As reported by Tom's Hardware, Luumi pushed the 22nm quad-core processor to 6,301.00 MHz, securing a multicore score of 10.8 cb and taking the top spot for the Core i5-4670K in Cinebench R11.5. While Tom's Hardware notes that the previous mark had stood for 12 years —and a commenter on the HWBOT submission page even characterizes it as a 14-year-old record—the verified leaderboard confirms that this vintage Haswell chip just saw its longstanding ceiling broken in October 2026.
Inside the 6.3 GHz Haswell Run
To appreciate what it takes to wring a new high score out of decade-old silicon, you have to look at the baseline specifications of the chip in question. Released in June 2013 for the LGA1150 socket, the Intel Core i5-4670K was the quintessential mainstream gaming processor of its day. According to Intel and TechSpot specifications, it is an unlocked four-core, four-thread desktop processor (lacking the Hyper-Threading reserved for Core i7 chips of that era) with a 3.4 GHz base clock, a 3.8 GHz maximum Turbo Boost frequency, 6 MB of L3 cache, Intel HD Graphics 4600, and an 84W TDP.
Running a chip at 6,301.00 MHz represents a roughly 65.8% frequency increase over its 3.8 GHz stock boost clock. Achieving that speed safely through a heavy all-core rendering pass required far more than a beefy air cooler. According to the verified HWBOT submission log (submitted on October 8, 2026) and Tom's Hardware's reporting, Luumi assembled a purpose-built extreme overclocking testbed:
| Component | Configuration / Specification |
|---|---|
| Processor | Intel Core i5-4670K (Haswell-DT, 4C/4T) @ 6,301.00 MHz |
| CPU Cooling | Liquid Nitrogen (LN2) |
| Motherboard | ASRock Z97 OC Formula (Stock air cooling on board) |
| Memory | 4 GB XPG DDR3 @ 2,708 MHz (Timings: 8-12-7-28, stock air) |
| Power Supply | Corsair AXi Series 1600W |
| Storage | Corsair Force GT SSD (AHCI controller) |
| Operating System | Windows 7 Professional 64-bit (as reported by Tom's Hardware) |
Every piece of that hardware stack tells a story to seasoned system builders. The ASRock Z97 OC Formula, designed by legendary overclocker Nick Shih, remains one of the most revered motherboards ever built for LGA1150 memory and core frequency tuning. Look closely at the memory configuration recorded on HWBOT: while Intel officially rated the i5-4670K's integrated memory controller for DDR3-1333 and DDR3-1600, Luumi pushed 4 GB of XPG DDR3 to 2,708 MHz with razor-sharp CAS 8 timings (8-12-7-28) on standard air cooling. Pairing an 84W processor with a flagship 1,600-watt Corsair AXi digital power supply might look like comical overkill on paper, but in extreme LN2 benchmarking, massive power delivery guarantees rock-solid voltage regulation and minimal ripple when the processor's internal voltage regulators are pushed to the ragged edge.
Section Summary: Luumi achieved 6,301.00 MHz on an Intel Core i5-4670K using liquid nitrogen, an ASRock Z97 OC Formula motherboard, tightly tuned DDR3-2708 memory, and a 1,600W power supply, pushing the chip nearly 66% past its stock turbo clock.
Qualifying the "World Record": What the Leaderboard Actually Shows
In competitive benchmarking, terminology matters. Headlines often use "world record" as shorthand, and while Tom's Hardware explicitly points out the caveat in its coverage, it bears repeating for complete clarity: 10.8 cb is not the overall Cinebench R11.5 world record across all processors, nor is it the fastest score across all quad-core CPUs.
Instead, HWBOT divides its competitive database into global records (overall core counts) and hardware-specific rankings (individual processor models). Luumi's run ranks 1st out of 187 submissions specifically within the Intel Core i5-4670K category.
