When overclockers pushed Core i9-14900KS to a record-breaking 9.118GHz, it was easy to presume that Intel’s Raptor Lake Refresh architecture had no greater frequency to offer. Rising to this challenge, another team of enthusiasts has not only pushed beyond this clock speed but done so with from a more-difficult base, namely Core i9-14900KF.
Chinese overclocker wytiwx, alongside teammates MickaShuBL, Crystalright, and Markjinli, successfully overclocked the Intel processor to a mighty 9.130GHz. That’s right, a mere 12MHz is all that separates the now-highest CPU frequency ever from the previous record.
To achieve this feat, the team employed the cooling capabilities of liquid helium, whose boiling point of -269°C makes it far more potent a cooling solution than liquid nitrogen (-196°C). As for the processor, the overclockers disabled multithreading as well as all 16 of the chip’s efficient-cores.
An Asus ROG Maximus Z790 Apex served as the base of the system. Rounding off the setup was a single 32GB stick of Corsair Vengeance DDR5-5744 CL32 RAM, an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050, and a Corsair HXi 1,200W power suppy.
Is this the end of the road for frequency overclocks? Never say never, but I don’t see anyone toppling wytiwx’s efforts anytime soon. After all, it took this long to beat the previous record and we’re only setting a new one through 12MHz.
Neither Core Ultra 9 285K nor AMD Ryzen 9 9950X or 9950X3D offer much in the way of overclocking potential relative to Core i9-14900K. As such, we can’t turn to more-modern processors to push beyond 9.130GHz.
That isn’t to say that exciting things aren’t coming our way in terms of frequency, with Zen 6 apparently targeting a surprisingly high clock speed of 7GHz. Here’s hoping Intel can pull off something similar with Nova Lake, but jury’s out on that architecture for the moment.
For more stories on overclocking, processors, and more, get yourself over to the Club386 Google News page and drop us a follow.
