[stcredzero]

Well, because heat dissipation is proportional to the square of the voltage, you end up giving up a little bit of performance but save a whole lot of heat. In experiential terms, you never miss performance but often notice a whole lot less fan noise.

Buying from a lower bin, you're getting a crappier processor, which might give you less latitude to save heat. This would probably be worth measuring and writing an article about. Also, I tend to buy lower clocked processors as it is.

[wmf]

I think it's likely that all lower bins are artificial, so e.g. underclocking a 2.4 GHz down to 2.0 is probably exactly the same as if you bought the 2.0. But yeah, it would be worth measuring.

[stcredzero]

Ah, I see. I wrote underclock. It's really undervolting that gets you the big win thermally. Underclocking should be done just as a means of achieving a greater undervolt. I just have these two things in the same mental bin.

[wmf]

When you underclock properly (with SpeedStep) it also lowers the voltage... probably to the same voltage that the lower-bin processor would use.

[stcredzero]

There's not just one voltage here. It's a curve. I suspect that the better the processor turned out, the more favorable your curve turns out to be.