A look at the current HWBOT Core i5-4670K R11.5 leaderboard illustrates just how tight the competition is at the top of this silicon bracket:
- Luumi: 10.8 cb at 6,301 MHz
- Strat: 10.76 cb at 6,249 MHz
- Moose83: 10.74 cb at 6,231 MHz
- Crazzzy85: 10.7 cb at 6,200 MHz
- leeghoofd: 10.53 cb at 6,198 MHz
The margin of victory over the previous record holder, Strat, is just 0.04 cb—roughly 0.37% higher—achieved by squeezing an extra 52 MHz out of the Haswell cores. By comparison, the overall global Cinebench R11.5 leaderboard on HWBOT sits at 207.25 cb on an Intel Xeon 696X system, and the global four-core category is led by modern architectures like the AMD EPYC 4124P at 24.71 cb. Even a modern 12-core, 24-thread laptop running in quiet mode easily quadruples the Haswell desktop's score, as Tom's Hardware noted in its testing.
But comparing a 2013 quad-core to a modern mobile workstation misses the entire point of hardware-specific overclocking. Just as motorsport enthusiasts still race vintage Group B rally cars or classic muscle cars in their own displacement classes, HWBOT's processor rankings ensure that older silicon remains competitively relevant long after it becomes obsolete for daily workloads.
Section Summary: Rather than an all-processor global record, the 10.8 cb score is the #1 hardware record for the Core i5-4670K on HWBOT, edging out the previous 10.76 cb category leader by 0.04 cb through an extra 52 MHz of clock speed.
The Windows Angle: Why Retro Benchmarking Needs Windows 7 (or BenchMate)
For Windows power users and system administrators, one of the most interesting details of Luumi's run is the operating system selection. According to Tom's Hardware, Luumi used Windows 7 Professional 64-bit for the record-breaking pass, even though the older Cinebench R11.5 binary still launches and runs effortlessly on modern Windows 11 systems.
Why would an overclocker bother maintaining a legacy Windows 7 installation in 2026 when Windows 11 runs the exact same benchmark without complaint? The answer comes down to timer integrity and OS overhead.
First, from a pure performance standpoint, Windows 7 carries significantly less background service bloat, telemetry overhead, and security virtualization layers (such as Virtualization-Based Security and memory integrity checks in Windows 11) that can steal precious CPU cycles during a sub-minute rendering sprint. When you are fighting for 0.04 cb on a four-thread processor, stripping the OS down to the bare essentials is mandatory.
Second, and even more critically, HWBOT enforces strict operating system validation rules to prevent clock-skewing exploits. Starting with Windows 8 and continuing through Windows 10 and Windows 11, Microsoft altered how the operating system handles the Real-Time Clock (RTC) and system timers. On older Intel architectures—specifically processors predating the 2015 Skylake architecture, which includes Haswell—adjusting the base clock (BCLK) inside Windows can inadvertently skew the OS timer, causing benchmarks to miscalculate elapsed time and report artificially inflated scores.
Because of this timer vulnerability, HWBOT's official Cinebench R11.5 rules prohibit submissions on Windows 8, Windows 10, and Windows 11 for pre-Skylake Intel CPUs unless the benchmark is wrapped inside BenchMate, a trusted third-party validation tool that monitors high-precision event timers to guarantee an accurate measurement. By running natively on Windows 7 x64—which does not suffer from the Windows 8+ RTC timer bug—overclockers benchmarking Haswell hardware can run a lightweight, native environment while remaining fully compliant with HWBOT's verification standards.
Section Summary: While Cinebench R11.5 still runs smoothly on Windows 11, competitive overclockers on pre-Skylake Intel platforms rely on Windows 7 both to minimize background OS overhead and to avoid Windows 8/10/11 timer-skew rules that otherwise require BenchMate validation.
Why Retro Overclocking Still Matters
There is something genuinely refreshing about watching an overclocker take the homepage spotlight on HWBOT without needing a flagship RTX 5090 GPU or an unobtanium workstation processor. Modern processors from both Intel and AMD are engineered with sophisticated boost algorithms that already push silicon very close to its thermal and electrical limits right out of the box, leaving modest headroom for traditional manual tweaking.
Fourth-generation Intel Core processors come from a wildly different era of PC building. Haswell introduced the Fully Integrated Voltage Regulator (FIVR) right onto the CPU die, challenged builders with infamously stubborn thermal interface material under the integrated heat spreader, and rewarded careful voltage and memory tuning with massive percentage gains. Seeing a 13-year-old Core i5-4670K hit 6.3 GHz in 2026 is a reminder that PC hardware enthusiasm does not expire when a socket reaches end-of-life—and if you have an old Z87 or Z97 board sitting in a closet on WindowsForum.com, it might still have a few good benchmark runs left in it.