Intel Has Overclocking Lab
January 16, 2020Overclocking a processor is analogue to coercing more power out of a car engine. It’s risky business and is frowned upon by most OEMs. But to the select few, who enjoy fine-tuning the parameters to achieve the supposedly ‘unreachable’ figures, it’s pure joy!
Fortunately, Intel views overclocking the same way the rest of us do. It’s all about bragging rights. The chipmaker has a lab at its facility in Hillsboro, Oregon that focuses on overclocking. Navya Pramod, a systems engineer there, is tasked with pushing CPUs to their limits.
CREATOR: gd-jpeg v1.0 (using IJG JPEG v80), quality = 100
Overclocking a chip results in the release of excessive heat. The only way to effectively manage this, is to employ efficient cooling measures. Pramod and co-workers use liquid introgen, to cool down a 9th Gen Intel Core i9-9900K chip that is being overclocked.
It is the best way to keep a CPU cool. Professional overclockers Allen “Splave” Golibersuch and Joe “Steponz” Stepongzi used this same technique in 2018 to push this same chip from its base clock frequency of 3.6GHz to a mental 7.1GHz on all cores.
Though overclocking seems like hogwash to some, it actually helps chipmakers identify weakness in their designs. And with this new found knowledge, they can produce more powerful and reliable processors.
Photo Credit: Intel Corporation
