Hardware Advanced Overclocking Championships 2008

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2008/08/01/aocc-2008/1

We flew to Hong Kong to check out the Advanced Overclocking Championships 2008. With forty of the world's top overclockers in attendance, a vast supply of hardware to tear through and more liquid nitrogen on hand than there was on the set of Terminator 2 (maybe), we report on the action!

 

pre-Madonna or Prima Donna?

Nice Article Harry - must have been awesome to see these guys get stuck in with the LN2.

 

wow, LN2 everywhere. overclocking heaven!

 

thanks for the spot there badders - and yeah, it was awesome to watch these guys do their thing!

 

Mm , I know i will get shouted down for this, but they could of at least run a couple of crysis tests, just as a what if? experiment. Also, I wish the article had the results from each test, would of liked to see how Australia went

Looks like awesome fun though, and keep up the good reporting and articles bit-tech!

 

full results can be found at VRZONE.com

http://www.vr-zone.com/articles/Adv...ampionship_08_Field_Report_Day_1/5956-10.html

 

LN2 is always fun. I can't wait until an overclocker tries liquid helium... but that requires some rather specific kit, although I'm sure it could be adapted. It'd also have to be sealed properly, or you'd start liquefying the air in the room. Still, seeing a magnet cooled by liquid helium quenching is both an exciting and frightening experience. (Half, "Holy crap, green snow; awesome!" and half "Get out of the room!")

Must have been great to see this whole event and the LN2 tricks applied by the pros.

 

Thanks, and Australia came 8th .

 

Watching videos on you tube about liquid helium 2, it looks awesome, also the videos look like the inspiration for the Darma videos in Lost ^_^

edit: wiki says there is Liquid helium-4 aswell, cool

 

Well what can I say harry, outstanding Wright up of the event and what a nice guy to meet up with, you made both mine and bazx stay that bit more special as we had a good chat and larf.

It was an experience of a life time with all the latest hardware available to us all from ASUS, we gained new friends and companions from this trip and it will be an experience I will never forget.

I must work much harder for next year’s event as I feel without some of the hardware failures we had we would have been in a much better position after all the benches.

Again top man harry and look forward to seeing you at the I34 event next month.

All the best
Paul

 

I've gotta respect these guys. They do something I could never do.. And with so much passion..

 

Australia came 8th you say??? HELL YEAH.

Gotta love a bunch of guys getting together with near unlimited high-end hardware and LN2 just to thrash the crap out of it until it burns lol.

 

The only problem with Liquid He is that at -271* C is does not have a viscosity and tends to drip through ceramic! say buh-bye to your board.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TBi9...om/science/top-10-amazing-chemical-reactions/

 

Indeed, liquid helium is a little extreme tbh. Cold-bugging would be even quicker than with LN2, and, of course, it'll evaporate much, much more quickly.

 

what i was going to say Krikkit - processors can't handle the full cooling ability of LN2, so liquid helium might be a wee bit extreme

 

You wouldn't be able to just pour liquid helium on anyway, because as I said, it'd just start to liquefy the air that was near it. Not something to be recommended, although nitrogen snow is impressive. Quick cooling a superconducting magnet that uses liquid helium will chew through a couple of hundred litres of helium, even if the capacity of the magnet is only 50 litres or so. It boils off fast.

A directed stream of helium vapour from a tank of liquid helium via a vacuum-insulated transfer line is really the only way to do it, though, and would provide much greater control of temperatures reached and maintained than pouring LN2 in a copper pot. You wouldn't want to be using the liquid directly because as pointed out, it has a tendency to work it's way through just about everything. And in fact, you'd need to think about having a heating element mounted to the CPU too, for even basic temperature control. Multiple elements would be better.

Through a combination of the two, you could maintain pretty much any temperature you could want from 1.2K (some seriously high end liquid helium systems can do this) to 298K (room temp) although obviously it's a ludicrous waste of money and an utterly extortionate use of liquid helium once you get above temperatures that LN2 could maintain.

...

The only real thing I was trying to say (aside from 'Loved the article' - best I've read since the GPU roundup, I think ) was that liquid helium would be kind of the 'ultimate' in extreme cooling. It would be a curiosity. Something interesting to see. Not something easily done. It wouldn't be cheap by any stretch of the imagination, but there would always be someone out there who would splash the cash (or the connections to required resources) simply so they can say, "I've tried/done it."

 

Go team Finland. TBH this Championship and the results interest me way more than the olympic games.

 

While these tests are definitely pushing overclocking to their limits, and show off some of the worlds best talent in this particular area of PC's... what I'd love to see is a more "long-term" extreme overclock, maybe an endurance of sorts... maybe something like "Maintain your best possible stable overclock for 72 hours" or more, while running benchmarks etc to push the system hard. In my opinion that would stimulate a whole new overclocking genre where longevity becomes key as well as performance. I'm sure some of these guys would come up with some very imaginative and ingenious long(er)-term solutions.

Eitherway, great coverage, lots of pics (woot!) and tons of LN to take in... good article, definite thumbs up

 

yeah... its nice with the ones who can clock them to the max for a short time, but a long clock takes more fine tuning

 

huh this might have been mentioned but these types of contest are kinda well unpredictable, I mean sure you can hand everyone the same hardware but any overclocker knows that not one piece of hardware will act the same as its counterparts so some people might get gold and others might get crap which doesnt really show the ones ability other then the person that got lucky with their hardware but none the less still entertaining to watch.

Anyhow the only problem I have with this article is it lacks engagement, this is where I wish bit-tech would film the event rather then take a handful of pics and then write an article on it, I much rather watch and get a real feel of what was going on but oh well it was still a decent read.

Oh something else you mention how nvidia is the card of choice for people that set records and what not and I have to ask how much did nVidia pay you to say that? as the majority of records set and just general use with LN2 is with ATI cards at least from what I have seen online.