One of the main problems we all face today with Intel and AMD is efficiently dissipating their power consumption. And it is that traditional values are of little use with their current measures, since they start from the base frequency, when this is really more a problem than a solution. The processors therefore do not officially show their cooling and consumption needs, but in Comet Lake this data such as PL1 and PL2 has been leaked.
For years, the two processor giants have changed the way they measure the cooling and consumption needs of their CPUs. The base frequency is now the key factor and therefore only refers to one of its energy states, where in the case of Intel it refers specifically to the so-called PL1. But, what are the real consumptions to dissipate?
Intel will reach the thermal limit for common refrigerations with its PL1 and PL2
| Intel Comet Lake-S – PL1 / PL2 / Tau | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| CPU | PL1 | PL2 | Tau |
| 10th Gen Core Comet Lake-S “K-Series” – 125W | |||
| Core i9-10900K | 125W | 250W | 56s |
| Core i7-10700K | 125W | 229W | 56s |
| Core i5-10600K | 125W | 182W | 56s |
| Comet Lake-S “standard” tenth generation – 65W | |||
| 10 cores with / without iGPU, Core i9-10000 (F) | 65W | 224W | 28s |
| 8 cores with / without iGPU, Core i7-10000 (F) | 65W | 224W | 28s |
| 6 cores with / without iGPU, Core i5-10000 (F) | 65W | 134W | 28s |
| 4 cores with iGPU, Core i3-10000 | 65W | 90W | 28s |
| 2 cores with iGPU, Pentium and Celeron | 58W | 58W | 28s |
| 10th Gen Core Comet Lake-S “T-Series” – 35W | |||
| 10 cores with iGPU, Core i9-10000T | 35W | 123W | 28s |
| 8 cores with iGPU, Core i7-10000T | 35W | 123W | 28s |
| 6 cores with GPU, Core i5-10000T | 35W | 92W | 28s |
| 4 cores with iGPU, Core i3-10000T | 35W | 55W | 28s |
| 2 cores with iGPU, Pentium and Celeron T | 35W | 42W | 28s |
As we can see, the actual consumption values have nothing to do with those specified by Intel, where in addition, said values are also different from those of its predecessor brothers.
The values are in many cases outliers, but will range from 35 watts in PL1, to 125 watts in the Power Limit itself and from 42 watts in PL2 to an incredible 250 watts. Unfortunately, the PL3 and PL4 values are not specified, although in most boards they are deactivated as standard, in others you can activate and gain performance with it.
New power limits for certain processors
As if this were not enough and given the amount of data we see, there are some numbers that the most savvy will have detected as either erroneous or impossible. We talk about the cases of those processors that have a PL1 of 65 and 35 watts, but that see their PL2 increased to 224 and 123 watts.
To contextualize this, keep in mind that until now Intel only allowed the difference between PL1 and PL2 to be 1.25X greater for the second of these values.
Now with Comet Lake-S Intel breaks that barrier and enables a 3.5x higher value , including some low-power T-series models and other standard 65-watt series models.
So those who decide to opt for any of these processors and a motherboard that allows them to bypass the restrictions of the PL1 such as ASUS or ASRock, will have a cheaper CPU that can increase its frequency quite a bit thanks to the new overclocking techniques where the processor may be capped.