Intel Core i9-9900K overclocked beyond 7.6GHz

by Mark Tyson on 22 October 2018, 10:11

Tags: Intel (NASDAQ:INTC)

Quick Link: HEXUS.net/qadys5

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HEXUS published its review of the brand new Intel Core i9-9900K processor at 2pm on Friday. Its "first mainstream 8 core / 16 thread processor" does offer excellent IPC and multi-core performance but the thorny issue is that it comes at quite a price and the chip gets rather hot when overclocked. Furthermore, the solder thermal interface material (STIM) doesn't do the chip any favours as it is more of an issue than an asset according to Roman Hartung, AKA der8auer, in this video.

Splave pours

As HEXUS and many other tech sites were sharing their findings and conclusions with regard to the Intel Core i9-9900K as it would be used by a PC enthusiast or gamer, the overclocking experts had already been at work pushing this chip to its limits. On the launch day Intel shared some of the exploits of pro-overclockers such as Splave and Steponz. If you head on over to the dedicated Intel Core i9-9900K page at HWBot you can see all the records this processor has already scalped.

Firstly I think it is worth looking at the CPU frequency record for the 9900K. That was set by der8auer on 12th Oct. The headlining clock speed achieved was 7613.19 MHz on all 8 cores. You can see the CPU-Z screen shot from the OC attempt above. If you are interested you can see the associated overclocking video that was released on Friday. Liquid helium was used as a coolant for this record. The Asus ROG MAXIMUS XI GENE Z390 motherboard was used with 8GB of single channel DDR4 RAM.

Intel says that professional overclockers Allen 'Splave' Golibersuch and Joe 'Steponz' Stepongzi used liquid nitrogen to carefully chill the Intel Core i9-9900K. In total 16 Benchmark records were claimed during the Intel Fall Desktop Launch event. There were 15 global first-place records in the eight-core category achieved, and a new world record in PC Mark 10 against all other processor categories.

der8auer gets a hand with his helium



HEXUS Forums :: 15 Comments

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Noice, that's some impressive crazy clocking!
This is totally and utterly irrelevant. Why? Because it doesn't matter what they, with their helium/nitrogen, can do with a chip. It's always going to be insane. What matters is what a reasonable person with a top of the range, long lasting cooling set up can do. Now personally I'd place this at a 360mm AIO liquid cooler. I think that a custom cooling loop is generally beyond the abilities of the average person (without significant time spent researching which takes it away from being average) and is also too potentially tempramental when built by an amateur to class as being reasonable. Also, a custom loop isn't likely to be massively better than a decent AIO… unless it's to one of those utterly giant rads which stands alone from your PC and so on.

Regardless, we have seen in reviews that even with the biggest and best AIO coolers, these chips run very, very hot and as a result are not suitable for serious overclocking by the home gamer. I saw some reviews where these chips get as hot as 100 degrees C with a mild overclock. That is utterly insane. My CPU is water cooled and even under intense load I've not seen it higher than 50 degrees C and I'm willing to bet that the performance at the resolutions I game at is the same within a few FPS.

So, in theory it's a nice marketing piece but in practice it's not representative of what you're actually investing into.
philehidiot
This is totally and utterly irrelevant. Why? Because it doesn't matter what they, with their helium/nitrogen, can do with a chip. It's always going to be insane. What matters is what a reasonable person with a top of the range, long lasting cooling set up can do. Now personally I'd place this at a 360mm AIO liquid cooler. I think that a custom cooling loop is generally beyond the abilities of the average person (without significant time spent researching which takes it away from being average) and is also too potentially tempramental when built by an amateur to class as being reasonable. Also, a custom loop isn't likely to be massively better than a decent AIO… unless it's to one of those utterly giant rads which stands alone from your PC and so on.

Regardless, we have seen in reviews that even with the biggest and best AIO coolers, these chips run very, very hot and as a result are not suitable for serious overclocking by the home gamer. I saw some reviews where these chips get as hot as 100 degrees C with a mild overclock. That is utterly insane. My CPU is water cooled and even under intense load I've not seen it higher than 50 degrees C and I'm willing to bet that the performance at the resolutions I game at is the same within a few FPS.

So, in theory it's a nice marketing piece but in practice it's not representative of what you're actually investing into.
Sure it has no real world relevance to the average person, but it's still neat to see how it performs under extreme conditions. Though personally I do think that liquid helium is a complete waste on chips with no real world benefit.
Hmm - the only liquid to be applied directly to chips should be vinegar.
Honestly, I never thought I would see the day of 7.6GHz. That is damn impressive