Someone Overclocked Ryzen 9 5950X To 6GHz, That Too On A Mac

AMD recently announced the Ryzen 5000 series of CPUs based on the Zen3 architecture with improved single-core and multi-core performance when compared to the competition. The Ryzen 9 5950X is currently the most powerful CPU from the series with 16-cores, and someone has overclocked this CPU to make it run at 6.0GHz.

Do note that, the base CPU clock speed of the Ryzen 9 5950X is 3.4GHz with a boost clock speed of 4.9GHz. Do note that, if you are a regular user, then it is highly unlikely to hit 6.0GHz clock speed with a normal cooling solution.

According to the Twitter user named APISAK, a user has achieved 6.022GHz on the Ryzen 9 5950X, and it has posted some of the highest single-core and multi-core CPU benchmark points on Geekbench 5. According to the listing, the overclocked Ryzen 9 5950X has posted a single-core performance of 2022 and a multi-core performance of 17877.

macOS

Ryzen 9 3900X @ 5.89 GHz
AMD Eng Sample: 100-000000059 @ 6.02 GHz https://t.co/6W60FBLH7C pic.twitter.com/B2xYMNJRC1

— APISAK (@TUM_APISAK) October 16, 2020

On contrary, a regular Ryzen 9 5950X with a boost CPU clock speed of 4.7GHz has scored 1292 points on single-core and 14100 points on multi-core performance. Hence, there is at least a 30 percent performance increase in terms of both single-core and multi-core CPU performance upon overclocking to 6.022GHz.

What's more interesting is the fact that the overclocking of the Ryzen 9 5950X was done on a computer running on macOS, to be exact on an iMac Pro. Is this means the upcoming iMac will be based on the Zen3 CPUs from AMD? Time has to tell.

How Can One Achieve Higher Clock Speeds On CPUs?

Though overclocking might look as simple as tuning the clock speeds higher by increasing the voltage and current, it is not as easy as it looks. Just to achieve a 5 percent CPU clock speed increase, one needs to have a better cooling solution, as overclocking a CPU will generate a lot of heat.

Not just that, there is a high chance that an overclocked CPU might crash, especially with a heavy load, so it is not advised to overclock a CPU on a daily driver computer. Overclocking is an art, and it has to be done carefully to get better results, else you might end up losing your new computer.