Intel continues to struggle with stability issues with its latest generation of fastest processors. It seems that motherboard manufacturers are setting the power consumption too high and therefore the voltage too high.
As a result, many users report problems playing games or keeping their computer running properly. Apparently, to solve the problem it is worth playing with the power management profiles that can be selected in the BIOS.
ASUS has released a BIOS update for its motherboards that introduces an option called “Intel Baseline Profile”. This setting should resolve the issue. This profile is nothing more than restriction and reduction of limits, which affects performance. The German portal “HardwareLuxx” studied this function and presented the results.
Tests were carried out using a powerful Intel Core i9-14900K processor. Among other things, the profile changes the PL2 specification, which is set by ASUS to 4095 W by default (that is, theoretically unlimited). The Baseline Profile restores the value recommended by Intel, which is 253 W. For testing purposes, the editors set the same consumption for PL1 and PL2. The results can be seen in the graph below:
Intel Core i9-14900K on ASUS boards with standard power consumption settings loses on average about 8-9% productivity. It looks like ASUS was the culprit in this case, not Intel. The motherboard manufacturer, in “auto” mode, agreed to increase the limit values to absurd levels.
If you follow Intel's recommendations, the stability problem can be significantly reduced, but at the expense of reduced performance. However, power consumption and voltage, and therefore temperature, are reduced.
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Cover author: Intel. Cover source: Benchfa