Ryzen CPUs for AM4 platform rely on external, motherboard sourced telemetry to determine their power consumption. The voltage, current and power telemetry is provided to the processor by the motherboard VRM controller through the AMD SVI2 interface. This information is consumed by the processors power management co-processor, that is responsible for adjusting the operating parameters of the CPU and ensuring, that neither the CPU SKU, platform or infrastructure specific limits are being violated.
The weakness of this method is, that the telemetry essentially uses an undefined scale for the current (and hence power) measurements. This means that the motherboard VRM controller will send an integer between 0 - 255 to the CPU, and based the reference value known by the co-processor firmwares, this integer is converted to a figure, that represents a physical current drawn by the CPU. Based on the accurately known current flow and the voltage, it is possible to calculate to CPU power draw in Watts (V * I).
The reference value mentioned earlier is generally different for each of the motherboard make and model, unless there are boards which have an identical power circuitry. Because of that, it is on the motherboard manufacturers responsibility to find the correct value for their motherboard design through the means of calibration, and then to declare it properly in AGESA, during the bios compile time. In case the motherboard design specific, correct value differs greatly from the declared value, there will be a bias in the power consumption seen by the CPU. In case the declared value is greater than the actual value, the power consumption seen by the CPU is greater than it actually is. Likewise, if the declared value would be an understatement... the CPU would think it consumes less power than it actually does.
Since at least two of the largest motherboard manufacturers, still insist on using this exploit to gain an advantage over their competitors despite being constantly asked and told not to, we thought it would be only fair to allow the consumers to see if their boards are doing something they're not supposed to do. The issue with using this exploit is, that it messes up the power management of the CPU and potentially also decreases its lifespan because it is running the CPU outside the spec, in some cases by a vast margin. Also, it can cause issues when this exploit goes undetected by a hardware reviewer, since both the performance and the sofware based power consumption figures will be affected by it.