Core i9-12900K(F) on Z690 is smashing records left and right, but 8GHz OC seems far fetched

Intel launched its latest 12th Gen Alder Lake-S desktop processors recently and the flagship Core i9-12900K processor or the i9-12900KF have been putting up an impressive show for overclocking (OC) enthusiasts. This is also a chance for the various motherboard vendors to show off their own OC skills too, but more importantly, to showcase the potency of the socket LGA1700 Z690 boards that they achieve these feats with.

In the latest such development, ASRock has announced that its Z690 AQUA OC, which is one such premium Z690 board, has smashed multiple world records which have been hosted on HWBOT website. These are:

• Geekbech4 Single Core (16xCPU) New Record Achieved: 11808 Points.
• CINEBENCH - 2003 (8xCPU) New Record Achieved: 11296 CB.
• Geekbech3 Single Core (8xCPU) New Record Achieved: 11134 Points
• Geekbech4 Single Core (8xCPU) New Record Achieved: 12651 Points
• PiFast (8xCPU) New Record Achieved 7 Sec 980ms.

A full detailed list of all benchmarks run has been provided here.

ASRock isn't the only vendor claiming these high numbers. Gigabyte, for example, recently got into controversy, again, for reportedly faking its results.

The firm announced on November 3 that it managed to get 8GHz CPU clock and ran the DDR5 memory at 8,300MT/s on its Z690 AORUS TACHYON motherboard. However, the developer of CPU-Z validator, who has the username @d0cTB on Twitter said that the record was faked possibly with the aid of some wonky CPU-Z validator reporting due to a phase-locked loop (PLL) bug.

@d0cTB adds that this PLL bug was detected earlier and patched with an updated microcode version 0x12 with the CPU-Z 1.98 release. In fact, the changelog of it notes "Improved validation process for Alder Lake records." Though, he believes that it's possible that Gigabyte may have been able to successfully exploit the bug despite the patch. You can read all about it on this Twitter thread.

Gigabyte however has denied these accusations. The company today has claimed that the 8GHz record was achieved for real and passed the CPU-Z Validator test using a newer supposedly patched Intel 0x13 microcode. Also unlike last time, it has posted a link for the CPU-Z Validator website.