Intel Core i9-10900K pushed to a crazy 7.7 GHz on all cores on liquid helium, DDR4 memory overclocked to 6.6 GHz on Z490

The reviews of Intel 10th gen Core i9-10900K are now officially out and we've seen that Intel manages to hold its forte in gaming and overclocking abilities when compared to the AMD Ryzen 9 3900X and the Ryzen 9 3950X. Apparently, Core i9-10900K has a lot more overclocking potential than the default 5.3 GHz all-core Thermal Velocity Boost, which can be harnessed via LN2 or liquid helium cooling. Asus's in-house overclocker Elmor has managed to achieve just that by being able to hit a whopping 7.7 GHz on all 10 cores while also managing 6.6 GHz DDR4 memory speeds on the Z490 platform.

The initial trial with LN2 resulted in a BSOD so the team opted to use liquid helium (−269 °C). While this did provide enhanced cooling, it also resulted in the failure of one the memory modules. The remainder of the experiment was therefore conducted with 8 GB single-channel memory. Elmor could ultimately push the Core i9-10900K running on the Asus ROG Maximum XII Apex motherboard to 7.7 GHz (7,707.62 MHz to be precise) at a voltage of 1.194 V.

Interestingly, Windows XP was the used as the OS so as to support the Asus Turbo V Core overclocking utility and the input devices were likely using the PS/2 interface. This could be due to the fact that Windows XP lacks drivers for USB 3.0 and many other on-board peripherals, which should minimize interference while pushing the CPU to the hilt.

Apart from the CPU, Elmor could also overclock the G.SKILL F4-4000C18-8GTRG to 3,332.7 MHz or effectively 6,665.4 MHz DDR. Similar such memory OC records have been achieved on the Z490 platform by other overclockers as well.

Of course, these records are only meant to prove a point and mean nothing to most mainstream users. We also do not know how stable the system actually was or what were the results of benchmarks. Elmor does shout "Cinebench" at one point, but no results have been published yet. All said and done, it is good to know that Intel's flagship CPU has excellent overclocking potential, which should lead to some neat results even on air or AiO cooling.