Going for Overclocking Gold
Jeff Geerling went for the gold in Raspberry Pi 5 overclocking and set a new world record with a patched and heavily cooled 3.4 GHz board.
The Olympic games are on once again, and that means the armchair athletes of the world have suddenly become experts in obscure sports with names that they may not even be quite sure how to pronounce. And just about all of us are sticking perfect landings on the uneven bars and setting world records in the long jump in our minds. That competitive spirit has also filled Jeff Geerling, who has decided to go for the gold in Raspberry Pi overclocking.
This may not be the most useful pursuit, but who cares? Did you ever hear of a rhythmic gymnast asking what use there is for ribbon twirling in the real world? Of course not! They do it to be the best, and that is all the reason anyone could ever need. And that is exactly what Geerling set out to do. No, not twirl ribbons, smart aleck! He wanted to have the world’s fastest Raspberry Pi 5, as measured by Geekbench 6.
Previously, Geerling had overclocked a Raspberry Pi 5 to 3.14 GHz to celebrate Pi Day. That was a fairly impressive feat, but nobody competes for a silver medal, so he pushed it further. But before going any further, a word of caution. If you play along at home, you will definitely void your warranty and probably destroy your Pi. There is also a good chance it will not work due to impurities and other minor imperfections in different silicon batches. Only one out of ten Pis tested by Geerling would even go up to 3.14 GHz and remain stable.
First to set a baseline, a stock Pi 5 was fitted with an Active Cooler and tested in Geekbench. It scored a respectable 794 in the single-core test, and 1612 for multi-core. Next it was pushed to 3.2 GHz, which caused a lot of lock ups until the CPU voltage level was bumped up which stabilized it and increased the benchmark scores to 951 and 1742 for single- and multi-core, respectively.
Not bad at all, but not a record either. So, the clock speed and voltages were bumped up to reach 3.3 GHz, then 3.4 GHz. The 3.4 GHz threshold could not be cracked, so Geerling strapped a Peltier cooler onto the CPU. Even this could not get it stable, although that may be because it was a cheap cooler.
To get some more speed, the Pi was moved back to 3.3 GHz and the NUMA emulation patch was applied. This boosted the performance in Geekbench to 1094 and 2164, which was a new world record! But Geerling was not content to leave it there and have someone else come along and top that mark any time soon. He was so close to 3.4 GHz that he could smell it (either that, or it might have been toasty silicon).
The Pi was bumped back up to 3.4 GHz and the voltage was increased, but this time, a heatsink was attached to the bottom of the board and a fan blew hot air away from the system. That was just enough to get it stable and score another Geekbench record at 1121 and 2219.
That was as far as it would go. 3.5 GHz was a no-go, although Geerling thinks it may be possible with water cooling, sub-zero cooling, or maybe even just better luck with the silicon itself. Think you can beat the record? Don’t go for the gold unless you are prepared to buy a new Pi to replace your fried board.