Intel Core i9-12900K is already showing seriously impressive overclocking potential

Intel Core i9-12900K being overclocked with liquid nitrogen

(Image credit: Gobbler's Hardware / Intel)

Intel's Core i9-12900K has only just been unveiled, and it's already breaking world records connected the performance front.

As Tom turkey's Computer hardware reports, the freshly revealed Alder tree Lake flagship CPU managed to set tercet new records when pushed hard by Uncle Tom's resident overclocking expert Grace Ethel Cecile Rosalie Allen 'Splave' Golibersuch – and that's just for starters, to be sure.

Splave overclocked the Essence i9-12900K to 6.8GHz on its performance cores (up from 5.2GHz), and 5.3GHz (up from 3.9GHz) happening the efficiency cores (yes, they can cost ramped up too), using smooth nitrogen to keep the CPU cool piece running benchmarks on Geekbench (and besides Intel's Extreme Tuning Utility or XTU).

The 12900K set new world records on both Geekbench 4 and Geekbench 5 for single-core, with tallies of 11,669 and 2,740 respectively, and also for multi-core (in the 16-core family) with results of 93,232 and 26,649 severally. As Tom's points out, in Geekbench 5, those scads crush the previous uninominal-core leader – Intel's predecessor flagship, the 11900K – aside 19%, and the old multi-center chief – AMD's Ryzen 9 5950X – past an even more impressive 27%.

With XTU 2.0, Splave had to drop the overclock on the performance cores a notch to 6.7GHz to keep the CPU stabilized enough to run the full benchmark, where the 12900K scored 12,765, another revolutionary record equally mentioned.

If you're rummy about the PC used for this batch of benchmarks, the Essence i9-12900K was tyke in an ASRock Z690 Aqua OC Variant motherboard, and paired with Klevv's DDR5-4800 system RAM (overclocked to 6200MHz), with an EVGA Supernova 1600W PSU providing the juice for completely this.

Analysis: Alder tree Lake looks promising for overclocking enthusiasts

It's no surprise to see world records existence broken, as every time a spic-and-span range of processors emerges, overclockers can't delay to get their teeth into jacking them up to incredible clock speeds with exotic chilling, and the results are predictably amazing. That said, this happened really quickly so, with Splave operative the chip through its initial overclocked paces while Intel's livestreamed Alder Lake launch was still going on.

This is intelligibly a positive indication that Alder tree Lake's operation will probable ensure that 12th-gen chips will appear on our list of the best processors, and information technology's a low glimpse that the overclocking potential is also inviolable here for those enthusiasts who want to pay back even Sir Thomas More out of their shiny new CPU.

Notably, Intel has already secure that there'll be very much much overclocking dynamic headroom with Alder Lake (compared to Rocket Lake), as PC Gamer spotted, so peradventur it's time to begin acquiring excited almost what these new hybrid processors will constitute fit to accomplish even with more run-of-the-mill cooling methods.

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Darren is a freelancer writing news and features for TechRadar (and occasionally T3) across a fanlike range of computing topics including CPUs, GPUs, various other hardware, VPNs, antivirus and Thomas More. Helium has scrivened about technical school for the best part of three decades, and writes books in his spare time (his debut novel - 'I Cognise What You Did Last Supper' - was published by Hachette UK in 2013).