Hi, I just got a new pc switching from a 9700k and am quite new to the whole "13th & 14th gen dying from power limits" thing. I have spent quite a lot of time in the past few days tweaking with the BIOS and XTU to try tuning the CPU.
First of all, 14900kf I have seems to bench slightly towards the lower end, scoring around 12400-12800 in XTU 2.0 compared to the expected 13000+. In cinebench 24, it scored 2207 with a .05V flat undervolt, PL1/2 both set at 260W and ICC limit at 320A. (I can't raise them much higher before thermal throttling becomes a fairly constant issue, no clue if this is normal for AIOs or if my cooling is plain bad)
During the bench tests, the thermal ramps quickly up to around 80c, and eventually starts to throttle when tested in cinebench. While all that's happening, the P-cores are always pegged at 5.1GHz and the E-cores are pegged at 4.1GHz, quite a bit lower than my set limit of 5.8 and 4.5, respectively. XTU shows that it is mostly from a combination of power limit throttling and current throttling.
I am wondering if such a massive drop in frequency limit during benchmarks and stress tests is common/expected for ppl running close to the Intel stock power limits, or if I have a bit of a dud in my hand.
For your information, here's the specifics of the PC:
MSI Z790-P mobo
14900kf cpu
MSI coreliquid m360 aio (pulling cold air in)
Using a thermalright contact frame & arctic silver 5 paste
4 Comments
It could be an AVX workload offset or if you only changed the boost frequency it might not be boosting as high due to the high thermals.
It could also just be due to the power and current limit you’ve set.
Are the motherboard’s VRM’s throttling? See if a case fan over them helps any
Artic Silver 5 is stuff you would have used on an i7 920. Just buy anything else next time.
I would check your mount is snug. Check the radiator fans and pump are turned up a bit. Honestly just max the pump out. That faster you push cold water over the plate the better.
Go into the BIOS and time there. Stop using XTU.
Try and set an IA/Core offset of -70mV and cache of -50mV and E core/L2 of -50mV.
If temps still don’t improve I’d swap that paste out. Just buy the 38x38mm kryosheet from thermal grizzly if you don’t want a mess and something easy to use. Can reuse it in future builds as long as you’re careful not to tear it.
You overclocked it and set a lower PL of 260W, of course it will downclock to keep power in check.
My 14900KF with MCE and unlimited PL scores 2427 in CB24 but max package power peaked at 370W during the test. I’d say your CB24 score of 2207 with PL1/2 at 260W is not bad at all.