Intel’s record-winning 56-core rig sucks as much power as a tumble dryer
Reaching new heights in power consumption and performance
When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
Details have emerged about therecent world recordachieved by Elmor, a professional overclocker, usingIntel’s fastest single-socketprocessor, theXeonW9-3495X, running on Maxon’s popular 3D renderer, Cinebench R23, a staple across manyworkstation PCs.
It was cooled down to -92.8 degrees Celsius (-135 degrees Fahrenheit) and boosted to 5.5GHz - across all 56 cores - using liquid nitrogen; a significant increase as its base frequency is 1.7GHz (with the CPU consuming 350W) and a max turbo frequency of 4.8GHz (consuming 420W doing so).
At its peak, the entire workstation drew almost 1.9kW (which is about what a tumble dryer or a hairdryer pulls in) and required a pair of 1.6kW PSUs to feed it; we neither know how much power the CPU drew on its own nor what the components were (which would have allowed us to make a reasonable calculation).
It did hit more than 132,000 points, which was the world record. That exercise, though, asI highlighted in a separate article, is great for the headlines but it doesn’t say much about real life performance especially as it doesn’t provide a clear indication of what the performance of future CPU families will be.
Raw clock speeds tend to be an expensive way - in terms of resources - to reach a certain performance level which explains why even Intel is now resorting to so-called Performance and Efficient cores in its mainstream processors, something thatArmintroduced 12 years ago with the big.LITTLE paradigm.
Extreme cooling is here to stay
As for cooling with liquid nitrogen, while there’s no way this will become mainstream amongst consumers, there’s a huge market for cooling systems and coolants in thedata centerwhere hyperscalers spend millions of dollars to move extra heat outside ofserversand other infrastructure.
Beyond the usualwater cooling solutionspopular with gamers and traditional overclockers, companies likeMicrosoft,IntelandGoogleare betting big on something calledliquid immersion coolingwhere the server hardware is literally submerged in tanks of non-conductive fluid, in a similar way to how an oil heater works.
Are you a pro? Subscribe to our newsletter
Sign up to the TechRadar Pro newsletter to get all the top news, opinion, features and guidance your business needs to succeed!
Smartphone vendors have also found innovative ways to dissipate heat in an economical and efficient way (remember that they can’t afford fans). Solutions likevapor cooling systemscannot unfortunately be scaled out for systems that require more heat to be evacuated.
ViaTomshardwareandHardwareLuxx
Désiré has been musing and writing about technology during a career spanning four decades. He dabbled inwebsite buildersandweb hostingwhen DHTML and frames were in vogue and started narrating about the impact of technology on society just before the start of the Y2K hysteria at the turn of the last millennium.
Google puts Nvidia on high alert as it showcases Trillium, its rival AI chip, while promising to bring H200 Tensor Core GPUs within days
A new form of macOS malware is being used by devious North Korean hackers
This new malware utilizes a rare programming language to evade traditional detection methods
