Hey all!

I just upgraded my Z690-based system from a 12600K to a 14700KF.

Seeing how this chip is listed with a max turbo power-draw of 253 W, and I do know from reviews and tests that my 240mm AiO can handle 250 Watt (and my case has pretty great airflow), I wasn’t too worried about the added wattage.

Until I ran Cinebench 24 to test the new CPU.

Cores were maxed out all the time, naturally, but according to HWMonitor, none of the P-cores ever boosted to their stock maximum of 5.6 GHz. All of them had a recorded peak of 5.5 GHz.

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Thing is that after a few minutes, multiple P-cores started to show some red (100°C), so I got scared and aborted the run after… ~3 - 4 minutes. What really weirded me out though is the fact that power-draw peaked way above what I would’ve expected. It went up to nearly 300 W (299.5). Which is quite a lot more than the advertised 253 W - especially since the CPU never reached its maximum frequencies. I should probably add that it wasn’t just a spike in power - I was keeping a close eye on power-draw the whole time and it never went below the high 270s. Which is still more than 20 W higher (most of the time more than that) than what I would’ve expected without overclocking.

Needless to say this was a stock run (other than having XMP enabled).

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Some specs:

Board: MSI Z690 Tomahawk DDR4 (latest BIOS with 14th gen support is installed)

Memory: 2x16 GB G-Skill Trident Z 3600 CL16

Case: Fractal Design Pop XL Air RGB

Fans: 2x 140 top exhausts, 1x 120 rear exhaust. Front has the 2 120 for the AiO and the rad plus one of the crappy 120s that came with the case, all as intakes. Temps were great with the 12600K installed (and that was without the additional front intake), so I’m pretty sure I have good enough airflow.

Anyone know what might be going on here?

Should I perhaps activate the power-limit in the BIOS? I have it on “unlimited” right now … well, technically speaking it’s not unlimited but some ridiculous value like 4000+ Watt on this board, but still … :D

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S.