CPU Frequency, Power, and Temperatures
The information below is taken from HWInfo64, which takes the information from the motherboard and CPU sensors. A 10 minutes loop of Cinebench R23 was used to load the system.
Functionally, the CPU package power is the same between both power limit settings. Despite being uncapped, the BIOS default settings from MSI don’t really help here. This is in part due to the fact that the CPU simply runs too hot to take advantage of the additional headroom.
CPU temperatures are identical for both Intel and MSI default power limit values. At 101c, the CPU will end up throttling down. As you can see from the data below, the average clock speeds are well below the maximum values.
Simply put, the 12900K runs hot and spends way too much time at the upper limit of what our cooling can handle. The CPU ends up throttling as it hits 101c rather quickly. On custom water cooling this gap would likely increase somewhat at the very least. That said, we do get 10MHz more consistently with MSI’s power limits.
Lastly, our maximum clocks are almost identical being about 1MHz apart. That’s insignificant outside of the fact that repeated testing shows this difference is virtually always present. These clocks are also basically the same as they are on other motherboards I’ve tested this CPU with.