MSI OC Academy Cambridge – April 2015

[section_title title=Overclocking Competition]

Overclocking Competition

Moving away from our master class from Dagmar, we got to watch one of the most heated “nerd” battles we’d ever witnessed. When you combine a room full of expensive hardware and LN2? Well.. the result is something spectacular. Contestants would set up the hardware and then compete in an hour long match, running different benchmarks on the different hardware each time they competed. Basically, you take LN2 and pour it deep down into the coppery goodness that provides the best thermal conductivity. In short – LN2 + Hardware means lower temps to put more power through without it setting on fire because of high temps.

Throughout the event, we got to witness match after match, the first round consisted of these mighty clockers benching off to prove their worth:

• Match #1 topdog v ObscureParadox
• Match #2 Massman v nickolp1974
• Match #5 rbby258 v (our very own) Gavbon
• Match #3 kimandsally v bulldog238
• Match #4 jumper118 v OverFiend
• Match #6 kitfit1 v Huddy

This entire event was live streamed at http://twitch.tv/hivizman. For those of you who haven’t already watched it and love overclocking, you may want to stop by that link and favorite it for the future!

Ever heard of cold bug? Essentially a temperature that once hit, the hardware will no longer boot or turn on. There are a number of ways to combat this, the fastest of which is to actually get a blow torch out and heat up the pot with LN2 in it to get that temperature to rise. This is where a lot of skill comes into play as when it comes to the end of running a benchmark, and you are no longer running the CPU at full load, it’s temperature could drop drastically which could put the hardware into that cold bug state, which will cost you valuable time, in which you could be benchmarking.

In the 2nd heats, the temperature was raised and the CPUs switched from the previous i7 Haswell chips to the latest unlocked Pentium (G3258).  This confused Gav a little as he turned up 10 minutes late to his heat after getting breakfast, but he clawed within 1 point of his heat; he was against Topdog, the 2nd best the UK has to offer and in all fairness, probably the best in the UK!

While all the overclocking was going on, there was plenty to do in the next room at the MSI stand and oh yes, the bar! Big thanks to The Grain Store for allowing MSI and Team GB Over-clockers to hold this event at their location.

The event was finally won by Nick, who grabbed himself a nice MSI Z97 MPOWER motherboard; oh we are jealous.  Huge congratulations, a top win by a top overclocker; unlucky ObscureParadox!