Intel Core i9-13900K Blasts Off to 8.8GHz, Breaking World Record

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

Hardcore overclocker Elmor officially broke the CPU frequency world record with Intel's brand-new Core i9-13900K 24-core processor. The best CPU hit a staggering 8.812GHz using liquid nitrogen cooling, dethroning the 8-year reigning champion, the FX-8370, by 90MHz.

That's right; it took eight years for a new CPU architecture to dethrone AMD's FX series processors. Those chips are infamous for their mediocre CPU performance at launch; however, these chips scaled incredibly well under liquid nitrogen overclocking.

The previous world-record FX-8370 result was made with master overclocker The Stilt, featuring a clock speed of 8.722GHz at a negative 186 Celsius.

Elmor accomplished this monumental feat thanks to Intel's new highly-clocked 13th Gen Raptor Lake CPU architecture. Out of the box, the Core i9-13900K can run over 5.5GHz on all P-cores while also hitting 5.8GHz under lightly threaded workloads. The 13900K is, by far, Intel's highest-clocking chip to date.

With the afforded frequency headroom already available to the Raptor Lake CPUs with traditional air/liquid cooling, it makes sense that these chips would excel in liquid nitrogen overclocking, where thefrigidd temperatures can stabilize these chips far beyond 6GHz.

But this is just the beginning; Elmor's world record was on the launch day of Intel's 13th Gen CPUs. So there could be many more world records to break with Raptor Lake once overlockers get accustomed to the architecture's unique behavior.

Intel has also teased an upcoming successor for the Core i9-12900KS that will feature 6GHz boost clocks by default. If Intel is binning Raptor Lake dies for this new model, we should see a new world record broken, with higher quality silicon that will come with this new Raptor Lake CPU.

Aaron Klotz
Freelance News Writer

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

  • -Fran-
    Nice.

    It took time, but grats to the team who pulled it off.

    Regards.
    Reply
  • Exploding PSU
    I've seen that AMD FX record number for so many times, the "8.722 GHz" practically lives rent free in my head

    Well done
    Reply
  • ezst036
    Did they use it to play Doom in notepad?

    https://www.tomshardware.com/news/doom-runs-at-60-fps-in-notepad
    Reply
  • gg83
    This is awesome! I think Intel's 7 is really nice now. They sure know how to make the most out of architectures.
    Reply