With each new platform on the market, we see immediate interest among professional overclockers to push it to the limit, and if possible, set a world record. As far as pure frequency goes, the AMD FX-8370 remains undefeated at 8.7 GHz, but there's a new processor in town breaking records: the Core i7-7740X with Kaby Lake-X architecture. An Australian team took one of these processors and used nothing less than liquid helium to push it to 7.5 GHz.
According to HWBOT, the absolute world overclocking record belongs to the Finnish team The Stilt, which took an AMD FX-8370 to 8,722.78 MHz. That happened in August 2014, and no one has managed to surpass it. Obviously, holding the top spot in frequency benchmarks does not mean it's the fastest processor, as evidenced by the rest of the categories, dominated from start to finish by Intel processors. Some records are as old as AMD's, but in recent days we've seen new data associated with Skylake-X and Kaby-Lake X chips. PiFast, SuperPi, wPrime, and XTU fell before the Core i9-7900X, and one of the most intriguing processors for enthusiasts, the Core i7-7740X. Interestingly, the vast majority of media identify it as the 7740K, but Intel's Ark clearly indicates it's a chip with the X designation.
Beyond that small difference, the fact is that the Core i7-7740X reached 7.5 GHz. The Australian team TeamAU used a Gigabyte X299-SOC Champion motherboard, a Corsair 1,500-watt power supply, and memory from the same company at 1,939 MHz. The rest depends on liquid helium, with an extreme temperature of -269 degrees Celsius. The images show us that such an overclocking session can't be taken lightly, and apparently the CPU-Z certification has certain technical details, starting with the voltage. Something tells me it was necessary to modify it, because 1.096v sounds too low under these conditions.
The Intel Core i7-7740X hasn't debuted on the market yet, and Intel is staying radio silent about the exact date, but we do know it will cost $339. Its stock frequencies are already impressive (4.3/4.5 GHz), and I imagine buyers won't have much trouble getting it to 5 GHz with a slightly more exotic cooling solution.
Note from the editor: Gigabyte explained the difference in the processor's name. The final product will be Core i7-7740X, but this overclocking was done with an engineering sample marked Core i7-7740K.
