8700T on H310 Motherboard

[Donut]

Hello everyone!

I finally managed to get my hands on an 8700T for a new office computer, and I'm shopping for a motherboard. I don't need many bells-and-whistles, and the H310 chipset seems adequate at first glance. However, I'm concerned about the ability of the 8700T to reach its maximum all-core turbo frequency on an H310 motherboard. This chipset seems to be geared toward budget motherboards (with presumably cheaper VRM components), and I've read that the 8700T can draw up to 120W under full load despite its 35W TDP.

Does anyone here have experience running the 8700T (or maybe even the 8700) on an H310 motherboard? Does it limit your CPU at all?

 

[Donut]

I think it would be useful to update this thread with information I find, in case someone else has a similar question.

I still have not found data from a system using an 8700T and an H310 motherboard, but I have found some information that leads me to think that it may be an issue (if the goal is to let 8700T run unbridled).

1. When turbo boost is not constrained, and the system does not have any cooling issues (CPU or VRM), an 8700T has peak power consumption similar to a stock 7700K (see here: https://www.computerbase.de/2018-06/intel-core-i7-8700t-i5-8500t-cpu-test-coffee-lake/3/?amp=1). That's roughly 100W full non-AVX load, and 140W full AVX load.

2. The 8400 draws about 20W less than the peak power of the 8700T. The stock 8700K draws about 20W more, and has similar peak power draw to 8700 (non-K). Hardware Unboxed ran some tests on the 8400 and 8700 using B360 boards of different quality - a more expensive board with VRM heatsinks and a cheap board with no VRM heatsinks (see here: https://www.techspot.com/review/1603-intel-b360-chipset/). The lack of VRM heatsinks did not affect performance of the 8400, but it led to a ~15% drop in performance for the 8700. The 8700 drew more power, which heated up the VRM more, and without adequate cooling this led to throttling. The power consumption of the 8700T is in the middle of the 8400 and 8700, so we might expect some detriment to performance with heatsink-less VRM (though it's hard to say how much).

3. Many H310 motherboards do not have heatsinks over the VRM. The number of power phases also tends to be smaller on H310 boards. I'm not very savvy with this stuff, but my understanding is that, given some set wattage target and equivalent MOSFET specs, with fewer total MOSFETs each individual MOSFET must "work harder" (use more voltage) to reach the target wattage, producing more heat. So I'm guessing the VRM of H310 boards generally run hotter, and they lack heatsinks to dissipate this heat. The Hardware Unboxed data are relevant to H310 boards.

This is all speculation, based on a a handful of different sources using different test setups (the comparisons I'm making may not be appropriate). It would still be nice to have first-hand data of the 8700T on an H310 board.