Board Thread:Warhammer 40k General Discussion/@comment-25686730-20141125054012/@comment-6078851-20141127151949

i'm not sure exactly where the intelligence boost comes from during the process of becoming astartes but astartes are smarter, or their brains simply work more efficiently, than they are beforehand. it could be an implant though i don't know of such an implant, or it could be the addition of an electro-mechanical augment (nork has something like that), but i imagine it's probably part of the genetic re-working that each aspirant goes through: becoming astartes is way more than just sticking in a few implants followed by the psycho-indoctrination - their genetic code is effectively re-written, largely by the implants, but almost certainly by some serious surgical 'tinkering'.

i doubt kharn would meet his match against an ogryn-astartes chaos lord but instead get utterly obliterated, most likely kharn would end up in the ogryn's stomach within 10 minutes of meeting... the majority of that time being spent by the ogryn prising kharns 'chewy bits' out of his armour :P  remember, nork killed a full size ork warboss with a single headbutt so in theory regular ogryns could kill any astartes with such a headbutt, and then add to that the increase in strength, agility, durability, intelligence etc, of being an ogryn astartes and kharn wouldn't stand a chance against such a chaos lord. even abaddon would have to be very careful against such an opponent :P