AMD Ryzen 9 9900X and 9950X overclocked above 7.4 GHz

Sales of AMD Ryzen 9 9900X and 9950X started just two days ago, but this was enough for enthusiasts to get the most out of the new Zen 5 family chips. These are some of the most powerful processors on the market and so it’s no surprise that enthusiasts are keen to make them run at very high frequencies.

Image source: x.com/msigaming

MSI drew public attention to the clock speed record for AMD Ryzen 9000 series processors, set on its MEG X670E Ace motherboard. The achievement belongs to overclocker TSAIK – he overclocked the 12-core Ryzen 9 9900X to 7.4 GHz, and the 16-core 9950X to 7.44 GHz and recorded the results on the HWBot aggregator. For comparison, the peak clock frequency of both chips declared by the manufacturer is 5.6 GHz, that is, this figure was exceeded by almost 2 GHz. For the AMD Ryzen 9 7950X, a similar processor of the previous generation, an overclock of up to 7.47 GHz was recorded on HWBot. And the fact that with the new models we managed to get closer to this result almost immediately after their release is impressive.

This figure, of course, does not amount to an absolute record – last year the Intel Core i9-14900KF processor managed to reach 9.1 GHz. But in recent months, overclocking Intel chips has become a thankless task: models of the last two generations are unstable, and the manufacturer even had to strongly recommend that partners and consumers stick to standard settings so as not to cause irreversible damage to the chips. And with the new AMD Ryzen 9000, the results were clearly not obtained with a standard cooling system – extreme overclocking is done using liquid nitrogen, and this processor cannot be cooled too quickly, because it can crack.

The AMD Zen 5 architecture is distinguished by increased energy efficiency and reduced heat dissipation – to the point that the mid-range Ryzen 5 9600X and Ryzen 7 9700X models operate almost like in Eco mode in normal mode. But there is unconfirmed information that in order to improve performance, AMD is considering increasing their TDP. The top-of-the-line AMD 9900X and 9950X, although cheaper than their predecessors, are still quite expensive. Perhaps with the release of Intel Arrow Lake processors they will become cheaper.