New World Record: Asus Overclocks i9-13900K to 9GHz

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The 13900K is one of the most well-behaved chips under liquid helium cooling.

CPU being overclocked with liquid nitrogen
(Image credit: Shutterstock)

Asus says its team of extreme overclockers has officially broken the CPU frequency world record by overclocking an Intel Core i9-13900K to over 9GHz. The company announced its achievement, which was recorded on an open-bench system featuring an Asus ROG Maximus Z790 Apex motherboard, on Twitter. 

The CPU hit a maximum clock speed of 9.009GHz and was stable enough to run Pifast for 6.85 seconds and SuperPi 32M for 3 minutes, 3 seconds, and 778 milliseconds. 

Asus' team disabled all of the Core i9-13900K's E-cores and disabled hyperthreading, limiting the CPU to only the 8 P-cores and 8 threads. The team used an unusual combination of liquid nitrogen (LN2) and liquid helium for cooling. According to SkatterBencher, one of Asus' overclockers, the Core i9-13900K is one of the most "well-behaved" CPUs he's seen under liquid helium: the chip scales very well in an extremely cold environment and runs a very consistent temperature of -250 degrees Celsius, without much fluctuation.

Liquid Helium Being Used On 13900K

(Image credit: YouTube - intel Technology)

This record is pretty impressive; the 9GHz barrier has been elusive for decades, even for the best CPUs and the most experienced extreme overclockers. The first CPU to come close to hitting 9GHz was AMD's FX series processors — multiple overclockers scored over 8GHz throughout the years. AMD's FX lineup may have been one of the worst CPU designs to date, but it was one of the most capable platforms in terms of frequency scaling with LN2 cooling. 

Core i9-13900K 9GHz World Record

(Image credit: HWBot)

Even now, many FX series processors rank in HWBot's hall of fame. For example, the Stilt's 8.722GHz FX-8370 result is now the second highest-clocked CPU of all time —  surpassed by Asus' record today.

The improvements Intel has made to Raptor Lake's process node are undoubtedly the reason we're seeing a new world record. Raptor Lake is Intel's highest-clocking CPU architecture ever, with boost clocks that can hit 5.8GHz out of the box on the Core i9-13900K — and we expect we'll see a special edition Core i9-13900KS that will be able to hit 6GHz (without manual tuning).  

Aaron Klotz
Aaron Klotz
Contributing Writer

Aaron Klotz is a contributing writer for Tom’s Hardware, covering news related to computer hardware such as CPUs, and graphics cards.

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13 Comments Comment from the forums
  • Friesiansam
    Great for the extreme overclocking community but, completely pointless for everyone else and, certainly not something that should influence buying decisions. Unless you are one of those overclockers...
    Reply
  • Exploding PSU
    9 GHz barrier falls hard. Very exciting

    Friesiansam said:
    Great for the extreme overclocking community but, completely pointless for everyone else and, certainly not something that should influence buying decisions. Unless you are one of those overclockers...

    I always consider those EXOC stuff to be like high end motorsports. They're exciting to watch, even though whatever they do on the track won't affect me in anyway (and to be fair won't change my car buying decisions either). But who knows, maybe they learned one thing or two which would trickle down to the consumer level products.
    Reply
  • thisisaname
    They turned a 24 thread chip into a 8 thread chip, I wonder how much more performance it got at stock with all the threads turned on.
    Reply
  • 🤓
    Reply
  • coromonadalix
    i hope to see 10ghz
    Reply
  • TerryLaze
    Friesiansam said:
    Great for the extreme overclocking community but, completely pointless for everyone else and, certainly not something that should influence buying decisions. Unless you are one of those overclockers...
    It's not COMPLETELY pointless, it does show that processes do in deed become better as time goes on, it does show that you get better performance at the same power point compared to older ones.
    It's not much but it is something.
    Reply
  • Colif
    they almost fast enough to play Crysis soon
    Reply
  • inanition02
    Really, they just left a ton of performance on the table for any modern multi-threaded application....or multi-tasking...

    8 Threads * 9 Ghz = 72 billion total cumulative clocks per second.

    At base frequencies - NO turbo even - that chip can process 16 threads at 2.2 GHz (E-Cores) and 16 threads at 3.0 Ghz (P-Cores) for a total of 83.2 billion cumulative clocks per second.
    At stock all-core turbo? That's 16 threads at 4.3Ghz and 16 threads at 5.4Ghz for a total of 155.2 billion clocks per second...so they left over half the total clock cycles on the table...
    Reply
  • USAFRet
    Exploding PSU said:
    I always consider those EXOC stuff to be like high end motorsports. They're exciting to watch, even though whatever they do on the track won't affect me in anyway (and to be fair won't change my car buying decisions either).
    Actually, that was sort of a thing with NASCAR.
    "Win on Sunday, sell on Monday."

    Started in the 1960's, but apparently still a thing today.
    https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/nascar/2021/08/10/win-on-sunday-sell-on-monday-still-a-goal-for-automakers/118057056/
    Reply
  • UnCertainty08
    Exploding PSU said:
    9 GHz barrier falls hard. Very exciting



    I always consider those EXOC stuff to be like high end motorsports. They're exciting to watch, even though whatever they do on the track won't affect me in anyway (and to be fair won't change my car buying decisions either). But who knows, maybe they learned one thing or two which would trickle down to the consumer level products.


    That's exactly how I explain being a PC Gaming Enthusiast and overclocking to people that ask why I(or others) do it.
    It's like cars, you tinker with your machine when you have time then take it out for races.

    People enjoy different things.

    I've been a PC Gaming/Hardware/Overclocking Enthusiast for 30 years.

    My current system is 10900K on ASUS Maximus XII Apex. Even though I am not an extreme OC'er, I have never used liquid N2, I'll buy another Apex. All my ASUS Maximus boards have been very stable, reliable boards. Also I prefer the feature set, layout, PCIE slots and I/O.
    Reply