Intel Core i7-6700K ‘Skylake’ Almost Reaches Magical 7.0GHz

Chi-Kui Lam has set a world overclocking record for the i7-6700K, which came tantalizing close to the 7.0GHz mark and achieved a stable maximum figure of 6998.88MHz. As a professional overclocker, he managed this feat by increasing the core voltage from 1.2v to 1.888v using liquid nitrogen. Staggeringly, this was a core increase of 74.97 percent compared to the stock frequency with a multiplier of x 70.

Lam opted for the overclocking-focussed AsRock Z170 OC Formula which features a 17-phase voltage regulation and high-end capacitors designed for extreme benchmarking. Other equipment included a 1300W Power Supply and G.Skill Ripjaws 4 DDR4 memory. While the recorded frequency is very impressive, Lam had to disable 3 cores to maintain stability within the allotted temperature threshold. As a result, don’t expect to get anywhere near this with normal cooling apparatus with all cores enabled.

Skylake hasn’t been well-received by consumers and many feel the pricing is too close to the X99-based, 6-core 5820K. Perhaps the Skylake pricing will reduce over time but that would be a very optimistic prediction. Although, at least overclocks running up to 4.7 GHz are possible on enthusiast hardware without breaking the bank. I’ll be interested to see if the 7 GHZ barrier is broken on Skylake and how it benches compared to last generation CPUs.

Thank you Kitguru for providing us with this information.