X99 OC 100% Thermal Throttling at 25 degrees

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   I assume a large switch for Slow Mode was considered unnecessary, since most owners of these boards won't ever use it. Plus a large switch adds cost for a rarely used feature.

The trick of enabling processor thermal throttling to create a locked slow speed processor mode is simply using a capability Intel built into their processors for another purpose. That is, protecting the processor from heat damage.

There are multiple types of processor thermal throttling, or levels with different behaviors for different situations. The one used for Slow Mode is a high level emergency type of thermal throttling that is close to or possibly one step before the mandatory shutdown of the processor to prevent thermal damage.

As long as the special register or bit within that register is set to On/True, the core speeds are set to their lowest value, VCore is reduced accordingly, and other processor parameters are set to low power states. Nothing else is checked to determine if throttling is no longer needed, such as core temperatures. Your core temps were well below their maximum values, but that made no difference in deactivating the throttling.

A nice fail safe mechanism that fortunately we rarely if ever experience in our use of these processors.