRAM. The default value is 0. The value range is -16 to 8. For each positive value increment you step the voltage by 0.025V. For each negative value increment you step the voltage by 0.025V. The default voltage is 1.2V, with a range of 0.8V to 1.4V.

Generally speaking, you need to modify a file name “config.txt”. Usually it is located in the /boot directory. However, this may not be true. You may need to check and see where your “config.txt” file is located depending on your distro; you may even need to add one.

NOTE: over_voltage_sdram controls three values simultaneously. If you wish to control these values independent of one another, you’ll need to disable over_voltage_sdram and enable the values for over_voltage_sdram_c, over_voltage_sdram_i, and over_voltage_sdram_p.

NOTE: There are two ways to deactivate a volt parameter, you can either completely delete the value from your config.txt or place a “#” in front of the parameter you wish to disable. Placing a “#” indicates that the corresponding line of code is a comment and will not be executed.

IE:
Disabled
#over_voltage=1

Enabled
#over_voltage=1

Each distro has a different login and location of the “config.txt” file. Please refer to HTPCBuild.com’s Raspbmc Overvolting GuideOpenelec Overvolting Guide, or XBian Overvolting Guide.