How to stop the i5-14600KF from throttling in Stellar Blade?
Watching this i5-14600KF struggle with Stellar Blade's physics was like watching a marathon runner stop to take a nap—the clock speed dive was just ridiculous. HWInfo showed PL1 was hard-locked at 125W, so the chip was throttling itself even though it was only 65-72℃. Total waste of silicon. I tried the motherboard's 'Auto-OC' first, but the CPU hit 98℃ and shut down instantly; that was a wake-up call about how dangerous uncontrolled voltage can be. I manually unlocked PL1 and PL2 to 253W and applied a -0.05V offset to keep things cool. Now the clock stays steady at 5.1-5.3GHz, and frame times tightened from a messy 16-32ms to a crisp 11-14ms. The fans sounded like a jet engine at first, but I tweaked the fan curve to make it bearable. Voltage is stable at 1.22-1.28V with power draw at 160-185W. Exported the data and it's finally performing as advertised.
