Professional overclocker Hicookie managed to increase the frequency of one of Intel's cheapest Alder Lake-based CPU — the Pentium Gold G7400T that has an RRP of $64 — from 3.1 GHz to 5.8 GHz by altering its base clock (BCLK). Running a modern dual-core processor at such a high frequency means that he owns of the fastest dual-core CPUs ever produced.
Intel's Pentium processors are aimed at inexpensive PCs that are not meant to be overclocked, which is somewhat ironic since the cheapest computers arguably benefit from overclocking the most (as expensive CPUs are fast by default). The last time Intel offered an overclockable Pentium processor was in 2014, when it launched the Haswell-based Pentium Processor Anniversary Edition (model G3258) with an unlocked multiplier for $72. But with the re-emergence of BCLK overclocking with Intel's Alder Lake, every CPU from this family can be overclocked, which opens numerous possibilities for those who want to get higher performance at a lower price. Being one of the cheapest ADL-S processors around, the Pentium Gold G7400T is an excellent candidate to test one's overclocking skills and luck.
Intel's Pentium G7400T is a simplistic dual-core processor with a 3.10 GHz base frequency, a 2.5MB L2 cache, and a 6MB L3 cache. Because it is a T-series chip, it has a TDP of just 35W, so it can be used even inside PCs with passive fanless cooling. But if you want to overclock, you'll need a more sophisticated cooling system as the CPU will get hot.
An avid reader will probably notice that 5.8 GHz is hardly the highest clock rate ever achieved by a dual-core CPU, but this is not about setting records. Furthermore, given the microarchitectural advantages that Intel's Pentium G7400T has over previous-generation dual-core processors, at 5.8 GHz, it outperforms all other dual-core CPUs. At least, based on Hicookie's submissions to multiple databases (and gathered by HD-Technologia.com), this is the fastest dual-core CPU in Geekbench 3.4.4, HWbot X265 Benchmark 4K, HWbot X265 Benchmark 1080p, and Y-Cruncher-Pi-1B.
To overclock his Pentium G7400T to 5808 MHz, Hicookie increased its BCLK to 187 MHz (or by 87%), pushed the voltage to 1.656V (which is rather extreme for a 10nm CPU) and used liquid nitrogen cooling. The experiment was conducted on Gigabyte's expensive Aorus Z690 Tachyon motherboard, which is an uncommon pairing with such a cheap CPU. Still, since the purpose of the experiment was to find out the overclocking potential of Intel's Pentium G7400T (rather than build an entry-level machine with overclocking in mind), this choice was justified. What remains to be seen is whether the G7400T is a good overclocker without liquid nitrogen.
