Question i9-12900KS extremely hot and EDP throttling

Elia1995

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I recently upgraded my PC to an i9-12900KS and I tried two different liquid coolers on it, but with both of them (the former being a 240mm with 2 fans and the second a 360mm with 3 fans), the CPU spikes to over 90 degrees under full 100% load.
With the 240mm AIO, it spikes straight to 100 degrees in a second, with the 360mm one, it spikes to about 95-97 but never reaches 100.

At this point I don't know anymore what to try to further improve the cooling of this CPU... Furthermore, XTU doesn't show that it's thermal throttling since I switched to this 360mm AIO, but it does show a constant current/EDP throttling and idk how to solve that.

Since I dual boot Linux and Windows, I checked and the temperatures are a tiny bit better on Arch and Garuda, with the highest spike of 95 degrees, not a huge difference than Windows 11 anyway.
 

Phaaze88

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By default, that cpu has an infinite turbo limit and no time limit on turbo. Meaning it's free to suck up as much power as it needs, and slow down for next to no reason - if the cpu hits the throttle limit, it'll briefly drop in frequency, voltage, temperature, etc, and shoot right back up, continuing this over and over and over, until your tasks are done.
There's also an Alder Lake exclusive issue with uneven socket pressure on the cpu, which just complements the above and not helping. More info on that HERE.


Solution(s):
A)Go into bios and apply a power limit, be it 200w, 190w, 180w... whatever gets the core temperatures into your comfort zone.
B)Get one of the Alder Lake contact frames, plus apply a power limit.
 

Elia1995

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How would I apply a power limit on an ASUS bios? Also, on my bios it says that the short boost has a window of "56" whatever it means idk, whether it's 56 seconds or something else
 
With the 240mm AIO, it spikes straight to 100 degrees in a second, with the 360mm one, it spikes to about 95-97 but never reaches 100.
Adaptive boost will always try to reach 100 degrees because otherwise it's just performance you lose.
You can disable that and still keep all the other turbo modes active if you want to.
Don't look at power and temps for something that you will never ever use in real work, if you touch 100 degrees on a stress test on anything you actually do you will have much lower temps.
https://www.intel.com/content/www/u...intel-technologies-boost-cpu-performance.html
Intel® Adaptive Boost TechnologyOpportunistically increases all-core turbo frequency when current, power, and thermal headroom exists. Works below a temperature limit of 100°C.
By default, that cpu has an infinite turbo limit and no time limit on turbo.
No THE CPU is very much limited to 241W turbo and not to an infinite turbo, anything above that is not covered by intel.
The default of THE MOBO can very well be to juice the living daylights out of the CPU.
turbo_small.jpg
 
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Karadjgne

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Intel recommends PL2 as max turbo, duration 56 seconds (Tau) after which the cpu should drop to PL1 indefinitely (PL1 is effectively TDP). So by default, you'd only see 240w for a minute, then 125w thereafter.

But motherboard vendors are notorious for ignoring Intel recommendations, doing so deliberately so they can advertise that their mobo is higher performance than the competition. They'll do so by changing the turbo parameters, the PL1, PL2, Tau limits in particular. You'll see that as Performance Mode or other such in Bios.

The MSI Godlike sets PL2 as 1000w, PL1 as 1000w and Tau as 999999 seconds, for instance. Effectively indefinite turbo run amok with as much power as the cpu and cooling can handle.

A 240mm AIO is @ 250w capacity, a 360mm AIO is @ 300w capacity, so by the 97°C temps on a 360mm AIO, I'd say the cpu was pushing @ 280w± in turbo full load, further evidenced by the 240mm hitting 100°C in seconds, that cpu power load being beyond its capacity and hitting throttle temps.

Try resetting bios to factory optimized default settings, touching nothing else except for XMP.