The first stable 6.0 GHz computer for 24x7 use

Stable 6.0 GHz Computer Performance = Vortex F6

December 5, 2011
Stable 6.0 GHz Performance!

The new Vortex F6 computer by Liquid Nitrogen Overclocking delivers what high performance enthusiasts have only been able to dream about: True 6.0 GHz performance with guaranteed 24x7 stability.

Shown above: The new, massive Intel i7-3960X chip (far left), the i7-980X Gulftown (middle) and the Sandy Bridge (far right).

The secret behind the incredibly powerful Vortex F6 computer is shown above on the left: The new Sandy Bridge-E chip. You can see that this chips is simply massive by comparison, measuring 20.8 mm x 20.9 mm. And what is the reason for all of this silicon real estate? This iteration of the Sandy Bridge-E comes equipped with eight Sandy Bridge cores on board, but two have been disabled in this release. (Later on, the Xeon version will have all eight enabled.) With a total transistor count of 2.27 billion, it beats the Gulftown by a whopping 1.1 billion!

Chief Technical Officer William Harmon had this to say:

We spents months designing this machine's predecessor, the Vortex F5, which we could not build fast enough to keep up with the demand once it was released. Our design team thought we could finally catch our breath when Ed Trice came to me with a crazy idea. He took out his portable white board, then I knew I was in trouble. He sketched out some nearly impossible performance goals, and left it on my desk.

My initial thoughts were: This was going to be impossible!

It was that same afternoon that I saw the performance specs and the die layout of the i7-3960X for the first time. I couldn't believe that 25% of the die was dedicated entirely to servicing just the L3 cache! In fact, each cache slice was 2.5 MB in size (compare that to 2.0 MB for the Sandy Bridge) which is a serious step up.

After researching the anticipated heat load for the chip, I was pleasantly surprised to learn the Vortex F5 cooling solution needed little modification to work with the new Vortex F6. They both could share the same case, cooling reservoir locations, and all of the same housing mounts. That meant the Vortex F6 could be one mean machine, in a very cool case design as well! I was thrilled when this finally hit me.

When it came time for benchmarking, that was when everyone's eyebrows were raised. The 5.2 GHz i7-3960X bested the performance of a 6.0 GHz i7-980X Gulftown chip! Recall that even the 5.27 GHz i7-980X (the "Lightning") required a massive single stage vapor phase change cooler to hold the CPU temperature to -40°, and here was the Vortex F6 beating that by 780 MHz using only a water-cooled solution!

With less complexity comes more stability, so the day of reliable 6.0 GHz performance had arrived! See the benchmark results below.

Vortex F6 Benchmarks
Program	Score/Time		Screen Shot (click for larger image)
Cinebench	14.83 NOTE: Cinebench 11.5 will display the stock speed of the chip, even when overclocked.
Fritz 9 Chess	64.92 = 31162 Kn/sec
NodeCount	Ratio	1.8043
	Time (seconds)	84.3901
	i7-980X Speed	6.01 GHz
	Click here to see all results

Click this link for more information about the Vortex F6.

Customization options are available for all of our models, so call 610.818.5063 or send an email today to discuss how you would like your dream machine configured.