Let me agree with you explicitly on loving the return to a sane power configuration here. I was watching Hardware Unboxed’s retest of this after the patches and it takes almost fifteen minutes of them reiterating that the 9700X and the 14700K are tied for performance and price before they even mention the bombshell that the 9700X is doing that with about half the wattage.

The fact that we keep pushing reviews and benchmarks focused strictly on pedal-to-the-metal overclocked performance and nothing else is such a disgrace. I made the mistake to buy into a 13700K and I have it under lower than out of box power limits manually both to prevent longevity issues and because this damn computer is more effective as a hair dryer than anything else.

We don’t mention it much because Intel was in the process of catching on actual fire at the same time, but the way this generation has been marketed, presented to reviewers, supported and eventually reviewed has been a massive trainwreck, considering the performance of the actual product.