Question Intel Turbo Boost causing my cpu to keep thermal throttling

[natanael6698]

This problem's been happening ever since I tried tweaking turbo power limits manually (PL1 & 2 were set to 150W from being auto), my CPU max clock would sit at 4.6 ghz and when it reaches around 75 degrees, instead of reducing the max clock it would always thermal throttle all the way to 800 mhz for a few seconds. This has never happened before i tweaked the turbo power limits and still happens even after i reset the bios settings to default (which also resets every overclock related settings to auto except for turbo boosting, which was always enabled by default).

Usually it would just decrease the max clock to around 3.8 GHz - 4.2 Ghz depending on my room temperature

These are my specs:
CPU: Intel i7 10700 (no suffix)
RAM: 2x16 gb @ 3200 mhz
Mobo: Gigabyte B460 MDS3H
GPU: RTX 4070 (yes i know my cpu is bottlenecking my system to hell and back, and am planning to upgrade someday)

Any insight and help would be much appreciated, thanks in advance!

 

[natanael6698]

Okay, sorry for double posting but after a lot of trial and errors, I've finally found that the cause of this issue was "CPU Power Performance" being enabled in bios, im not sure if this is exclusive to gigabyte boards, but there you go, now my CPU can freely switch between 3.8 - 4.6 ghz and sit at 65-70 degrees max while playing ray traced cyberpunk at high settings.

If anyone is still interested in answering a related question, what exactly does CPU Power Performance do?

 

[Phaaze88]

This problem's been happening ever since I tried tweaking turbo power limits manually (PL1 & 2 were set to 150W from being auto), my CPU max clock would sit at 4.6 ghz and when it reaches around 75 degrees, instead of reducing the max clock it would always thermal throttle all the way to 800 mhz for a few seconds.

Mobo: Gigabyte B460 MDS3H

That motherboard's VRM is small, and doesn't have any heatsinks around it. Suspecting motherboard VRM thermal throttling. The feature will starve the cpu of power, but as soon as the VRM cools a couple degrees below the limit, it'll go back to supplying full power, hit the throttle limit again, and do it over and over and over, until you stop or swap to lighter tasks.
Your power limit tweak must be running the VRMs hotter - to the point of throttle - than whatever the auto setting was.
It's normal for the frequency on unused cores to lower, to save power, but not all the way to 800mhz; that clock's been a symptom of VRM thermal throttling for a long time.

This... still happens even after i reset the bios settings to default (which also resets every overclock related settings to auto except for turbo boosting, which was always enabled by default).

Is this a prebuilt, or DIY?
If it was the former, the SI may have customized some settings before they sent it to you.

Okay, sorry for double posting but after a lot of trial and errors, I've finally found that the cause of this issue was "CPU Power Performance" being enabled in bios, im not sure if this is exclusive to gigabyte boards, but there you go, now my CPU can freely switch between 3.8 - 4.6 ghz and sit at 65-70 degrees max while playing ray traced cyberpunk at high settings.

If anyone is still interested in answering a related question, what exactly does CPU Power Performance do?

CPU Power Performance is one of many protections on the board. If I were to hazard a guess, by disabling it, you just told the motherboard to ignore the VRM throttle limit, and to continue supplying power to the cpu, creating a 'this is fine' moment for the VRM.
It's not exclusive to Gigabyte, just worded differently. They all do it, like how Asus coins their auto OC 'Multi Core Enhancement(MCE)'.

I'd turn CPU Power Performance back on, unless you're going to upgrade in a couple months?