MSI Master Overclocking Arena 2010

MSI Master Overclocking Arena 2010

bit-tech visited Paris over the weekend to see some of Europe’s best overclockers in action taking part in MSI’s Master Overclocking Arena 2010. Representing the UK were Carl Evans (Evocarlos) and David Hiett (Vento1), both members of long standing UK-based extreme overclocking community, Benchtec. The task set was to get the highest scores in Super PI, 3DMark 05 and 3DMark Vantage in a mammoth two day overclocking competition, competing against twelve other teams in the European final.

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List of competitors:

• Belgium - Pieter Jan Plaisier (Massman) and Thomas Kerrickx (PT1T)
  
• Italy - Alex Skarlavaj (Delex) Francessco Tigani (Cische)
  
• Denmark - Stefan Delin (Roasty) and Henning Toft Hansen (Riska)
  
• Finland - Arta Kiuttu (Kite) and Karl Junkkonen (Junksu)
  
• France - Jean Christophe Renaux (Jmax_oc) and Laurent Raynai (Topalof)
  
• Germany - Manuel Wiesner (BenchBros) and Andreas Bock (BenchBros)
  
• Greece - Aristidis Panetsos (Aristidis) and Stelios Georgousis (Stelaras)
  
• Poland - Marcin Rywak (ryba) and Piotr Maj (Chaos)
  
• Russia - Andrey Ivanov (ModLabs.net/Team MXS) and Andrey Simonov ( S_A_V)
  
• Sweden - Jonas Klar (Mean Machine) and Ann-Sofie Lonnkvist (Mink)
  
• Seed (previous winners) - Jon Sandstrom (Elmor) and Henry de Kruijf (ME4ME)
  
• UK - Carl Evans (Evocarlos) and David Hiett (Vento1)
  
• Ukraine - Oleg Golubovych (cyclone) and Andrii Vazhynskyi (T0lsty)

Hardware provided included MSI’s Big Bang XPower motherboard, Intel’s six core Core i7-980X, an MSI N480GTX-M2D15 graphics card, Kingston KHX2000C9AD3T1K3/3GX RAM, a Western Digital VelociRaptor and an Enermax ERV 1050EWT PSU.

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Saturday’s events began at 9am local time in a room most Star Wars fans dream about - filled with dry ice and lots of people walking around in pretty convincing costumes. There was even a life size model of Jabba the Hutt along with Princess Leia (we wondered how much she was paid given that she literally just had to lay down next to a lump of rubber for two days). Unfortunately Darth Vader had packed on a few pounds and listening to the Star Wars soundtrack constantly for 48 hours was, shall we say, draining on the ears.

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As soon as the liquid nitrogen started flowing though, it was all hands on deck to get the highest overclock whilst dealing with cold bugs and condensation from the freezing temperatures surrounding the motherboard.

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There was plenty of variation in the hardware used with each team bringing their own pots. Hair dryers were supplied for warming the pots but many teams brought their own industrial heaters which were much more capable at warming copper pots, frozen to -190 degrees.