They manage to overclock the raspberry pi zero up to 1600mhz

EverPi, a Brazilian portal dedicated to messing with Rasperry Pi Zero boards, has achieved a new world record by reaching over 1600Mhz by overclocking. The theoretical limit is at 1620Mhz.

Overclocked Raspberry Pi Zero up to 1600Mhz

A couple of months ago they had already carried out preliminary overclocking tests with the Raspberry Pi Zero, without making any hardware modifications on the board. Overclocking up to 1100MHz the board started without any problem, but when it reached 1200Mhz it was not always able to complete its startup, receiving the 1.4 Volt Vcore processor.

The previous Rasperry Pi Zero overclocking record stood at 1550Mhz.

In order to overclock at 1600Mhz they had to create a custom heatsink so that the temperature would not rise too high. They also added a Peltier module that put it in ice water to maintain a proper temperature. It started with a temperature of 2.4 degrees Celsius until it stabilized at 16 degrees Celsius.

How did they get to 1600Mhz?

The problem with Raspberry Pi Zero is that it is limited by the firmware that prevents voltages higher than 1.4 volts from being used on the board. For this, the people of EverPi had to remove the control inductor that is in charge of voltage management from the board and changed it to the LM2596 regulator to be able to use voltages greater than 2 volts.

Can you break the record of 1200Mhz?

According to EvenPi it is not possible due to the following limitations:

1. The factory-shipped firmware was previously locked at 1500MHz and is currently limited to 1600MHz. There is a 3.2 GHz PLL limit, which would cause frequencies above 1600Mhz not to work.

Source: EverPi