Congrats To Our Intel K-Series Contest Winners

We’d like to congratulate the winners of our Intel K-series contest.

As a quick reminder, the aim of the competition was to overclock an Intel Core i7-875K or Intel Core i5-655K as high as possible, submitting a CPU-Z-validated link to prove the successful clock rate.

Naturally, the folks with Core i5s had an advantage here. Not only is the dual-core chip less complex than the quad-core i7, but it’s also manufactured on a 32 nm node. Not surprisingly, our top three winners were all using Core i5-655Ks. And by the looks of their clock rates, all were on LN2, too.

First place: Chris Morrell with a final clock rate of 7.013 GHz

Chris won an Intel Core i7-980X, an Intel DX58SO motherboard, and two 80 GB X25-M SSDs.

Second place: Joe Stepongzi with a final clock rate of 7.011 GHz

That’s right, first and second place were separated by 2 MHz. Two. Megahertz. Joe still made out pretty well, though. He won an Intel Core i7-980X CPU and Intel DX58SO motherboard.

Third place: Brian Yuhas with a final clock rate of 6.918 GHz

Brian was less than 100 MHz behind, but came darn close to cracking 7 GHz himself. Nevertheless, he too won a Core i7-980X and DX58SO motherboard.

Congratulations also to our runners-up, each of which was notified and given the chance to take home two cases of Sparkling ICE Spring Water.

We’re working on another couple of contests (and the prizes are already stacking up in our Culver City office. So stay tuned for more!

Chris Angelini
Managing Editor

Chris Angelini
Chris Angelini is an Editor Emeritus at Tom's Hardware US. He edits hardware reviews and covers high-profile CPU and GPU launches.
  • Strider-Hiryu_79
    Congrats!!

    Nice the top 3 walked away with i7-980x and a mobo to boot. No pun intended. :D
    Reply
  • pbrigido
    Impressive numbers! Grats guys!!!
    Reply
  • wolfram23
    Wow, jealous! Nice OCs tho.
    Reply
  • User69
    Can any of you guys (if you happen to read this) put down your hardware used, and any unorthodox methods? I'm sure many people would appreciate your wisdom, as I will. Right now I'm just jealous!
    Reply
  • dogman_1234
    How the heck did they achieve above the 5 GHz marker? Liquid Nitrogen?

    If so, I need to get some nitro on hand too. :D

    Anyways, congrats to the winners. They will have a great ime with their prizes...OC party anyone?
    Reply
  • mavroxur
    ArticleThird place: Brian Yuhas with a final clock rate of 6.918 MHz
    6.918 MHz? Man, who would've thought an 8088 would even rank in this contest :-)
    Reply
  • mrface
    Dogman,

    it says in the article all used LN2.
    Reply
  • liveonc
    How many people killed their CPU? They should all have an "Intel WAS Inside" sticker sent, or a t-shirt with, "I killed my CPU & all I got was this lousy t-shirt", written on it. ;-)
    Reply
  • jomofro39
    Nicely done. I wish there was an efficient LN2 aftermarket cooler that was affordable. I wish benching at 7 ghz was a possibility.
    Reply
  • scook9
    That is not bad at all....they were right up there with the highest i5 665k overclocks in the world

    http://hwbot.org/hardware/processor/core_i5_655k?tab=2drankings#/manufacturer.rankings.do?applicationId=13&manufacturer=intel&hardwareTypeId=CPU_2179&hardwareType=CPU&tabid=cpubenchmarks
    Reply