Intel Core i7-7740K hits 7.5GHz with liquid helium

Word reaches us about another nice overclock achieved with liquid helium. Most extreme overclockers stick with liquid nitrogen but if you really want to achieve something extra liquid helium can be a good secret weapon. The primary reason why liquid helium isn't commonly used is because helium is a scarce gas, using it for entertainment isn't very responsible and it's also a lot more expensive than LN2.

Liquid helium's big advantage is that it allows you to go roughly 70° lower than LN2, but the flip side is it will cost you a lot of money. As we explained a couple of months ago, a relatively short overclocking session will easily consume several thousands of dollars worth of liquid helium.

Thanks to some sponsorship from the Gigabyte OC Lab, TeamAU was able to overclock Intel's upcoming Core i7-7740K processor to a whopping 7.5GHz. This Kaby Lake-X chip has a default speed of 4.2GHz and was paired with the Gigabyte Aorus X299-SOC Champion motherboard:

"In order to push past the 7.5GHz barrier, the team of overclockers employed liquid helium to drop temperatures to a mind numbingly low -250C. Gigabyte now dominates the world record in 3DMark03, 3DMark06, and Aquamark," Gigabyte boasted in a press release. "The 3DMark06 world record was broken not once but twice over the past week, using different hardware configurations, subsequently making one of those scores a global first."

Via: HotHardware