Advanced Overclocking Championships 2008

AOCC – Day two

After the heavy competition of day one, day two was all about team co-operation and setting some coveted benchmark world records, with the atmosphere between teams much more relaxed . The teams were allowed to use absolutely any hardware they had brought with them, which resulted in many teams breaking out pre-binned CPUs, the performance potential of which they were more than familiar with.

Pre-binning is one of the underrated, and very expensive sides of being a extreme overclocker, and simply involves buying up a large supply of processors and testing their overclocking ability, keeping only the very best and selling on the rest at a loss. There were more than a few personal pre-binned processors, both dual and quad core, on show, and with teams able to chase any benchmark they chose with the still plentiful LN2 and replacement hardware, there was potential for some record breaking attempts.

The most serious of the attempts mounted was that by the Swedish, Finnish and Italian teams, utilising a Triple SLI GTX 280 TOP LN2 cooled setup and a QX9770 capable of 5.9Ghz, and although unsuccessful, they posted a very respectable second in the world score. That's simply incredible when you consider that the teams involved had just a few days with much of the hardware available, and the attempt was made in a 25°C, super-humid inner city shopping centre!

Some Final thoughts

I had come to Hong Kong with a fair bit of apprehension over the AOCC, expecting some of the prima-donna antics I’d previously associated with professional gaming teams and a very competitive and secretive atmosphere amongst those involved. Instead I found a contest that, while decided when processors were picked to a degree, still required a huge amount of preparation and experience in addition to a group of people who were genuinely supportive of others overclocking efforts and attempts.

Every team were happy to discuss with others their strategies, equipments and experiences, and were never afraid to share information or results with myself, or any other team. Compared to professional gaming, where tactics are kept as secretively as possible and inter-team rivalries can reach the size of some pro-gamer egos, this wasn’t just a refreshing change, but a revelation. Because the worldwide extreme overclocking scene is so close knit, everyone seemed to know, or at least to have heard of each other and there was a huge amount of mutual respect shown between teams.


The lengths some of these teams go to to obtain just a few more 3Dmarks or a to shave a few seconds off of their Super Pi times is simply phenomenal, and it’s clear that extreme overclocking is more of an obsession to these people than a hobby or even a profession. In this way it’s similar to case modding, with benchmark scores chased not for bragging rights or fame, but for the simple joy of doing it. As a member of Team Australia told me, “We don’t bench without music and beer,” and while I doubt we’ll be seeing “Team China” overclocked PC hardware on the shop shelves any time soon, perhaps extreme overclocking is just fine without getting to the level of commercialisation that pro gamers like Fatl1ty have plumbed.

For those of you interested in finding out more about extreme overclocking, check out the Benchtec forums, which are full of equally fascinating and incredible cooling setups, as well as plenty of tutorials from the very experienced benching team over there.

Finally, many thanks must go to Asus, for inviting us to the event and providing the huge amount of hardware which the contestants tore through throughout the weekend!

Keep Moddin' Overclocking!