Test Setup

• All applications, games, and processors are tested with the drivers and hardware listed below—no performance results were recycled between test systems.
• All games and applications are tested using the same version.
• All games are set to their highest quality setting unless indicated otherwise.
• Now that DDR5 has gained some maturity, we will use faster DDR5 speeds with tighter timings in upcoming reviews (once we retest the 40+ CPUs in our test group)
• The ASUS Z890 Hero motherboard feeds four of the CPU VRM phases from the 24-pin ATX connector, instead of the 8-pins, which makes it impossible to measure CPU-only power with dedicated test equipment (we're not trusting any CPU software power sensors). You either lose some power because only the two 8-pin CPU connectors are measured, or you end up including power for the GPU, chips, and storage when measuring the two 8-pin connectors along with the 24-pin ATX. For this reason, we used an MSI Z890 Carbon for the power consumption tests in this review.