Power Consumption and Temperatures

With the test bench update, I have also overhauled my temperature measurement 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 BIOSTAR Racing B460GTA, the two probes are evenly spaced along the VRM. A probe is left out to log the ambient temperature. All temperatures are presented as Delta-T normalized to 20 °C, which is the measured temperature minus the ambient temperature plus 20 °C. The end result accounts for changes in ambient temperature, including those over the course of a test, while presenting the data as if the ambient temperature were a steady 20 °C for easy presentation. 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 chart above, I am now using Prime95's Small FFT test for power consumption. For temperatures, I am using the maximum temperatures recorded over the course of my standard benchmark suite (this is almost always during wPrime or Blender tests). 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.

This test typically involves a 30 minute Prime95 run at the maximum overclock the motherboard can maintain, again with no airflow over the VRM. For B460, I had to stick with the stock settings because of Intel's restrictions. 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.


The BIOSTAR Racing B460GTA did well in my VRM test, barely going above 70 °C. Given the Racing B460GTA has a locked power limit, the VRM should be plenty sufficient.