Power Consumption and Temperatures

With the test bench update, I have also overhauled my temperature measurement and methodology. For measurement, I now use a Reed SD-947 4 channel Data Logging Thermometer paired with four Omega Engineering SA1 Self Adhesive Thermocouple probes. One probe directly touches the chipset and two are placed on select power stages. The last probe actively logs the ambient temperature.

For the ASRock Z390 Phantom Gaming X, one is in the center of the left bank Vcore, and one is put on the top Vcore next to the SOC power stages. A probe is left out to log the ambient temperature. All temperatures are presented as Delta-T, which is the measured temperature minus the ambient temperature. Additionally, there is no longer any direct airflow over the VRM with this new setup, placing extra strain on the VRM cooling.

For the numbers seen in the above chart, I use wPrime for both temperature and power draw as it is the most intense. However, relatively short tests do not put enough strain on the system to get a look at how the VRM performs at the limit, so I added an additional test to try to thermally abuse Vcore as much as possible. It involves a 30 minute Prime95 run at the maximum overclock the motherboard can maintain, again with no airflow over the VRM. The temperatures are logged every second, and the two probes are then averaged for a cleaner presentation before subtracting the ambient to calculate the Delta-T. The results are charted below.


Between the overbuilt VRM and hefty heatsink, the ASRock Z390 Phantom Gaming X thwarted my best attempts to make it thermal throttle.