Low power draw -- i5-11400 with ASRock B560M Pro4

[wolffan]

Hi all, I have an i5-11400 with an ASRock B560M Pro4. I also have a tower style aftermarket air cooler. I set the PL1 power limit to 125W in the BIOS (highest available setting). When I stress/test the CPU with cinebench, the power level never goes above 100W, even at the start of the test. Because I unlocked the power limit, it stays at 100W for the duration of the test. Any idea why it never goes above 100W? At the very least, it should go to 125W for 10-20 seconds per the B560 spec, right? My CPU temp never climbs above 60C. My clock speed reaches the turbo value (4.2 GHz).

 

[FreedomEclipse]

Its the board/bios itself....

 

[unclewebb]

why it never goes above 100W?

My clock speed reaches the turbo value (4.2 GHz).

You answered your own question.

A CPU is only going to consume as much power as it needs to consume. If the CPU is running at full speed and it only consumes 100W then that is a good thing. Why would you want it to consume more power and run hotter if it does not need to? It is already running at full speed.

The amount of power necessary to run at full speed varies depending on what type of load you are running. Stress tests that use the AVX instructions in the CPU will consume more power compared to tests that do not use these instructions. The 11th Gen CPUs support the new AVX-512 instruction set which can really send power consumption through the roof.

Try doing some Prime95 testing if you want to see higher power consumption. The latest version of this program allows you to choose what instruction set to use. Either default, AVX, AVX2 or AVX-512. Each test will consume a different amount of power. The Small FFTs test is a good way to warm up the cores.

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