Asus ROG Strix Z390-I Gaming

[HEXUS]

Small in size, big in performance.

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[philehidiot]

The turbo behaviour can possibly be explained by the Tau variable which dictates how long the CPU can stay in a particular power level. This variable is a timer and acts independently of the CPU temperature to limit how long the CPU can stay in turbo. The reason being that Intel don't want you reducing the life of the chips (so they say, but surely if its adequately cooled it doesn't matter?) but also they don't want you going out and buying a decent cooler, running in turbo mode all the time and essentially going up the product hierarchy for "free". When turbo hits, it increases clockpeed, the Tau timer expires, speed drops and it allows the currently workload to finish, gives it a few minutes and then allows turbo again.

To allow OEMs integrating into SFF, etc to change the behaviour of the turbo to fit their cooling apparatus, this variable can be changed by OEMs or motherboard manufacturers who can set it at something stupid (which basically says turbo all day long if you like) to boost their benchmarks. It is likely that the Asus board uses the Intel recommended settings whereas the other boards basically eliminate Tau and use only thermal regulation.

This is from a recent article on Anandtech explaining why Intel's specified TDPs are not representative of actual TDP.

[edmundhonda]

As above: the ~4.1ghz all-core is about where the 9900K runs when the 95W TDP is enforced (PL1). The board is running precisely to Intel's spec when it does that!

In case you haven't joined the dots, this is why those 'bang4watt' graphs are misleading.

[=assassin=]

We also like the way in which modern boards now come with integrated shields

Me too! I really am glad that more and more boards are being available with this feature, since I often find the I/O shields a pain, with them popping out just as I've lined everything up.