The clock speed of your CPU defines how many cycles it can complete per second. It's just a frequency, not dissimilar from an audio frequency, and that's important to keep in mind.

Often, computer cases also featured a small LED display showing the CPU's clock frequency in MHz or displaying "HI" or "LO" to indicate the mode in which the CPU was running.

Clock speed is the number of cycles your CPU can complete in a second, and it’s measured in hertz. So, a 4GHz processor can complete 4 billion clock cycles per second.

Heat is the enemy, and as you push your clock speed higher, your CPU will get hotter. There’s a direct connection to how cool you can keep your CPU and how far you can push the overclock.

As we found in our Ryzen 7 9800X3D review, this CPU is already the best gaming CPU you can buy right now, which is partly down to its clock speed. Check out the 9800X3D specs, and you'll see that ...

Ryzen 9800X3D could offer an all-core boost of 5.2GHz, which would help it to become the new gaming CPU king When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here ...

While clock speeds aren't the be all and end all of processor performance, they are nonetheless an important part of the spec that separates the best gaming CPUs from lesser stock. While AMD has ...