Overclocking: the results

I was right in thinking that my 7800X had lousy silicon quality. While I was able to push clock speeds from the stock 3.5 ghz to 4.8 ghz, it took a huge amount of voltage (1.32v) which resulted in less than stellar temps. Also, the mesh was horrific, and would not push beyond 3.2 ghz.

Nonetheless I was able to steal 3rd place in 7zip

The motherboard VRM held up very well, and it had better because I put a cheeky little fan pointing directly on its heatsink

Overall, a solid run, but without a delid, and better cooling, i.e phase change or liquid nitrogen, this is likely where I stop, at least with this cpu.