Corsair and Intel's Computex OC Main Event

Corsair and Intel's Computex OC Main Event

If you’ve read bit-tech for while, you’re likely familiar with the world of extreme overclocking; the exclusive world of pushing PC hardware to the limits of its performance with the aide of liquid nitrogen cooling. Despite the undoubted skill of the competitors, extreme overclocking competitions do have a tendency to boil down to luck of the draw; whoever gets the fastest CPU or GPU from the box on the day, wins.


Yesterday Corsair and Intel hosted their Computex OC Main Event to highlight the extreme overclocking abilities of the respective company’s an DDR3 modules and CPUs, but with a big difference. While three grand prizes were up for grabs for those running hardware handed to them on the day, a large proportion of the event comprised a free-for-all where the top-level overclockers could use any hardware from any vendor they wished.


This is a rare contest as such events are typically sponsored by a single motherboard or component manufacturers. Here overclockers were free to use their own-pre-modified GPUs, pre-binned CPUs for maximum clock speed and any motherboard they chose; pitting the best of Asus, Asrock, Gigabyte and MSI against each other.

With gallons of LN2 (and an open bar) on tap the contests got to work prepping their weapons of choice. As well as noted amateur overclockers, professional in-house experts such as MSI’s Elmor and Asus’ Andre were also in attendance, but it took a few hours of prep and testing before the first benchmark results began to roll in.


The manufacturer backed pros seemed more focussed on the tests that allowed them to use hardware of their choosing, having bought a war chest of pre-binned CPUs and hugely modified GTX Titans with which to conquer benchmarks ranging from 3DMark11 to wPrime32M. Elsewhere teams were more focused on maximising the hardware handed to them on the day.


Each team had been handed an approved Intel Core i7-4770K and sets of Corsair Dominator Platinum and Vengeance Pro DDR3 memory, along with pairs of Corsair’s AX1200i power supply and its Neutron GTX SSDs, but otherwise teams were free to pick their motherboard of choice.

As the afternoon wore on and the Ln2 flowed, almost every team at some point occupied the lead in one test or another, but with the timer counting down the sharp end of the afternoon saw a flurry of last minute results that upset the overall leader-board.


In the restricted category (where overclockers had to use chips given to them on the day) it was overclockers.co.uk’s own 8-Pack and his team mate zzolio who emerged victorious, matching a high CPU and memory frequency to conquer SuperPi 32m in 4min, 49.344 seconds and netting them a cool $5000. The award for highest memory frequency went to the Gigabyte equipped team of HiCookie and Dino22 who split a $4000 prize, while the highest CPU frequency of the day of 6.984GHz earned Lin222 and Mad222 a share of $3000. Congrats to all three winners!

In the free-for-all contest things were much more one sided though, with Asus’ Andre Yang breaking out a pre-binned Core i7-4770K and a humongous modified GTX Titan that required five 8-pin PCI-E connectors to demolish the competition and earn top spot in all eight remaining categories; an impressive achievement indeed. We've included a full run-down of the winners, and their motherboard of choice, below.


While no world records toppled, competition through-out the day was fierce, with most winners only decided in the final minutes. It must also be said that there was a great amount of respect between the teams, despite the oft inflated rivalry between the various Taiwanese motherboard magnates. Thanks must also go to both Corsair and Intel for putting on the event and giving some of the worlds best overclockers the chance to go head to head.

Stay tuned for more from Computex 2013 throughout the week!