See the original comments under the news article. > Base frequency is when the Tau moving window time has expired. How most modern high end motherboards set it

See the original comments under the news article. > Base frequency is when the Tau moving window time has expired. How most modern high end motherboards set it to an effective unlimited time. https://www.anandtech.com/show/13544/why-intel-processors-draw-more-power-than-expected-tdp-turbo https://www.anandtech.com/show/13544/why-intel-processors-dr... > To simplify, there are three main numbers to be aware of. Intel calls these numbers PL1 (power level 1), PL2 (power level 2), and T (or tau). > PL1 is the effective long-term expected steady state power consumption of a processor. [...] PL2 is the short-term maximum power draw for a processor. [...] Tau is a timing variable. It dictates how long a processor should stay in PL2 mode before hitting a PL1 mode. > This is where it gets really stupid: the motherboard vendors got involved, because PL1, PL2 and Tau are configurable in firmware. [...] This lets them set PL2 to 4096W and Tau to something very large, such as 65535, or -1 (infinity, depending on the BIOS setup). This means the CPU will run in its turbo modes all day and all week, just as long as it doesn’t hit thermal limits.