We were impressed that someone could boost a Core i9-13900K up to 6.2GHz with a liquid chiller before Intel’s new Raptor Lake chips went on sale. The Asus overclocking team has since broken that performance record. By successfully pushing a 13900K over 9GHz, the team has broken the previous CPU clock speed record. This is the first instance of a CPU being able to surpass 9GHz. In October, the same team managed to accelerate the same chip to 8.81GHz, ending AMD’s reign as champion. As a result of an 8.7GHz overclock performed on an AMD FX-8370 in 2014, it had maintained it for more than eight years.
This time, the team’s use of liquid helium rather than liquid nitrogen was crucial to its success. Helium, it seems, can get much colder than LN2, but it’s trickier to use because it evaporates so quickly. The team had to bring the CPU socket temperature down to -250C in order to reach 9GHz. To maintain the mainboard’s temperature and avoid condensation during the run, a blowtorch was used all around it. The team’s computer was a $800-or-less Asus ROG Maximus Z790 Apex. Asus posted the video below along with a tweet announcing the record-breaking run.
Regarding the precise chip used for the run, there is some ambiguity. Intel also posted a video that displays a Core i9-13900KS chip, despite the fact that CPU-Z clearly identifies it as a Core i9-13900K. The 13900KS, a binned 13900K that can boost a single core to 6GHz, has not yet been announced by Intel. That is 200MHz more than the current 13900KS standard. This seems to indicate that it’s a chip that Intel had previously selected because of its capacity for overclocking to become a 13900KS at some point. This CPU is a purported “golden sample.” This world record attempt appears to be the result of Intel now giving these chips to overclockers.
Elmor, a member of the Asus overclocking team, and Skatterbencher are the overclockers in charge of the accomplishment. Additionally, according to Videocardz, the Z790 Apex they used was upgraded for the attempt with better signaling and VRMs. The new world record for CPU frequency has already been established by HWbot.
As is customary with such things, only one core—not all of them—was used to achieve this frequency. Eight performance cores and 16 efficiency cores make up the 13900K. The overclocking experiment did not use the efficiency cores. According to Asus, the Z790 Apex has already broken 14 world records, which would seem to justify its astronomical price.
