Intel’s long-rumored Core i9-14900KS finally went on sale yesterday and already the CPU has broken records, including becoming the fastest ever processor.
Tom’s Hardware reports that a team of expert overclockers at Asus took the Core i9-14900KS – which runs at a mighty 6.2GHz boost right out of the box – and pushed it to 9.117GHz to set a new world speed record. (Note that this was the boost achieved on a single core, as you might expect – you won’t get 6.2GHz at default speeds on all cores, either).
The team – which comprised of well-known overclockers Elmor, SkatterBencher, and Shamino – used exotic cooling (liquid Helium) and had to crank the voltage to a huge 1.85V to get that almost 9.12GHz clock speed.
This means the Core i9-14900KS is now the fastest ever CPU, beating out the Core i9-14900KF (the vanilla 14900K without integrated graphics) which hit 9.044GHz previously. (Again, when ramped up by a team of Asus overclockers including SkatterBencher).
On top of that, Safedisk, a South Korean overclocker, used the Core i9-14900KS to set new world records in the PiFast, SuperPI 1M, and PYPrime 32B benchmarks, Tom’s Hardware observes.
Analysis: PiFast and PiFaster
Safedisk’s PiFast record didn’t stand for long, mind you, as it’s already been knocked down to second place by another high-profile overclocker, Splave, also using the 14900KS. Interestingly, Splave used Liquid Nitrogen cooling (Liquid Helium was used by Safedisk, the same as the Asus overclocking team).
Note that these benchmarking records were set at an overclock of 8.5GHz – the huge speed record-setting 9.12GHz was just a matter of having the CPU get to that clock and verify it (in CPU-Z), not actually running anything (well, except CPU-Z of course).
If you recall, the 14900KF did manage to briefly hit 9.1GHz in previous clock speed record attempts, but the processor wasn’t stable and the system locked up before the overclock could be validated. So technically, that’s no good, and it’s only with the 14900KS that we’ve now witnessed 9.1GHz being exceeded and running in a stable fashion.
In all likelihood that clock speed will be beaten soon enough, mind, as there will be no shortage of overclockers trying their hand to get even more performance mileage out of the 14900KS.
The 13900KF was the first CPU to break the 9GHz barrier, although just by a hair when it reached 9.008GHz.