Some motherboard makers are secretly overclocking your Ryzen CPU

System monitoring and diagnostics tool HWiNFO has added a new feature that lets AMD Ryzen processor users monitor "Power Reporting Deviation". As explained on the tool's forums, some motherboard makers are deliberately pushing Ryzen processors out-of-spec to gain an edge in benchmarks. Two of the largest motherboard makers are reportedly using this technique to gain an unfair advantage over competitors:

Since at least two of the largest motherboard manufacturers, still insist on using this exploit to gain an advantage over their competitors despite being constantly asked and told not to, we thought it would be only fair to allow the consumers to see if their boards are doing something they're not supposed to do. The issue with using this exploit is, that it messes up the power management of the CPU and potentially also decreases its lifespan because it is running the CPU outside the spec, in some cases by a vast margin. Also, it can cause issues when this exploit goes undetected by a hardware reviewer, since both the performance and the sofware based power consumption figures will be affected by it.

For example, if we take a Ryzen 7 3700X CPU that has 65W TDP and 88W default power limit (PPT), and use it on a board which has declared only 60% of its actual telemetry reference current, we'll end up with effective power limit of ~ 147W (88 / 0.6) despite running at stock settings (i.e. without enabling manual overclocking or AMD PBO). While the 3700X SKU used in this example typically cannot even reach this kind of a power draw before running into the other limiters and limitations, the fact remains that the CPU is running far outside the spec without the user even acknowledging it. This exploit can also cause additional cost and work to the consumer, who starts wondering about the abnormally high CPU temperatures and starts troubleshooting the issue initially by remounting the cooling and usually, eventually by purchasing a better CPU cooler(s).

HWiNFO says the "Power Reporting Deviation" metric should be as close to 100 percent as possible under a stable, near-full-load scenario. If the value is significantly lower than ~95 percent, it indicates there is most likely intentional biasing going on. A suggested workload to get a stable and reproducable deviation metric is Cinebench R20 NT, with the HWiNFO sample rate set to less or equal to 1000ms.