Sky’s the limit for Skylake-S

Intel is gearing up to launch its Intel Core i7-6700K Skylake Processor 8M Cache up to 4.20 GHz at the beginning of next month (the rumored launch is August 5), and most of what we’ve seen so far about the new architecture has been impressive. You can add overclocking potential to the list.

Chinese-language website HKEPC posted a CPU-Z image to its facebook that shows an Intel Core i7-6700K running at 5.2GHz (well, 5,198.75MHz, to be exact), which is a pretty significant jump from its stock 4GHz core and 4.2GHz boost clockspeeds.

What’s even better is that the overclock didn’t require an insane amount of voltage or exotic cooling. According to HKEPC, the overclock was achieved at 1.35V using air cooling, not water or LN2.

Assuming the overclock is legit, this bodes well for Skylake-S, and the Core i7-6700K in particular. As a refresher, the 6700K is quad-core processor built on a 14nm manufacturing process. In addition to the aforementioned clockspeeds, it also has 8MB of L3 cache, 95W TDP, and can support DDR4-2133 and DDR3L-1600 memory.

On the graphics side, WCCFTech reports it’s running a GT2 graphics part with 24 execution units, 350MHz base and 1,250MHz boost clockspeeds, and full support for DirectX 12.

The specs are similar to the Core i7-4790K (Devil’s Canyon), but with faster graphics, a 200MHz slower boost, and of course several architectural upgrades that improve the performance per clock and power efficiency.

Skylake-S processors will require a new socket — LGA 1151. We’ve already seen a spattering of Z170-chipset boards, and when the line of CPUs launches, you can bet there will be a fair number of mobos to choose from as well.