for years intel has discouraged the
notion that golden samples of their
processors
even exist and yet here i
am in a video sponsored by intel holding
nothing other than
a golden sample and it gets even better
because intel sent over a second very
special package
a cryogenic cooler that they
claim can be used to chill a chip like
their golden sample
to sub-ambient temperatures and help it
reach frequencies
as high as 5.6 to 5.8
gigahertz in gaming workloads and
it gets even better again because we've
got a stream coming up where you'll get
a chance to win
one of these combo packs you will find
more details
linked below you know i don't know
what's up with like
this scrappy new attitude over at intel
but i
like it let's go for a test drive ladies
and gentlemen
cpu go brrrr
on the surface there's nothing unusual
about the core i9 10
900k inside this golden foil wrapper
10 cores 20 threads 3.7 gigahertz base
5.3 gigahertz max boost etc etc etc
but on the inside is a piece of silicon
that was hand picked by intel's
engineers as a
shining example of the absolute best
their 14 nanometer process is capable of
now these kits were actually created for
ltx this year hence the packaging
but it's just as well because a little
more time in the kitchen has turned into
a
far more interesting experience let's
shift our focus for a moment then to
what the heck is a cryo cooler there are
two partners that intel worked with to
develop these things
cooler master created this a pre-filled
aio style unit while ek went the custom
loop route
the ek solution is actually what we used
in our fastest gaming pc in the world
for now video
and that's how we were gaming at 5.4
gigahertz with all cores so let's start
with an unboxing of this puppy
first things first you've got a triple
radiator
so far nothing especially cryo looking
about that
three 120 millimeter fans it's all
pretty normal
we've got uh actually what looks like a
pretty beefy pump
especially for an aio like it's nothing
for like a custom loop but that
looks fairly considerable all right
that's uh
kind of non-standard connection on there
and then
ah
now this this is where the magic happens
inside the cpu block is a
custom thermoelectric cooling or tech
module that draws about 200 watts of
power using an
8-pin pci express power connector for
the uninitiated
tech cooling takes place when an
electric current passes through a
thermocouple
causing heat to be absorbed on one side
and then to be
output on the other side the more
powerful the peltier
the more cooling you get but also the
more
heat you have to deal with hence the
need for a triple radiator
now on a normal cpu only aio cooler like
the corsair one that i'm pulling
out of this system a triple rad is
kind of overkill on the cryo cooler
it's pretty much a necessity as we're
going to see
and there are some other considerations
you probably noticed that even though
the cooler master master liquid ml360
sub-zero
has a separate pump the cpu block unit
is
too large to account for just adding a
thermoelectric cooling module in there
that's because there's a shroud to
prevent humid air from contacting the
cold surface here
there's a freaking humidity sensor to
help manage condensation
yes my friends and there's a power
control
and monitoring board that communicates
with intel's cryo cooler
software it's not the greatest mount for
the pump but i did manage to kind of
screw it into the top of a fan
it's more intended for like a slit like
this
or an empty 120 millimeter fan mount
where you could just put the thumb
screws
through the mount into the like threaded
bracket but
hey it's on there you all want to go sub
zero with
me we've already applied the bios update
that we're going to need for the cryo
cooler so all that's left
is to throw on our xmp profile
and fire up windows in order to avoid
any potential for bottlenecks
this system is loaded up with 5100
megahertz ram from crucial
as well as an rtx 3090 that's actually
on its own completely separate water
cooling loop so
intel told me to expect temps as low as
10 degrees celsius in unregulated mode
but recommended sticking with cryo mode
for daily driver operation
cryo mode uses cpu telemetry data to
avoid unnecessary power draw
and tells the cryo cryo-cooler if
something's improperly mounted or
something
intel did mention that only 10th and
11th gen and onward cpus are designed to
provide that feedback
although technically you could use the
cryo-cooler with anything you wanted
as long as you made the necessary
modifications to the condensation shroud
yolo now let's talk about another thing
intel's been cooking up called
oc thermal velocity boost regular
thermal velocity boost
already existed and it's just a higher
level of turbo frequency that your cpu
can gear up into
when it's running cool enough it's the
oc
part that's new so get this in a
highly unusual move
is that competition i smell intel is
adding this feature to existing silicon
with a microcode update
allowing users to adjust the factory
thresholds for thermal velocity boost
using their xtu overclocking utility
all right so why don't we have a look at
the software first of all
there's the cryo software which is very
simple okay
so there's standby cryo and unregulated
i mean
should we just fool around with
unregulated mode first and see what kind
of temps we see
oh we're down to 60 wait 43 degree what
what is it doing 10 degrees
what's going on here intel it's
definitely working
these wires right here that go from the
top of the unit where the power goes in
down to presumably where the tech is
yeah down at the base
these are warm and our cpu temps are
looking pretty interesting as well check
this out
we've already dropped down to zero
degrees celsius
now it's not letting me go below zero
degrees which is interesting
i would guess because of the climate
that we're in
and the local humidity yeah dew point
nine point eight and the cooler is
actually at minus ten
now let's pull out the old thermal
camera and have a quick lookie boo
here you can see the warm cable
everything up here is
pretty cool pretty normal looking
radiator's not super toasty
oh interesting we can see the hot side
of our tech module
through this grill here and then we can
actually see
how chilly things are right around the
cpu socket
that's actually one of the bigger
concerns with running in unregulated
mode
not necessarily that you're going to get
condensation on the cooler itself
because you've got that little
shroud on it to keep warm air away from
it but rather that the board itself
