Gigabyte Motherboard Sets CPU Overclocking Record

A Gigabyte X79 model has set a new overclocking record. Ironically, this is precisely what happened, as this submission on HWbot proves.

The exact motherboard is X79-UD3, while the central processing unit was an Intel Core i7-3930K chip.

Faulty firmware was found to have been responsible for the failure of some Gigabyte X79 mainboards (GA-X79-UD3, GA-X79-UD5, and G1.Assassin 2). The company quickly released a new BIOS for the boards that had not yet failed in such a manner but were in similar danger.

Thus, while unfortunate customers have to replace their burnt platforms, the rest of the populace can download BIOS version F7, which can be found here. Unfortunately, this BIOS cripples overclocking by throttling the CPU clock speed when extreme workloads are detected, or so people feared.

Overclocker HiCookie, who also happens to be part of Gigabyte's PR team, took it upon himself to prove that the new BIOS doesn't hinder overclocking at all. Thus, he put a dual-core Core i7-3930K on an X79-UD3 and pushed the processor all the way to 5,543.2 MHz.

The overclocker also made sure no one could say this was just a fluke by running the Super Pi M, Super Pi 32M and PiFast benchmarks. The base clock of the chip was set at 99 MHz, the multiplier at 57.0x and the voltage at 1.584V.

To assist with the experiment, HiCookie equipped the motherboard with 8GB Kingston HyperX Genesis DDR3 RAM (random access memory) and an AX1200W PSU (power supply unit) from Corsair.  Needless to say, much liquid nitrogen was poured over the CPU during the experiment (a home-made cooling array was required). At this point, it is safe to say that the F7 BIOS does not, in fact, eliminate the overclocking potential of Gigabyte motherboards.