Overclock to 5.3GHz using just air cooling! Now that’s pretty impressive! But the dodgy photos and poor screenshot doesn’t really help confirm the result.
Intel’s upcoming 8-core/8-thread Core i7-9700K is in the news yet again, this time with a noteworthy overclocking feat of 5.30 GHz with all cores enabled, under air cooling. An enthusiast with access to an i7-9700K chip and an unknown motherboard posted blurrycam pictures of their setup and a CPU-Z screenshot showing 8-core/8-thread config, and 12 MB L3 cache, confirming this is an i7-9700K. The multiplier of this chip is dialed up to 53.0x, which multiplying the untouched base-clock works out to ~5.30 GHz. The core voltage made it to the screenshot – 1.215V.
The most impressive part about this feat is the cooling. A mainstream-looking tower-type cooler is used. Crossing 5.20 GHz with all cores enabled takes current-generation i7-8700K at least AIO liquid coolers. This is probably a testament to the soldered IHS the i7-9700K is equipped with. Then again, it could also be the effect of a lack of HyperThreading. At higher overclocked speeds, disabling HTT on current-generation Core i7 processors contributes to stability.
