Intel’s new Arrow Lake desktop processors (Core Ultra 200S range) have just been released, and that inevitably means overclockers are already pushing the flagship to its limits, resulting in a 7.5GHz overclock for the Core Ultra 9 285K so far .
This was achieved by renowned overclocker Elmor, as Asus explains in a blog postwith the Core Ultra 9 CPU sitting in an Asus ROG Maximus Z890 Apex motherboard.
Elmor – and a team working on the project consisting of 3D Systems, Diabatix, ElmorLabs and SkatterBencher (another famous overclocker) – achieved 7488.8 MHz, to be precise, using liquid helium cooling. By default, the Core Ultra 9 285K is boosted to 5.7 GHz (clocks and energy consumption are tamer with Arrow Lake than with its predecessors).
Asus also emphasizes that the LN2 pot – which is literally a pot, the container used for the LN or liquid nitrogen (or helium) gas to cool the CPU as it ramps up to ridiculous speeds – is designed using generative AI technology from Diabatix.
So in a small way, AI has helped here to provide optimal cooling in terms of the container design, or rather the ability to explore a number of design alternatives in a quick manner.
Asus notes: “The output of the generative AI process was unlike anything else on the market and required 3D Systems’ advanced 3D printing technology to bring to life, but the results speak for themselves.”
At this speed, the 285K managed to set a series of new world records – four of them, all in 3DMark CPU – along with 19 global first place records (and 31 first places in various benchmarks in total). A big part of that was various Cinebench and Geekbench results, as you might imagine.
Individual, Wccftech also points out that overclocker BenchMarc managed to boost its DDR5 RAM to an incredible speed of 12066MT/s in the Asus ROG Maximus Z890 Apex motherboard.
Analysis: Impressive stuff – but unlikely to improve public perception
Arrow Lake desktop chips have had a lukewarm reception, so Intel will likely take every win possible – and the Core Ultra 9 285K is doing very well when it comes to the world of extreme overclocking.
The obvious problem is that this niche view of performance is clearly not relevant to the real world – although it is at least a hint that PC enthusiasts can get more mileage out of the 285K than others, via more traditional overclocking. (Depending on how much headroom there is to push harder with the chip, note).
In fairness to Team Blue, Arrow Lake isn’t terrible, and certainly in terms of app performance, the new CPUs do well enough. However, they don’t really represent a compelling upgrade over Raptor Lake or its refresh, despite efficiency gains, and the gaming side of the equation is frankly sloppy. (The 14900K is much stronger for gaming – and the 285K is a bit all over the place overall, with some strange benchmark results to prove it).
These gaming quirks may be issues that will be ironed out with updates from Intel, but this shouldn’t happen with CPUs at launch (just hang on to them – and get it right the first time, please).
Still, we can’t dispute the overclocking results here, and as always we can expect the Core Ultra 9 285K to be pushed faster in the future and undoubtedly break even tougher benchmark records.