Day 1 of the official competition was swimming in anticipation as each gladiator waited outside the arena exchanging stories of their successes and failures. Demonstration systems were on hand containing components from all of the key sponsors, showing off video footage of previous events and video game demos. Although these distractions were available, most competitors were just anxious to see what kind of hardware they would be using to secure the title of champion.
At that point, GIGABYTE’s event director stepped forward with a box of numbered balls. Each competitor chose a ball which assigned a station. This ensured that there was no favoritism and kept things very interesting. Components can vary in their overclocking capabilities. Our Pre-Show Report showed off much of this hardware.
As you may have already heard, Fugger was in attendance. He alone has won more overclocking contests and titles than I could count. While he was in the competition, he wasn’t competing to secure a spot in the World’s OC Championship to be held in Taiwan. If anything, he’ll probably be setting the standard to beat. Either way, the U.S. Team should be one excellent bunch come the final Computex competition.
Building Sub-Zero Computers
Everyone was then let inside where they took about an hour to assemble and configure their systems in preperation for the contest. It takes a good hour to make sure the system is a hundred percent ready. So, for that hour plus, the room was a mad house while everyone ran about getting set up and installing software drivers.
There’s a lot of prep work that has to be done. There’s a basic method to LN2 cooling. Both the CPU and GPU coolers are replaced with two different “pots”. These pots are specially machined aluminum or copper cups of sorts that sit on top of the CPU and GPU that are carefully filled with LN2 when the system is ready.
Before using any LN2, the motherboard has to be water proofed, so to speak, which requires attention to detail lest you short out your system with condensation build up. This means using a lot of various tricks such as Vaseline, insulation, clay, and other kinds of foams (Editor: Kinda sounds dirty).
Checking out Some Elite Configurations
This particular system was using what is considered to be the pinnacle of available Pots. The better the pot design, the better it cools and the greater chance there is of success. You’ll see other pot designs in the galleries at the end of the article.The sysem was also carefully wrapped with a bit of insulation before being put inside a plastic tub which was then filled with a non-conductive, safe chemical solution. This negated the worry of any condensation build up as the pot was filled repeatedly during competition. Pretty darn slick!
Some of the CPU temps ranged from -50 to -95C during overclocking, which greatly depended on the pot used. These temps are necessary to keep the CPU stable at 4.8 GHz and higher. However, higher overclocks really come down to the luck of the draw CPU. There are never any guarantees you’ll hit super human overclocks even with the best equipment. But, at least the odds are in your favor.
Super Cooling the Super Pi Competition
The objective is simple. Overclock the hell out of the systems as far as you can, successfully run the Super Pi benchmark, and report your calculation times to a judge. There were many a blue screens during these two hours as the competitors patiently try out adjustment after adjustment looking for the best possible performance.
The battle was very, very close during the first and second hour. But, as the overclocking became more aggressive, Fugger’s 30.625 was the time to beat. Miahallen produced the fastest time at 30.969 seconds with Gomeler coming in close with 32.172 seconds. It seemed that Miahallen’s processor was more than willing to work, but not the system’s memory settings.
Freezing the 3DMark competition
The 3DMark competition is a little different in that you need to produce a 3D stable overclocked system. This means finding the right CPU and memory frequency that’ll compliment the LN2 cooled 260 GTX video card which is also insanely overclocked. Finding that right overall configuration can be tricky and can test even the most patient and experienced of overclockers.
Ultimately, Sno.Jnc won the 3DMark competition producing 24,869 overall marks which was enough to beat Fugger with 24,502 marks. Sno.Jnc said he attributed the bulk of the results to the GTX 260 video card which just happened to be an excellent card for overclocking. Interestingly, this was Sno’s first experience with overclocking the new Intel I7 system. It was an impressive outcome for someone with the odds stacked against him.
The Top Three Ice Knights
After the scores and results were tallied by the judges, first place went to Miahallen (middle), followed by second place Sno.Jnc (left), and third place Maxi (right). Both Sno and Maxi received an impressive stack of prime computer hardware for building their own elite Intel I7 system. They also earned bragging rights and are considered serious contenders to be rekoned with at future events. We’ll undoubtedly see more of these two gentlemen especiatly now that Sno has his very own I7 system and will have a chance to learn how to make it go even further.
Miahallen won the big prize! He got the elite stack of gear which included every top of the line I7 component available from each of the great event sponsors. He also secured a spot at the overclocking championship in Taiwan during Computex 2009 this June where many of the world’s best overclockers will amass for yet another amazing event. Are you ready to start overclocking?
We’ll be back again with more answers and upclose interviews from the contenders who offer up the reasons for why they do it. If you’re not overclocking even a little, this just might be the encouraging words you need to hear to get you started. In the meantime, check out the photo gallery on the next page and stay tuned!
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GIGABYTE GOOC 2009 North American Regional Finals – The Competition Results – Photo Gallery
