How I Overclocked Core i9-10900K to 7GHz and Set World Records

[harlan4096]

With the right tools, Intel's Core i9-10900K can reach epic clock speeds.

Intel's latest and greatest consumer chip, the Core i9-10900K has been criticized, including in our review, for its massive power consumption and all the heat it generates. But this new 10-core chip is an absolute overclocking beast, if you have the right equipment and you know how to use it, as I did when I set several world records, getting a clock speed as high as 7,083 MHz.

Due to its lower price and more reasonable power use, the Core i5-10600k is the daily driver of Intel's new Comet Lake S lineup. But the Core i9-10900K is the chip you take to the track on weekends. Yes, it uses a lot of power; it's loud, and it’s raw, but I don't care. 

Intel’s 14nm++++++  (or whatever the current joke is) process is as refined as 110 octane fuel. The Core i9-10900K comes with more cores than the 9900K, overclocks better, has a stronger memory controller, runs cooler, and it’s priced handsomely. There is everything to like about these chips.

IHS and Lapping the Core i9-10900K

OK, maybe my only gripe about the chips themselves is with the integrated heat spreader (IHS), mainly because it isn’t perfectly flat. I give this a pass, though, because neither AMD nor Intel have really buckled down on this side of things yet. Some argue it's better to have a convex heat spreader and a “bowed” water block or cooler, but I would tell you that if you flattened the IHS you would see improvement ten out of ten times.

Sometimes very little, and sometimes a lot.  

In and of itself, soldering metal to some well placed sand is mind boggling to me. Perhaps there is some warping because of the heat needed for soldering during manufacturing, or maybe it's not cost effective enough for the companies to care about doing a better job. If they can pass spec with looser quality control, I'm sure that’s the easy answer, on both sides, to the question. 

Lapping, or a better term is probably ‘flattening the IHS,’ is what extreme overclockers (XOCers) and even some hardcore ambient users do to try to flatten both the chips’ heatspreader and the mating surface of a water block, air cooler, or LN2 container. That makes for a flat and even mating surface. Flatter surfaces require less thermal paste because it minimizes the voids and imperfections that have to be filled by thermal paste. It’s a simple equation: The thinner the layer of grease between the cooler and the hot heat spreader, the better the temps. The better the temps, the better the overclocking. 

If you want to see lapping, search that on YouTube. If you’re like me, be prepared to look down at the clock and see that it’s 2 AM and you wasted your entire night watching people lap and perfectly ‘true’ (make flat) the surfaces.

So, how accurate can a guy, a pane of glass, sandpaper and a five gallon bucket of elbow grease get, you might wonder? Well, even for a neanderthal like me being cautious (but not careful), I got it down to a 0.01mm difference from edge to edge on the IHS (see below).

Is the Core i9-10900K Hot or Not?

I was shocked when I first read that some leakers claimed the 10900K runs extremely hot. I had the exact opposite reaction. If so, how can I OC to 5.4 GHZ and not break 80C when the chip is under load? Well, it turns out motherboard companies are partially in charge of their own proprietary “boost” settings. These settings are based on taking a group of processors, seeing what they can handle voltage-to-MHz wise, and then taking an average. Some reviewers even showed Core voltage as high as 1.45V at default settings! That’s because many motherboards will turn on “multi core enhancement” by default, which locks in the turbo clock to all cores. 

At 1.45v for 5-5.1 GHz, that’s a full 100mv more than what I use at 5.4 GHz on my CPU that loves to eat voltage. Is this to trick reviewers, or to confuse the public? You decide. I wish motherboard companies would leave well enough alone and rely on standards instead of playing tricks, but maybe it's just an oversight. There’s plenty of drama in the world at the moment without questioning this, so let’s get back to the positive. 
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