Clock Frequencies

The following chart shows how well the processor sustains its clock frequency, and which boost clock speeds are achieved at various thread counts. This test uses a custom-coded application that mimics real-life performance—it is not a stress test like Prime95. Modern processors change their clocking behavior depending on the type of load, which is why we provide three plots with classic floating point math, SSE SIMD code, and the modern AVX vector instructions. Each of the three test runs calculates the same result using the same algorithm, just with a different CPU instruction set.

Overclocking

Overclocking the Core i5-116600K wasn't that difficult because its heat output is very manageable.

However, while I could boot at 5.0 GHz, it wasn't stable for any serious workload. Even 4.9 GHz turned out to be unstable in Prime95—other apps worked fine. So I settled for 4.8 GHz with slightly over 1.4 V.