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Core i7-4790K Overclocked to 7003.38 MHz on ASRock Z97 OC Formula

By - Source: Tom's Hardware US | B 45 comments

Nick Shih has set a new overclocking record using an ASRock motherboard and an Intel CPU.

Overclocker Nick Shih has set a new world record for overclocking the Intel Core i7-4790K processor. To do this, he has used the Z97 OC Formula motherboard from ASRock.

The overclocker has brought the CPU up to a frequency of 7003.38 MHz, with two CPU cores enabled and hyper-threading disabled. The core voltage was brought up to a staggering 1.792 V, and to cool this, we can only assume that a lot of liquid nitrogen was consumed.

Of course, such overclocks are not sustainable on a day-to-day basis, but it's always nice to see how close the hardware can be pushed before reaching its breaking point, which seems to be quite high here.

So, when you buy a new motherboard, does this kind of information sway you in favor of the motherboard itself, the vendor, or does it not affect your buying decision at all?

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Top Comments
  • 25 Hide
    InvalidError , June 18, 2014 5:30 AM
    Sustainable or not, there is not much point in overclocking an i7 to 7GHz if you are going to have to disable half of its core and HT to get there... you basically have a very expensive Pentium-K at this point.
  • 12 Hide
    CaptainTom , June 18, 2014 6:19 AM
    Quote:
    Unless it's water who cares. And I have my 2600k 1.5v @ 5.1ghz with hyper-junk disabled and it eats through anything. Ram is 2400mhz cas10. All on a maximus 4 extreme. Koolance block, Koolance 240 and DD pump. 64c load temps. For this exact reason I think Intel is holding back.


    LOL that "Hyper-Junk" would allow a stock i7-2600K to outperform yours in some games.
Other Comments
  • 2 Hide
    jabuscus , June 18, 2014 5:30 AM
    wow. :o 
  • Display all 45 comments.
  • 25 Hide
    InvalidError , June 18, 2014 5:30 AM
    Sustainable or not, there is not much point in overclocking an i7 to 7GHz if you are going to have to disable half of its core and HT to get there... you basically have a very expensive Pentium-K at this point.
  • 4 Hide
    ajcroteau , June 18, 2014 5:47 AM
    WOW the 1.792v is pretty insane... I'm curious how stable this chip is running @ 7Ghz... Would love to see some benchmarks...
  • 6 Hide
    yarmock , June 18, 2014 6:18 AM
    Quote:
    Unless it's water who cares. And I have my 2600k 1.5v @ 5.1ghz with hyper-junk disabled and it eats through anything. Ram is 2400mhz cas10. All on a maximus 4 extreme. Koolance block, Koolance 240 and DD pump. 64c load temps. For this exact reason I think Intel is holding back.


    I wouldn't call it holding back, but it degrades the chip and shortens the life of the CPU. Not exactly a good thing..
  • 12 Hide
    CaptainTom , June 18, 2014 6:19 AM
    Quote:
    Unless it's water who cares. And I have my 2600k 1.5v @ 5.1ghz with hyper-junk disabled and it eats through anything. Ram is 2400mhz cas10. All on a maximus 4 extreme. Koolance block, Koolance 240 and DD pump. 64c load temps. For this exact reason I think Intel is holding back.


    LOL that "Hyper-Junk" would allow a stock i7-2600K to outperform yours in some games.
  • -7 Hide
    yarmock , June 18, 2014 6:47 AM
    Quote:
    Quote:
    Unless it's water who cares. And I have my 2600k 1.5v @ 5.1ghz with hyper-junk disabled and it eats through anything. Ram is 2400mhz cas10. All on a maximus 4 extreme. Koolance block, Koolance 240 and DD pump. 64c load temps. For this exact reason I think Intel is holding back.


    LOL that "Hyper-Junk" would allow a stock i7-2600K to outperform yours in some games.


    What game(s) utilize more than 4 cores efficiently?
  • 2 Hide
    MANOFKRYPTONAK , June 18, 2014 6:50 AM
    Quote:
    Quote:
    Unless it's water who cares. And I have my 2600k 1.5v @ 5.1ghz with hyper-junk disabled and it eats through anything. Ram is 2400mhz cas10. All on a maximus 4 extreme. Koolance block, Koolance 240 and DD pump. 64c load temps. For this exact reason I think Intel is holding back.


    LOL that "Hyper-Junk" would allow a stock i7-2600K to outperform yours in some games.


    I would like to see a stock i7 compete against an OC i7 lol. Even with Hyper Threading disabled. I have a 2600 too @ 4.3 and I really don't see any reason to upgrade.

