Just a few days ago, an overclocker took a Ryzen 7 2700X processor and cranked the clockspeed all the way to 5.884GHz, just 16MHz shy of hitting 5.9GHz. You can forget about that milestone though—another overclocker just did one better by turning the dial a smidgen past 6GHz.
Just how high AMD's second generation Ryzen processors can ultimately go remains to be seen, but in the early going, 6,009.34MHz is now the record to beat. It belongs to "der8auer," a renowned overclocker who is no stranger to setting records, and is more than comfortable ripping the lids off chips to do so (a delicate process known as delidding).
Obviously achieving a record overclock requires exotic cooling, and this was no exception—der8auer doused the Ryzen 7 2700X in liquid nitrogen to keep things nice and chilly. However, for those who appreciate the art of extreme overclocking, there is a lot more that went into hitting 6GHz on this chip.
It's quite the process, actually. To begin with, der8auer tested a bunch of chip candidates on air cooling to narrow the field to a select few CPUs that end up subjected to LN2. It's basically a binning process, though that's only the start of things.
Der8auer achieved the record overclock using an Asus ROG Crosshair VII Hero motherboard based on AMD's new X470 chipset. The mobo also required considerable attention, with der8aeur stripping the board of certain parts that aren't needed for this task, such as some of the heatsinks and decorative shielding. After that, he heated up some Vaseline and applied it to the motherboard to protect it from condensation.
You can check out the entire process below:
Der8auer achieved the 6GHz clockspeed on all eight cores. It still wasn't enough to set a new high score in Cinebench R15's CPU benchmark, which was set with an Intel Core i7-7820X at 2,739 points. However, the Ryzen 7 2700X came close at 2,627 points. However, he was able to set a Geekbench record while running at around 5.7GHz, whereas the Core i7-7820X previously held the score, which it achieve while running at 5.1GHz.
Outside of using extreme cooling methods, the Ryzen 7 2700X isn't going to come anywhere close to 6GHz. Still, it's neat to see what these chips are capable of once temps are removed from the equation.
We'll have a full review of the Ryzen 7 2700X later today (sans LN2 testing), so stay tuned.
