



Intel has the enthusiast segment in its crosshairs with the new Core i9 series , and the 7900X is currently its most potent offering. Priced at $999, the Core i9-7900X features 10 cores and will have to hold down the fort until its faster (and more expensive) 12-, 14-, 16- and 18-core siblings arrive later this year.

To see just how far the Core i9-7900X could be pushed, SOFOS1990 decided to build an elaborate setup using liquid nitrogen (LN2) cooling. In addition to the aforementioned processor, his test rig consisted of the following components:

4GB G.Skill Trident Z DDR4 memory

Gigabute X299 SOC Champion

120GB Neutron GTX SSD

Corsair Professional Gold Series 1500W PSU

Backed by LN2, SOFOS1990 was able to push a massive overclock of the Core i9-7900X to 6,016MHz, which represents an 82.30 percent increase over its stock frequency. For comparison, the stock Core i9-7900X has a base clock of 3.3GHz, Turbo Boost 2.0 frequency of 4.3GHz and a Turbo Boost Max 3.0 frequency of 4.5GHz.



The overclock was enough for the SOFOS1990 to score 12189.52 points in the HWBOT Prime benchmark, setting a new record for 10-core processors. In fact, this record means that the Core i9-7900X actually pulled in the fastest single-processor score in the database. This result puts in the 11th position in the HWBOT Prime world rankings, but all of the systems ahead of it have either two or four Intel Xeon E5 or AMD Opteron processors.



While a score of 12189.52 points is no doubt impressive, we can’t to see the results of the range-topping Core i9-7980XE, which has yet to be launched. This 18-core, 36-thread monster will be priced at $1,999. We’ll also have to be on the lookout for AMD’s Ryzen Threadripper processors, which will debut at the end of this month with up 16 cores and 32 threads. We should also expect AMD to undercut Intel’s pricing by a wide margin, which should be a boon for gaming enthusiasts.