Asus Open Overclocking Cup 2014 Final: Summary and Interviews

Dancop and Benchbros Interview

Following their victory at the Asus Open Overclocking Cup 2014 Final, we sat down briefly with winners Dancop and Benchbros to discuss how they pulled it off...

Bit-tech: Congratulations on your victory yesterday. Three teams were tied on points at the end of the third round, and you had only managed third place in 3DMark 11 and 3DMark Fire Strike. How did you pull off coming first in 3DMark Fire Strike Extreme?

Dancop: Andy remembered that you have to heat up a GTX 980 to get more stability in benchmarks. When you are too cold on the PCB for a long time you have a lot of problems reaching the same clocks so we heated up the GPU to -20°C, and afterwards we were able to reach much higher clocks with less volts and it was pretty insane.

Bit-tech: Was there anything specific about Fire Strike Extreme that worked to your advantage or was it just heating up the PCB that did it?

BenchBros: The main point was heating up, but for 3DMark 11 and Fire Strike we used only the first GPU and for Fire Strike Extreme during the final round we decided to choose the second GPU and it was a little bit better. We did Fire Strike Extreme with the first one earlier since we were able to submit all benches at any time and once we were finished with the first GPU we tried the second one.


Bit-tech: How was the competition hardware? Was it better than expected or did anything let you down?

Dancop: The CPU was just... shit. They were retail and when you wanna have a good 5960X you need an engineering sample 'cause for overclocking either they are gold or totally shit

BenchBros: The memory was also much worse. We tested a different revision of the same kit only last weekend preparing for the AOOC, but this revision we used here seems to be Samsung's, and they are not able to run 3,000MHz C12. It's a different IC – much worse than the Hynix chips. It was sad that we ran into memory issues, especially booting Windows 7. Hynix chips would've been a better choice but all teams had to deal with the same shit. Also, other than maybe Cinebench, the benchmarks are not that memory related.

Bit-tech: What are you benching today and have you got any specific aims?

Dancop: Yeah, we wanna reach the top spot in Fire Strike Extreme in two-card SLI. So wish us luck!

BenchBros: We are just now pre-testing a new CPU and I may try my golden CPU on the Rampage V Extreme again because it's not running that good compared to on the [MSI X99S] Xpower [AC]. It runs much better by about 150 or 200MHz on the MSI and I really want to figure out what the problem is with the Asus board. This is the plan for later; for now we are just pre-testing Daniel's CPU and after that we will use two graphics cards. These are graphics cards from the competition; we didn't bring our own [graphics] hardware because German customs sucks.


Bit-tech: How did you both get into professional/extreme overclocking?

Dancop: For me, one part was Andy. I just started two years ago. I was pretty good at overclocking things with water but Andy always said come and make things cold. Then der8auer came over with a pot with LN2 and we tried it for the first time and I was addicted.

BenchBros: For me it's a little bit of a different story. I was gaming a lot on Counter Strike and with the launch of CS: Source my hardware was not that good so I started to overclock it and also bought a new CPU, a Pentium M 740. I started of course on water and air and some day I just asked what the limit of this CPU was and started with dice benching and then LN2 benching. Since that time I have never played any game again

Bit-tech: Is this a full time job for you both or do you have other work as well, and if so what is it?

BenchBros: We both have normal jobs so this is just our hobby, except we don't have to spend a lot of our own money because we get samples which we can sell and so money comes in. But I am an ASIC and digital designer and Daniel is a key account manager. So, of course, our jobs need a lot of attention (as well as girlfriends) so it's not always easy to manage and get the hobby running.

Dancop: That's definitely true on my side, I have three children so...


Bit-tech: We've seen Ian and Roman enter into the SI market with Caseking. Is that the sort of thing you see happening more in the future?

BenchBros: Yeah, in the last few years some more overclockers have joined vendors so vendors have their own overclocking labs and do some launch sessions to achieve some world records. Maybe we'll see some more overclockers that can do their hobby as a job but I think that for most it has to be a hobby.

Bit-tech: What about you guys, is it something you'd be interested in doing?

BenchBros: The main problem is that you have to go to headquarters in Taiwan because it's hard to establish an overclocking lab in Germany, especially for MSI or Asus etc., so it would be pretty hard, especially with our families. So I think we're both interested in making the hobby a job but the chances are not that high.

Dancop: Yeah it's true you have to go to Taiwan. I've had two proposals in the past and both were Taiwan. Changing your living area with three children is almost impossible. But with overclocking events like we had yesterday or MOA or whatever, overclocking is getting more and more pro, so I think 2015 is going to be awesome. There should be a lot of contests.

Bit-tech: Other than yesterday, what are your best individual achievements this year?

BenchBros: This year was not that successful for me so I took a little rest from overclocking. Of course, AOOC qualification and this championship is awesome. Besides this, some small scores like Vantage or Cinebench records; nothing special for me.

Dancop: I won two Gigabyte contests this year but it's nothing compared to yesterday. It was the biggest achievement in my entire overclocking life.


Bit-tech: What about next year – do you have specific benchmark targets you want to reach or is it more about championships and things like that?

Dancop: I'm gonna focus on championships.

BenchBros: It depends on the new hardware launches. Broadwell will appear next year and it all depends if it overclocks well or not but I think the main focus will also be championships. On HWBot, there are so many benchmarks and you cannot bench them all or you'll go crazy, so I like the idea of competitions and also of the Pro OC cup, because the amount of benchmarks is limited. We are a great team, so we will focus on competitions and try to qualify next year.

Bit-tech: Do you two work together a lot?

BenchBros: It's about 400km between our places so it's always a long drive, but we talk daily and make plans and share tweaks and are always sending hardware. For the main sessions and preparations we meet and do some stuff together.

Bit-tech: Thanks a lot guys, we'll leave you to it now – good luck today!