Precision 5820@Xeon W-2245 Current/EDP limit throttling.

I have detailed this issue in a video:

https://youtu.be/kRMS0Ka1FTQ

@tomstephens89​ I have the same issue with the 5820 and the w-2145 !!! It NEVER goes past the base CPU core speed !!! What a shame, they ask big bucks and deliver a race horse with its legs cut off. I tried every setting, updated to the latest BIOS, nothing. Its appalling in my opinion along with the lack of support by DELL for this obviously known and probably intended issue. I put this CPU on a different board and get the full Turbo Boost Frequency speed for each core ! I am really disappointed and thank you very much for your video, sir. I thought I did something wrong.
The only thing I can do from my end is to stop buying crippled and overpriced workstations by Dell again.

@tomstephens89 Thanks for your research on this. I bought a Precision 5820 myself with an i9-10940X and upgraded the CPU to your i9-10980XE. A few takes from my own experimentation: as quite a few others have done, I replaced the stock cooler and shroud with a Noctua U9DX i4, which sadly is the largest cooler that I've seen confirmed to fit the narrow ILM + chassis.

Current/EDP Throttling: Per the Intel forums, this is expected behavior. Hindsight is 20/20, but with the Intel CPU degradation scandal of the the past couple years, this throttling is likely a good thing. Also, bear in mind that Precisions are about reliability and uptime and not just about performance. It wouldn't do Dell any favors to deliver systems that drag race well but die after a year or 2.

Thermal Throttling: I've been able to defeat this on all XTU CPU stress tests by setting the fan offsets to 100%. I'll be doing some more tweaking to figure out a less noisy setting that still works, but yes it's possible to avoid throttling with an aftermarket cooling solution. FWIW, the 20 - 25% setting I've seen recommended here doesn't resolve the issue.

Package TDP: With XTU's Power/Current optimization enabled (~12% XTU benchmark boost) and fan offsets set to 100%, I've been able to sustain Package TDP of ~220W in the default XTU CPU stress test without thermal throttling. 220W might not sound like much, but it's 33% over the 10980XE's 165W spec. Overall, I'd say that's pretty good for prebuilt motherboard.

IMO, the biggest limitation of the 5820 isn't the BIOS or the motherboard but rather the chassis being too small for overclocking (note the emphasis). In reality the chassis size is limited by the rack mounting feature. If the chassis were larger, Dell could have used a square ILM CPU socket, which would allow a larger cooler and a larger overclocking Package TDP. Unfortunately in enterprise as standard rack sizes effectively quantize compute units, the solution to that limitation is to add another physical machine and make a cluster, not overclock.

Where I'm going with this is, as fun and attractive as it sounds, overclocking a workstation like this is not using the workstation as Dell intended. That said, the 5820 and its motherboard are one of the last few HEDT solutions with 4+ (8, in this case) onboard SATA ports, so if you need PCIe lanes, have a lot of HDDs, and don't want to drop $8K on Threadripper DIY build, a refurb 5820 (which is what I got) might be the only option.

@tomstephens89 Did you wind up getting the Noctua NH-U12DX i4? I'm trying to find out whether it has sufficient RAM clearance (I need at least 34.5 mm) for the 5820 but can't find any specs or confirmation of that anywhere.