Flagship Z390 vs Budget Z370 Motherboard

Nosotros have two final graphs we'd like to discuss which compare the operation of Intel new 9900K on a flagship Z390 motherboard to that of a budget Z370 motherboard, MSI's Z370 PC Pro packing a real 4-phase VRM and for reference I've included the Core i7-8700K and Threadripper 2950X results.

Starting with the stock out of the box functioning nosotros saw that the MSI Z390 Godlike allowed the 9900K to produce a score of 2048 pts. Now slotting that CPU onto the Z370 PC Pro resulted in a score of just 1790 pts after a vi-run average. Initially the score was upwards around 1900 pts only on the 2nd pass nosotros saw a lot more VRM throttling and this continued as we ran the test 4 more than times to study a 6 run average.

This meant on average the 9900K was 13% slower on the budget Z370 lath. It is possible to enter the BIOS and remove the power limits and this did come across full functioning restored merely fifty-fifty so we still saw some VRM thermal throttling going on and I did have a 120mm fan direct over the vcore VRM heatsink. And so this is likely shortening the life of the motherboard and I don't recommend removing the limits on boards with them in place.

Interestingly, if you lot overclock the 9900K on the Z370 board with the limits in place the performance is much worse than if you did nothing at all. Basically the increased vcore voltage sees the VRM throttle even harder with the limits in place and this further reduces CPU core clocks. Once again removing the ability limits does mostly restore performance to what was seen on the Z390 board, just if you were placing this lath under heavy load for extended periods on a regular basis I don't imagine it volition have a long and happy life, probable look fireworks in the short term.