might have air going across it that is
going to cause condensation
so we can see this even more clearly
around the back
that is freaking chilly
well below ambient temps now let's have
a look at the interface
niklas already ran some before numbers
both with the cpu running at stock
speeds
as well as with his own sort of
conservative attempt at using thermal
velocity boost overclocking
but intel sent me over what they call a
starting point
recipe for our golden chip that they're
hoping will give us
5.6 or maybe even 5.8 gigahertz in games
it's not the most user friendly thing
ever
56 multiplier dang that feels crazy to
even put in
4 core 56 so then 55
and then 54. so they want 5.4 gigahertz
all
core 5.6 4 core
well we applied it oh yeah any voltage
things oh i need
1.45 volts adaptive turbo boost short
max power should be good
my understanding is this is a very new
feature
whoopsie daisies well that's what you
get for not
um changing all your voltage settings
and stuff before overclocking to 5.6
gigahertz
good luck everybody apply
is it running faster oh yes it is
definitely
i saw it boost past 5.3 for a second
there
idle temps look good right in that 12 13
degree range
about 5 degrees below ambient
temperature right now
all right thank you for the coil wine
rtx 3090
love you okay oops whoops oh bloody hell
we're one round in let's tab out and
what did we see in here
5.4 max okay do we want to try a more
extreme recipe
might as well okay okay everything else
here is the same we're just going for
5.7 on loads up to
you know what no forget it 5.8 up to two
cores 5.7 up to four
see if you know golden sample one of 200
can do it start with 1.475 volts okay
let's do 485 yeah we definitely have
cores that are seeing 5.5 gigahertz
uh i'm pretty sure this is more
performance we're seeing anywhere from
370 to 380 i'm even touching 390 fps
from time to time
it might just be working highest clock
speed seen
5.5 gigahertz throughout that run but
every core touched it whoa hey now that
we're out of game
we just saw 5.7 gigahertz on three of
the cores
what that tells us then is that
counter-strike global offensive
is more like a five to six core load at
least with
whatever we've got running in the
background which frankly isn't much
other than our monitoring tools so what
i'm going to do now then given that that
is stable is nicholas is going to run us
through
all the benchmarks that he ran before
and we'll get you that comparative data
the results are in and this is
fascinating guys
we ended up needing about 1.5 volt to
reach 5.7 gigahertz
and this is a real lesson in optimizing
your overclock because more voltage
means of course
more heat and especially combined with
the extra 200 watts from our tech
that's a lot for even a triple radiator
to manage
so in cs go for example we actually got
our best result from nicholas's
lighter overclock at a lower voltage you
can see that his 99th percentile frames
so that's the slowest one percent of
frames that the system is outputting
we're actually about 10 faster with cryo
cooling
but not pushed to the limit do maternal
on the other hand
shows us exactly what this kind of
cooling is capable of
in a best case scenario going from a
stock cpu
on a triple water cooler all the way up
to 5.7 gigahertz we went from 184
to 222 fps
even if it did ultimately end up running
about 20 degrees
hotter than the conservative more
lightly overvolted
attempt as for shadow of the tomb raider
it didn't end up being particularly cpu
limited
in general so this shows us a really
good mix
of games that will either benefit a
little bit in certain situations
benefit a ton or potentially not benefit
at all
of course a few more fps in lightly
threaded loads like games
isn't going to mean much if the whole
thing falls apart when you fire up a
workload that exceeds
the 230ish watt limit of the cryo-cooler
block
so uh does it fall apart
over the course of an extended test we
found that while our system performance
was on par with a regular triple aio
our temps were significantly higher
which is
a bit of a downer considering that a
cryo cooler is expected to cost about
twice as much
as a regular aio cooler with that said
not everybody runs extended all core
loads and it should be noted
that this is a very first generation
attempt
from talking to intel about it the
cryo-cooler initiative is
actually less of a random one-off
project by a handful of nerdy engineers
than i expected
although it should be noted the
engineers were undoubtedly delightfully
nerdy
and they consider it to be more of a
first step towards helping mainstream
users achieve the kind of
off-the-wall frequencies that they'd
normally only see from hardcore
overclockers
now the timing of intel's interest in
squeezing extra performance out of their
near redline flagship cpu is
definitely a little sus as the kids say
but for my part
i'm not one to look a gift horse in the
mouth and in my opinion the enthusiast
community should support initiatives
like this
in hopes that we see more of them on the
subject of support
that was one area that i told intel i
would like to see them do
better the reason traditional
overclocking you know where you just
set an all core ratio and increase the
cpu voltage
is still so popular is because it's
simple
this kind of overclocking where you're
setting
individual core frequencies under
various loads
and at various temperature thresholds
with various offsets
is not simple and one of the biggest
challenges
is validation with a normal all core
overclock
it's easy to tell if the system is
stable you just run a stress test
overnight
and see if it errors out but if intel
wanted
this to get to the point where let's say
a puget systems or
origin pc is going to ship a
pre-overclocked cryo gaming pc to a
customer
they need to create the tools that will
help
test single dual multi-core workloads
with and without avx offsets etc etc etc
and simultaneously monitor dye temps
power use frequency
and stability that way everyone from a
system integrator to an end user can
know with confidence
that if they get a blue screen down the
road it's because of a driver update or
something
and not because their cpu flew too close
to the sun
so bottom line i am enthused to see more
dials for
enthusiasts to play with and very
excited to see where the road map for
coolers based on this tech leads us
pun definitely intended if you enjoyed
this video
maybe check out one of our previous
attempts at sub-zero cooling
i'll tell you guys this is significantly
more
elegant and quieter