Intel Core i9-9900K Overclocked To 6.9GHz On All Eight Cores

Intel held its Fall Desktop Launch Event here in New York to launch its new 9th Generation Core processors. The company had a few professional overclockers on hand and plenty of liquid nitrogen for some sub-zero overclocking action.

With the help of LN2, Famed overclocker Splave pushed his Core i9-9900K to 6.9 GHz with a 1.7V Vcore. That's enough voltage to kill most conventionally-cooled processors, but cooling the processor to -190C gives the processor plenty of headroom. Splave told Tom's Hardware he has maintained a 7.1 GHz all-core overclock on some samples, and can reach up to 7.4GHz on a single core.

Intel also displayed a range of test results from its overclocked Core i9-9900K sample, which you can see above.

Splave told Tom's Hardware the Core i9-9900K can hit 5.3 GHz on all cores with watercooling and a 1.4V Vcore, citing a big improvement in thermal dissipation courtesy of the Solder TIM under the die. That means these chips should be great overclockers for us mainstream enthusiasts. That's pretty impressive compared to the typical 5.0 GHz we can attain on all cores with a watercooled and overclocked Core i7-8700K. As you can imagine, we'll have our own test results soon, so keep your eyes on these pages for the full review.

Paul Alcorn
Managing Editor: News and Emerging Tech

Paul Alcorn is the Managing Editor: News and Emerging Tech for Tom's Hardware US. He also writes news and reviews on CPUs, storage, and enterprise hardware.

  • thecoolman101205
    at first i was thinking it was smoking
    Reply
  • dreamalladream
    Not practical. It's good for bragging rights nothing more.
    Reply
  • jdlawrence
    I wonder how many CPUs it took to find one that would OC at 5.3 on all cores. I am curious if this will be common on all chips or was this the most perfectly binned chip.
    Reply
  • Math Geek
    21384878 said:
    Not practical. It's good for bragging rights nothing more.

    i agree but note the "Splave told Tom's Hardware the Core i9-9900K can hit 5.3 GHz on all cores with watercooling and a 1.4V Vcore" in the article. that's impressive and easily practical for the average pc enthusiast. :)
    Reply
  • stevensen76
    why do any of you reviewers bother with giving us benchmarks with LN2? noone uses it out here in the real world so don't bother. Give us "Real World" results please. Air cooled, water-cooled etc. Thats it. Thanks!
    Reply
  • Ninjawithagun
    Another Intel lie. AMD was the first to release an 8 core/16 thread mainstream CPU over a year ago. Seriously? Tom's needs to do a better job vetting these stories.
    Reply
  • brokenthorn
    Not much of a difference to justify the price, from previous 8700K. It's basically a tighter binned part.
    Reply
  • stdragon
    At the speed of light, once cycle @ 1Ghz travels the distance in 30cm. Theoretically at current CPU die sizes, that can clock up to 20 Ghz before you run into signal propagation issues of one cycle still trying to finish while another begins. Essentially the speed of light becomes the the physical limit.

    That all said, I'm rather surprised they could clock it that high at 7 Ghz without running into excessive timings issues from the PCIe bus all the way to the CPU and back again.
    Reply
  • TerryLaze
    21385188 said:
    Not much of a difference to justify the price, from previous 8700K. It's basically a tighter binned part.

    /s Yeah pfff 33% more cores ,big deal... /s
    Reply
  • mgallo848
    @NINJAWITHAGUN,

    Did you even bother to read the article before posting? Please show me where in this article does Tom's even MENTION AMD? Please show me where in this article does Tom's say that Intel was the first 8 core/ 16 thread mainstream CPU?

    If you want to hate Intel and thump your AMD chest that's your opinion but at least read the article first.
    Reply