Corsair Blog

ASUS held their first IIIXIII Extreme Overclocking Summit in Santa Clara, California on April 10^th and 11^th, to overclock the brand new ASUS ROG motherboards and set world records.  Three extreme overclocking teams from North America battled it out over two days of tweaking and pushing their systems to the limit using liquid nitrogen.  The liquid nitrogen allowed the Intel® Core™ i7 processors to be pushed to frequencies over 6.5GHz on the ASUS motherboards.  The event was centered on ASUS’s new Rampage III Extreme and Maximus III Extreme motherboards. It was split over two days, with the first day dedicated to ASUS-provided hardware and the second day open to any hardware the teams brought.  The event was streamed live via webcam and broadcast on ASUS’s ROG website.

Over 200 Liters of Liquid Nitrogen

Each team was provided with enough hardware for three complete systems, with additional spare parts as well.  Each team received three ASUS Rampage III Extreme and two Maximus III Extreme motherboards along with Intel Core i7 processors to match.   Each was also provided six ATI Radeon™ HD 5870 video cards, three kits of Corsair® Dominator GT modules, several SSDs and three power supplies.  Along with all the hardware, each team was allotted 60 liters of liquid nitrogen each day.  This allowed them to cool the processors and video cards to sub-zero temperatures, nearing the -190°C mark. Each team had to compete in several different benchmark categories including: CPU-Z Frequency, WPrime 1024m, SuperPi 32m, 3DMark06 and 3DMark Vantage on both P55 and X58 platforms.

Team PURE members discussing strategy and overclocking their machine

Team XtremeSystems was led by Charles “Fugger” Wirth, founder of XtremeSystems.org and a world-champion overclocker.  Charles was joined by Michael “Mike” Graf, a PCMark Vantage Guru and Brian “Chew*” McLaclan, a well-known AMD overclocker.  XtremeSystems is one of the most recognized overclocking teams in the world and is currently in 12^th position on HWBot.org.

Brian “Chew*” McLaclan pouring liquid nitrogen

Team PURE consisted of three overclockers who are ranked among the top 100 worldwide.    Team leader Brian Yuhas is a veteran overclocker who is currently ranked 15^th in the world.  Also on the team is Jody “3oh6” Bailey, a SuperPi 32M fiend.  The last member, Chris “Gomeler” Morrell, is a well-rounded overclocker and reviewer for LegitReviews.com.  Team PURE is the brainchild of Vince “K|ngP|n” Lucido, one of the best overclockers worldwide.   The team is a who’s who in overclocking and is currently ranked first in the world on HWBot.org.

Team PURE tweaking for SuperPi 32M

Team OC Alliance was led by Travis “V2-V3” Jank for this event. An up and coming extreme overclocker, Robert “Hondacity” Marique, joined the team as well.  Allen “Splave” Golibersuch rounded out the team for OC Alliance and is currently ranked 20^th in the world.  The rather new Team OC Alliance consists of dedicated enthusiasts who just broke into the 8^th spot on HWBot.org.

Allen “Splave” Golibersuch from TEAM OC Alliance tweaking his Intel Core i7 980x

On day one, the teams focused on the benchmarks at hand with XtremeSystems taking an early lead.  Team XtremeSystems ended the day in first place, Team PURE took second, and Team OC ALLIANCE finished third.   There were impressive scores on day one from all the teams.  XtremeSystems dominated in the 3DMark benchmarks while Team PURE won almost all of the wPrime and SuperPi benchmarks.

Team PURE using the Corsair Airflow 2 fan to cool the PWM on their 4 ATI Radeon 5870

On day two the teams were allowed to use any hardware they wanted to get the best score in the same benchmarks.   Team XtremeSystems went on to win day two as well, with Team OC ALLIANCE in second and Team PURE in third.  For the full details, see ASUS’s ROG website.

Team OC Alliance warms up their liquid nitrogen pot on day two after several hours of overclocking Overall the event was a huge success, with several world records broken by the teams.  Team XtremeSystems had a great strategy and were able to get top scores in several of the benchmarks to secure wins on both days.  Team Pure did a great job as well, but ran into some issues trying to run their four ATI Radeon 5870 video cards on liquid nitrogen.  Team OC Alliance also did a very good job with an impressive 6.5GHz CPU-Z validation by Allen “Splave” Golibersuch.