    And this overclock to 7ghz, who cares, its not stable, you can't use it. If it were 5.5 or 6ghz and underwater and stable for daily use with low temps, I would be very excited. I like practicality and usability, those are most important IMHO.
  • 5 Hide
    vmem , June 18, 2014 7:28 AM
    Quote:
    Quote:
    Quote:
    Unless it's water who cares. And I have my 2600k 1.5v @ 5.1ghz with hyper-junk disabled and it eats through anything. Ram is 2400mhz cas10. All on a maximus 4 extreme. Koolance block, Koolance 240 and DD pump. 64c load temps. For this exact reason I think Intel is holding back.


    LOL that "Hyper-Junk" would allow a stock i7-2600K to outperform yours in some games.


    What game(s) utilize more than 4 cores efficiently?


    Guild Wars 2 is the big one here... my friend upgraded his i5 to an i7 3770k, and running that at stock speeds against my i5 2500k (4.4 Ghz), he gets about 30% more FPS than I do. Sure that shows that the game has some coding inefficiencies, but still, I just wanna play my game
  • 2 Hide
    siman0 , June 18, 2014 7:37 AM
    Hyper-threading will improve performance in some games, others it won’t do as-well. But we are talking old games; most these days are using 4+ cores. However most are slowly moving most things off the CPU to the GPU. The CPU is slowly becoming more of a data director over actually computing things.

    In all honesty the only real reason to upgrade the CPU is for more bandwidth and PCI lanes. I’d say the best place to look at speeding stuff up is the GPU memory size/bandwidth utilization and storage. Most cards haven’t come close to touching the bandwidth that the PCI-E can provide. And storage devices are still fairly slow even the new M.2 standard is fairly slow in the grand scheme of things.
  • 7 Hide
    InvalidError , June 18, 2014 7:37 AM
    Quote:
    You do know that hyper-threading actually decreases FPS in games, right? Look it up before commenting...

    You might want to look at BF3/BF4, Watch Dogs and other higher-end game benchmarks.

    HT has a SLIGHT negative impact on single-threaded games but also has a significant positive impact on more heavily threaded games and applications.
  • 1 Hide
    mapesdhs , June 18, 2014 8:28 AM
    Quote:
    I would like to see a stock i7 compete against an OC i7 lol. ...


    Which model of i7, and what benchmark tests are you interested in?

    Ian.

  • 2 Hide
    pills161 , June 18, 2014 8:39 AM
    This is completely pointless if you have to cripple the CPU just to hit a number, can it even bench? play games? or is it just to say you got to XXXX number without crashing? Total mhz doesn't really mean anything to me anymore, unless it's fully functional and can be sustained I just don't care and thus no this wouldn't impact which brand of board I buy next.
  • 2 Hide
    Joseph DeGarmo , June 18, 2014 8:40 AM
    R.I.P. normal electricity bill :( 
  • 5 Hide
    InvalidError , June 18, 2014 8:50 AM
    Quote:
    can it even bench? play games?

    Most likely not since they already need to disable HT and two cores just to get the thing to boot into Windows.

    I wish OCing contests required that overclocks be Prime95-stable for 10 minutes to qualify... and have separate categories for fully-enabled CPUs and completely unrestricted crippling.
  • 1 Hide
    mapesdhs , June 18, 2014 9:17 AM
    Quote:
    I wish OCing contests required that overclocks be Prime95-stable for 10 minutes to qualify...


    Even better, 10 mins stable using 1344 and 1792 FFTs. :D  I've seen oc's which are fine at default settings
    with P95 but don't last 5 mins at these sizes. Good idea about the categories aswell.

    Ian.



  • -2 Hide
    firefoxx04 , June 18, 2014 9:29 AM
    Hyper threading haters.. LOL

    Dont comment if you dont understand the tech.


    im curious if they get diminishing returns on performance as clock speed increases. At what point is it not worth it?
  • -1 Hide
    jasonc2 , June 18, 2014 10:08 AM
    Impressive! These kinds of things don't affect my buying decisions at all. Hardware is so powerful these days that even stock machines from a few years ago are far more than adequate for generally all consumer tasks; including modern "extreme" gaming where most of the load is off-loaded to the graphics hardware anyways. For the most part, the money spent on things like this is either for personal challenge, or to impress your friends on the forums. Nothing wrong with that, but not a purchasing decision for me!
  • -1 Hide
    gsxrme , June 18, 2014 10:13 AM
    Quote:
    Quote:
    Quote:
    Unless it's water who cares. And I have my 2600k 1.5v @ 5.1ghz with hyper-junk disabled and it eats through anything. Ram is 2400mhz cas10. All on a maximus 4 extreme. Koolance block, Koolance 240 and DD pump. 64c load temps. For this exact reason I think Intel is holding back.


    Yepper! I found better FPS with HT disabled and a higher clock speed than having HT enabled. Even BF4 was tested. But yet again I do have high video card bandwidth.

    LOL that "Hyper-Junk" would allow a stock i7-2600K to outperform yours in some games.


    You do know that hyper-threading actually decreases FPS in games, right? Look it up before commenting...

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