Intel has accomplished the not possible. Whereas wanting down the barrel of the Ryzen 4 launch, they’ve managed one thing they haven’t been capable of (or been pushed to) do in latest instances: give us unbelievable efficiency at unbelievable pricing. And, for those who’re an overclocker like me, the brand new thirteenth Gen “Raptor Lake” chips make it simple to get speeds in excessive 7 GHz vary on a number of cores or over 8 GHz on a single core.
The highest-of-the-line Core i9-13900K, which I pushed all the way in which to eight.2 GHz, has a mere $589 MSRP (although it’s over $600 in additional locations proper now). Let’s not neglect the not so distant Intel Excessive Version days the place the highest canine of the mainstream and or lately deceased excessive finish desktop section was at all times $999-$1099. At almost half that worth with 24 Cores and 32 threads, the Core i9-13900K is a win for shoppers.
Whereas some will argue that the lesser-core depend Core i5-13600K and Core i7-13700K are the true worth / efficiency winners, I might quite carry my silver spoon, increase my pinky and benefit from the high canine 13900K (or high dinosaur). Let’s overclock this factor.
As an expert overclocker, I stay up for completely different challenges at every new {hardware} launch. On this case although, overclocking Raptor lake is precisely the identical as overclocking Alder Lake. Don’t cry for me but although. Extra on that later.
Overclocking these chips on ambient temperatures (conventional liquid or air cooling) is ridiculous. Single threaded benchmarks like Superpi32m can loop simply over 6100 Mhz with out utilizing what I think about ridiculous voltages. Multi-threaded benches like Cinebench R23 on a lot of the items I’ve tried can run at 5.7 GHz on all efficiency threads whereas set at underneath 1.3 volts.
You may simply speculate the place the future 13900KS, which guarantees as much as 6 GHz at inventory, will find yourself frequency-wise particularly if Intel is skimming the perfect dies to save lots of for these at the moment. You might be nonetheless going to profit from the Thermal Grizzly OC Body and can in fact wish to purchase the greatest thermal paste that you just really feel is inexpensive to you.
What does it take to cool the Core i9-13900K? You should use a reasonable answer if you would like, however the high quality of your expertise on these chips is instantly proportional to the standard of your cooling.
When you have a inventory LGA775 intel heatsink set on high of your motherboard, your chip will run decrease frequency and dial its personal voltages again to remain inside its thermal limits. When you have a monster Ice Big Elite or related excessive finish air cooler you’ll be rewarded with extra efficiency, even for those who don’t tweak a single setting.
With a high-end air cooling setup, an IceGiant ProSiphon Elite, I used to be capable of run single threaded benchmarks at 6.1 GHz and multithreaded exams at 5.5 to five.6 GHz, relying on the load.
Right here’s a phrase on temperatures and “working sizzling.” I’ve learn numerous articles and seen countless YouTube thumbnails of fireside emojis and face palms speaking about thermals on the latest-gen processors. After talking to a few of my engineer pals on each side, these are sometimes clickbait. When you have constructed PCs for any quantity of serious time, you understand that, when your processor hits 95 to 100C, most temperature monitoring software program turns the textual content crimson to warn you of overheating. Nonetheless, its vital to keep in mind that 100C is inside the regular specs for the processor. The truth is, even at inventory settings, the chip tries to run at 100C underneath load to supply the very best efficiency potential — that’s a part of the ABT boosting tech.
Intel’s new chips are resilient, and the corporate has even added the power to extend the throttle level for the chips within the BIOS (not all motherboard makers assist this but), however like growing voltage throughout overclocking, it voids the guarantee (and will shorten the lifetime of your chip). On this case, lifting the bounds leads to a stage 1 throttle at 107C and stage 2 at 115C. For some perspective, solder doesn’t soften till it will get as much as over 300C.
What am I attempting to say? Intel units the bounds in your thermals and needs to RMA as few items as potential, so it has inbuilt some tolerance even over 100C. So though it seems like pushing the envelope to greater temps, the chip might be simply high quality working at 100C. Get pleasure from your excessive frequencies, Your Raptor Lake CPU will adapt itself voltage and clock sensible to its situations.
This brings us to Z690 vs Z790. Most high-end Z690 motherboards are nice choices for Raptor Lake, offered you will have up to date their BIOSes (see our story on the best way to keep away from BIOS replace points with Z690 and thirteenth Gen Core) Frankly I don’t see any cause in any respect to improve. For all of my benchmarking scores I am nonetheless utilizing my identical ASRock Z690 Aqua that I used to be sampled what looks like ages in the past and I do not really feel held again or restricted in any manner. Kudos to Intel for the backwards compatibility and even the choice to stay with DDR4 RAM for those who’re feeling funds acutely aware.
Lastly, let’s discuss in regards to the excessive overclocking half. Bear in mind after I stated it was basically the identical course of to overclock Raptor Lake and Alder Lake? It’s besides one massive unhealthy distinction for XOCer’s — Most of the highest-quality chips have a chilly bug. Over half of them do. This makes binning (or the processes of discovering the perfect CPUs) a heartbreaking endeavor. You discover your potential greatest chips on ambient cooling first. Then check them one after the other on LN2 as some scale higher than others with decrease temperatures and better voltages.
A CPU able to working at -192C is the primary requirement. Whether it is -189C and even -190C, it’s not sufficient and is rejected. You may have a beautiful unit that does 5.8 GHz utilizing very low voltage on ambient cooling, that then has a chilly bug at -185c that’s deemed ineffective for excessive overclocking. It is a painful course of and has contributed tremendously to my grey hair.
After attempting half a dozen or so chilly bug-free CPUs, I discovered that the perfect can run at 7.5 – 7.7 GHz on multi-threaded benchmarks and at 8.2 GHz on single threaded exams! The clock charges that Raptor Lake can run on threaded benchmarks are what Alder Lake might barely suicide validate (run simply lengthy sufficient to register) in CPU-Z. That is really outstanding and I’m impressed with what Intel has been capable of pull out of its sleeve.
To provide some perspective, the 24-core, 32-thread Core i9-13900K dominates AMD’s 3960X Thread Ripper (24-cores, 48-threads), which retailed for $2,000 at launch, with 16 much less threads and with out 24 “actual” cores. It additionally is ready to edge out the Ryzen 7950X 16-core, 32 thread AMD processor in productiveness benchmarks like Geekbench.
Whereas working Geekbench 3, I acquired the 13900K’s P-cores as much as 5.6 GHz on air cooling for a multicore rating of 103,766. Once I switched to LN2, my P-core clock pace elevated to 7.5 GHz, which gave me a multicore rating of 157,211. At its greatest, AMD’s flagship Ryzen 9 7950X hit 6.8 GHz on LN2 and it returned a multicore rating of 145,577.
A superb good friend and throughout superb asset to the overclocking group, Elmor was capable of lastly take the frequency world report at 8.812MHz with the Core i9-13900K. That’s a really superb feat of talent. Big congratulations to him and ASUS for placing on an awesome present. You may watch him break it on YouTube.