What just happened? Intel's new Alder Lake flagship, the Core i9-12900KS, arrived this week, but we've already seen overclockers squeezing every drop of performance from the CPU and breaking several records in the process.
The Core i9-12900KS utilizes the best 12900K silicon to produce a binned Special Edition of the latter chip that clocks slightly higher: 5.5 GHz turbo and 3.4 GHz base frequencies, compared to the original's 5.2 GHz turbo and 3.2 GHz base.
We weren't overly impressed with the small performance uplift offered by the Core i9-12900KS over the K version when you consider how much it costs---around $800---though we did note that price is likely worth it for extreme overclockers.
Tom's Hardware reports that the i9-12900KS already has a dedicated page on overclocking hub HWbot. The most eye-opening stat is TSAIK getting the chip to hit 7,450.62 MHz using one physical core and liquid nitrogen cooling (LN2), though it doesn't quite take the world record of 7.6 GHz achieved on a standard 12900K.
TSAIK is part of MSI's overclocking team; they used an MSI MEG Unify-X motherboard for the overclock. The company celebrated the feat by posting an image of this achievement along with the CPU and MOBO that were used.
Allen 'Splave' Golibersuch did manage to take some of the world records (WR) and global first places (GFP) with the 12900KS, including the Cinebench 2003 16 physical core score, the Cinebench - R23 single core score, and the Geekbench 4 Multi Core (16C).
While the 12900KS hasn't stolen the overclocking world record quite yet, it's worth remembering that the CPU has only just launched, so don't be surprised if it adds that accolade to its list of achievements very soon.