Record clock speed: 9.2 GHz with Intel's 14900KF under helium

Using a specially selected specimen of Intel's Core i9 14900KF (Raptor Lake), Chinese overclocker “wytiwx” achieved a clock speed of 9206 MHz on one core. This breaks the previous world record of 9118 MHz set by Swede “Elmor” after more than two years. It was Elmor who first broke the 9 GHz barrier with an Intel CPU, and his results were long considered unbeatable. Before that, older AMD CPUs had dominated clock speed records for years.

Such frequencies can only be achieved with liquefied gases; typically, nitrogen with a boiling point of minus 195 degrees Celsius is used. However, Wytiwx used liquid helium, which evaporates at minus 269 degrees Celsius – just over 4 Kelvin from absolute zero. Liquid helium is significantly pricier than nitrogen, and since it transitions to gas even faster, larger quantities are needed for the hours-long overclocking sessions. The theoretical temperature advantage cannot always be translated into higher clock speeds, as a multitude of other factors play a role in cooling.

Great Effort for a Record

These include the absolutely flat seating of the heatsink, referred to here as a “pot” due to its function, and the iron development in the pot. Stresses on the motherboard and other components caused by temperature differences, and of course the silicon quality of the processor, also play a role. The “golden sample” that achieves the highest clock speed is selected from dozens, sometimes hundreds, of CPUs. And if the test setup crashes, it usually cannot be immediately restarted; it must be warmed up, restarted, and slowly cooled down again.

Of course, none of this is practical; in the overclocking scene, it's primarily about the fun of what's technically possible. Results are considered “official” when they are verified on the HWbot website according to the scene's criteria. This includes a validated result from the CPU-Z tool, which among other things reads out clock frequencies. This is the case for Wytiwx's record.

A 14900KF Far Beyond All Limits

In the hunt for the highest clock speed, the rest is largely irrelevant: only one core needs to briefly reach the highest possible frequency. According to the data on HWbot, only seven of the 14900KF's eight P-cores were active, with one reaching 9.2 GHz, the others not. The E-cores were apparently completely deactivated. Since it was only about clock speed, not a benchmark value, the DDR-5 memory with an effective speed of 5792 MHz and CL32 was also comparatively slow.

The operating system used was Windows 7 Ultimate, which is popular among overclockers; many background services can be disabled here without affecting stability. The effort involved with an entire team can be followed on a video from the Chinese platform Bilibili. Even though in the end only 87 MHz more were achieved, the experiment shows that the 14900K(F), notorious for its failures, still has some reserves. At least when cooled with nitrogen or helium.

(nie)