Intel Core I9-12900K Surpasses Expectations with 5.2GHz Overclock at Just 330W - A Formidable Contender to the Ryzen 9 5950X

Intel’s 12th Generation Core ‘Alder Lake’ processors are not yet available commercially, but enthusiasts who managed to lay their hands on these CPUs are already experimenting with overclocking. A Chinese enthusiast this week overclocked his Core i9-12900K to 5.20 GHz on all high-performance cores and managed to leave behind AMD’s Ryzen flagship in a multi-threaded test. However, Alder Lake is a very power-hungry beast at 5.20 GHz.

Overclocking Intel’s hybrid 12th Generation Core processors will be somewhat different from overclocking ‘traditional’ CPUs as enthusiasts will want to increase clock speeds of high-performance Golden Cove cores while keeping energy-efficient Gracemont cores at stock speeds. Apparently, the unlocked Core i9-12900K CPU coupled with enthusiast-grade Intel Z690-based platform support an overclocking setting that allows to overclock only Golden Cove cores and leave Gracemont cores intact, according to a Chinese enthusiast who has a blog at Bilibili (via VideoCardz ).

In a bid to overclock high-performance cores of the Core i9-12900K CPU to 5.20 GHz (from 3.20 GHz base and from 5.0 GHz all-core boost), the enthusiast had to increase core voltage all the way to 1.385 Volts at which point power consumption of the chip skyrocketed to 330W (up from stock PL1 value of 125W), though he did not disclose how he measured power consumption.

But at 5.20 GHz, Intel’s Core i9-12900K can score 851 points in the CPU-Z single-threaded benchmark as well as 11986.9 points in CPU-Z multi-thread benchmark. By contrast, AMD’s flagship Ryzen 5950X CPU scores 648 and 11906, respectively. Unfortunately, it was not revealed which OS and what kind of memory was used with the Alder Lake CPU. Previously, the Core i9-12900K beat the Ryzen 9 5950X in Geekbench.

(Image credit: https://t.bilibili.com/583591531888281277?tab=2 )

Overclocking hardware ahead of launch should always be taken with a bit of skepticism. First up, we do not know whether we are dealing with pre-release or commercial hardware (we are talking both about the CPU and about the motherboard). Secondly, we have no idea whether commercial hardware will support the same capabilities as pre-release hardware. Thirdly, in this particular case, exact hardware and software configurations were not revealed. Finally,benchmarks like CPU-Z do not necessarily reflect real-world performance.

Stay On the Cutting Edge: Get the Tom’s Hardware Newsletter

Get Tom’s Hardware’s best news and in-depth reviews, straight to your inbox.

Contact me with news and offers from other Future brands Receive email from us on behalf of our trusted partners or sponsors

By submitting your information you agree to theTerms & Conditions andPrivacy Policy and are aged 16 or over.