Why is my i7-10700F locked at 2.9 GHz in an Alienware Aurora R11?
Asked by
MellowPine42
My i7-10700F stays at its 2.9 GHz base clock instead of boosting, even when idle or under load. HWiNFO reports a constant 29x multiplier, and Cinebench R20 multi-core scores only 1772. During a full-load test, temperatures remain around 70°C and CPU power is about 37 W, so this does not appear to be thermal or power throttling. HWiNFO only shows the "Max Turbo Limit" flag at 100%. Turbo is enabled in firmware, and the listed turbo ratios go as high as 48x. I have tried different Windows power plans, enabled aggressive boost behavior, removed frequency caps, updated the BIOS, loaded optimized defaults, checked SpeedStep, Turbo Boost, and C-States, tested with Speed Shift disabled, removed the system-management utilities, and confirmed that neither XTU nor ThrottleStop is installed. Dell's hardware diagnostics also found no errors. What could be forcing the processor to remain at its base multiplier?
Answers
Hyper-Threading is enabled, but that setting does not normally control whether Turbo Boost works. Disabling it did not change the behavior either: the processor still reports roughly 2.89 GHz with a 29x multiplier during stress testing and at idle. Since temperatures and package power are low, this looks more like a firmware or motherboard performance-policy issue than normal thermal throttling. Recheck every BIOS performance setting, perform a complete power removal and CMOS reset if supported, and compare the multiplier in BIOS hardware monitoring and another utility. If it remains locked after a BIOS reset, the system may need Dell firmware or motherboard support.
Reply to this answer
Add your answer
Answers are reviewed before publication.
MellowPine42: I disabled Hyper-Threading and checked again with both HWiNFO and CPU-Z, but the clock stayed at about 2893 MHz with a 29x multiplier, both under stress and without a stress test.