The Core i7-6700K was once one of Intel’s best CPUs for gaming, but fast forward to 2026, and the decade-old chip is now hardly an optimal choice to pair with any modern GPU hardware, including some entry-level graphics cards. Despite this, YouTuber TrashBench put the 6700K to the test and challenged himself to see if he could overcome CPU bottlenecking with an RTX 3080 purely through overclocking.

In his tests, the YouTuber pushed the Core i7-6700K to its absolute limit, exceeding safe voltage limits in an attempt to achieve his goal. Three overclocks were tested: a 4.7GHz overclock at 1.4v, a 5GHz overclock at 1.56v, and a 5.1GHz overclock at 1.65v. The YouTuber even attempted 5.2 GHz and 5.3 GHz overclocks with a vcore of 1.7 V, but sadly, neither attempt was successful. As for cooling, the 4.7GHz overclock was achieved with an air cooler, while the 5GHz and 5.1GHz overclocks were achieved using a custom loop submerged in an ice bath.

At stock speeds, the 6700K was barely able to get the RTX 3080 above 60% utilization in Cyberpunk 2077, with an average of 103 FPS. With the 4.7GHz overclock, the bottlenecking situation noticeably improved, with the RTX 3080 achieving nearly 70% utilization, resulting in 13% higher performance compared to stock. At 5GHz, the 6700K improved the RTX 3080’s utilization to 74%, with Cyberpunk 2077 performance improving by 17%. Finally, at 5.1GHz, the fastest overclock unfortunately yielded the least impressive result, improving performance by just 1 FPS compared to Cyberpunk 2077 running at 5GHz on the 6700K.

The YouTuber also tested several other games featuring Shadow of the Tomb Raider, Hitman 3, and Far Cry 6. 3DMark Time Spy was also thrown in as a synthetic test. With air cooling at 4.7GHz, all of the aforementioned titles achieved an average performance gain of 7% compared to stock. In 3DMark Time Spy, the results were far different, with the 4.7GHz overclock achieving a whopping 19% performance improvement over stock. For the 5GHz ice-cooled results, performance improved by 11.3% on average over stock across the same three titles, and in 3DMark, the results showed a 24% improvement over stock.

The YouTuber unfortunately failed to achieve his goal of stopping CPU bottlenecking with a 6700K on an RTX 3080 through CPU overclocking alone. However, the overclocking results demonstrate that the Skylake flagship is still a capable gaming CPU, achieving around 100 FPS in all of the aforementioned games at 5 or 5.1GHz.

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Aaron Klotz is a contributing writer for Tom’s Hardware, covering news related to computer hardware such as CPUs, and graphics cards.