14 DAY TRIAL // The new Skylake Core i7-6700K had managed to impress overclocking enthusiasts around the world even before it was launched this August at Gamescom. As was to be expected, higher overclocked frequencies keep being reached after the official launch.
After a Polish overclocker reached a 6.5GHz frequency speed without any Hyper Threading being disabled and using Liquid Nitrogen to cool the CPU, a professional overclocker from Taiwan managed to beat the previous record by reaching 6801.63MHz, also with Hyper-Threading enabled. The new frequency breaking record came on MicroStar International’s flagship MSI Z170A XPower Gaming Titanium motherboard.
Toppc, the Taiwanese overclocker, succeeded in pushing the CPU’s stock frequency to 70% extra frequency speed, whereas its DDR4 memory operated also on overclocked values of 4268MHz in single-channel mode. The new 6.8GHz frequency is the highest clock-rate achieved by any Skylake-S, breaking the previous achievement of the Polish overclocker. However, Skylake still has a long way to go until it breaks any records, but it’s worth mentioning that it managed the laudable feat of actually racking clock rates as high as 5.2GHz with air-cooling only. Now that’s impressive.
Not absolute record breaking, but with lots of potential left
To reach the incredibly new high-frequency clock-rates, Toppc increased the core voltage from around 1.2V to an amazing 2.024V. To cool down the chip, the overclocker used liquid nitrogen (LN2). We must mention that voltages like 2V are extremely high and potentially dangerous power values for 14nm CPUs. Although the current absolute records are being held by AMD with nearly 8.8GHz of core clock frequencies, Intel comes close behind with an Intel Celeron 352 overclocked at 8.5GHz. Core i7 “K” model’s top frequency comes from an Intel Core i7-3770K that managed 6912 MHz with Hyper Threading off and only one core activated. Skylake has the potential of much, much more than that when Hyper Threading is off and maybe hydrogen cooling is involved.
The MSI mainboard was also a decidedly important factor that contributed to this result, as it was equipped with a 6-phase all-digital voltage regulator module (VRM) that used titanium inductors, or “titanium chokes,” which allows higher temperatures to be reached, but most of all, promises longer life cycles than normal copper ones do.
Although the new overclocking process is very impressive, it is highly advisable not to operate the CPU under such frequencies, as the voltage will very likely kill the CPU. The safe OC’s operating frequencies is somewhere around the 4.8GHz to 5.2GHz, depending on your cooling solution and even luck.
