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[Big Mountain]

Can anyone explain to me what use underclocking has?

Someone told me about underclocking the other day and I had no idea such a thing existed. Does it actually have a use?

[damaged]

Unless you can lower the voltage.. I see no purpose, other than acting like a damn fool.

[Hak Foo]

Reduced heat, longer battery life.

The EEEPC, for example, is underclocked to like 660MHz on a CPU rated 900.

Also, if your PSU is marginal, it can sometimes help.  My old Athlon 2000+ used to only run stable at 833MHz (66MHz FSB!) with a finicky mainboard and POS power supply.

[blafrisch]

I underclock the server that I keep in my closet.  Why?  A lower clock alone consumes less power and produces less heat, but this also allows me to lower the voltage which pushes power consumption and heat production even lower.  This of course wouldn't be a smart move if I heavily taxed the server, but I really don't.

If you are wondering what I am running, it was my former gaming PC parts (Abit AN7, Athlon XP Mobile 2500+, 2GB DDR400 RAM), my old server drives for the OS (2 160GB IDE drives in RAID 1), and new drives for storage (4 500GB SATA drives in RAID 5).  The CPU is supposed to run at 14.0 x 133MHz but I run it at  7.0 x 200MHz.  I only underclocked it 487MHz, but the faster FSB helps more than the higher multiplier so I really didn't lose much and I was able to drop the voltage 0.23V.  Does 0.23V sound insignificant?  Stock is 1.45V, so effectively I dropped it about 16%. 

I didn't even see how low I could set the voltage and still maintain a stable PC because I was in a rush so I'm sure it could go lower, but hopefully you can see why someone might do it and a situation in which it is practical.