Last-gen Intel chips refuse to retire as Core i9-14900KF claims the first spot in CPU frequency, again. It’s admittedly a small step from previous records that demanded a lot of work and luck to pull off, but hard to pick faults for a last-gen processor.
Overclocker Wytiwx has claimed the frequency world record at 9,121.61MHz using an Intel Core i9 14900KF CPU – which is a 14900K with disabled iGPU. This is first to breach the 9GHz territory since Elmor, who previously reigned with 9,117.75MHz on a Core i9 14900KS.
Wytiwx was able to claim the title barely with less than a 4MHz difference. But still, higher is higher. This frequency was obtained by pushing the unlocked CPU multiplier to x89 and the bus speed to 102.49MHz on an Asus ROG Maximus Z790 Apex motherboard filled with 16GB of DDR5 memory.
Like their predecessor, Wytiwx used liquid helium extreme cooling, alongside BIOS tweaks which included disabling E-cores and hyperthreading. The idea is to improve stability by removing unnecessary features for this task. The overclocker also opted for Microsoft’s Windows 7 instead of 10 or 11, probably due to stability concerns.
Liquid Helium allowed the cooler temperature to drop as low as -257.8°C which is beyond what the CPU thermostat can comprehend. Understandable considering it’s only 15°C higher than absolute zero. In addition to extremely low temperatures, high core voltages, and a lot of know-how, Wytiwx needed one last uncontrollable ingredient: luck of the draw, also known as Silicon lottery. Without a good chip, you can’t go far.
Seeing how current CPUs seem to have reached their maximum as new records barely move the needle, the 10GHz barrier feels unreachable. But hey at the end of the day, real-world performance isn’t directly impacted since air and liquid cooling are far from being enough to sustain these clocks anyway. It shows what could have been if all stars were aligned, and we like it.
All in all, a great achievement for Wytiwx, and time for Elmor to double their effort.
