The news has been out that a certain Chi-Kui Lam has broken a world record by speeding up his Intel Core i7 6700K Skylake processor by 75.64 percent and reaching the frequency of 7025.7 MHz. And that’s true---in a sense.
The caveat is that the record only applies to the current Intel processor architecture, named Skylake. When it comes to the absolute highest frequencies achieved by overclocking retail processors, Lam’s doesn’t come even close.
The highest result belongs to Andre Yang who achieved 8794.33 MHz on an AMD FX-8350 processor in November 2012, according to CPU-Z Validator, a website providing a bench marking tool for processors.
In fact, in the overall competition Lam may rank around 400th, according to hwbot.org, a website where people post their overclocking results and where Lam posted his.
Lam is a chief reporter with HKEPC, Hong Kong online IT magazine, according to his Facebook page.
His record holds certain significance, as only one other person has been able to break the 7 Ghz barrier on Skylake chips, at least according to hwbot.org. It was the user der8auer from Germany who pushed his Intel Core i7 6700K to 7007.85 MHz in January.
It’s also worth noting that Lam disabled three of the processor’s four cores, to set the record on the remaining one, a method not unusual to reach extreme overclocking. He also cooled the processor with liquid nitrogen, which boils at −320 °F.
