Corsair Blog - Dominator GT

FOR THE HORDE!

Some people go on a cruise for their vacation, or perhaps take a trip to Hawaii or some other tropical paradise. But not me! For me, paradise was in Anaheim, California, in late October, at Blizzcon 2011!

This year’s BlizzCon was a blast and will be my first pick for this year’s best game convention. If you are a fan of any Blizzard’s games then you should’ve been at this year’s event! BlizzCon is Blizzard Entertainments annual celebration of their major franchises: Warcraft, Starcraft, and Diablo. Fans can play the latest version as well as participate in community contests and tournaments. Blizzard also revealed a lot of interesting things about their upcoming games, including the long-awaited and highly-anticipated game, Diablo III. The event was full of surprises and the crowd was just awesome.

Overclocking on liquid nitrogen and pushing hardware into the danger zone can be very frustrating but can also be rewarding. We recently released an overclocking video that showed you how I prepare my motherboards to run on liquid nitrogen. I recently took the same setup from the video but with a different CPU, and tried to set the 3DMark03 world record with it.

With the availability of more affordable liquid nitrogen pots, more and more users are starting to overclock using liquid nitrogen. However there is still some mystery about how its done and how the system is prepared. In this video I will take you through the process of insulating the motherboard, and show you how to get started overclocking with LN₂.

I used the folliwing hardware when I shot this video:

• Intel® Core™ i7 990X Extreme Edition CPU
• Asus Rampage III Black Edition motherboard
• Asus ROG Xpander (allows 4-way SLI)
• NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX580 (x4)
• Corsair Dominator® GT memory (CMGTX2)
• Corsair Professional Series™ Gold AX1200 PSU (x2)
• Corsair Force Series™ SSD

If you have ever looked at the top 3DMark® scores or know a little about extreme overclocking, you've probably seen the name Vince “K|ngP|n” Lucido. Recently Vince teamed up with fellow overclocker and mad scientist Illya “TiN” Tsemenko to break some world records.

Four highly modified NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 580 with K|ngP|n cooling Tek 9 LN2 pots installed

Round two of the ASUS® ROG Experience Overclocking contest was held during Blizzcon 2010 at Anaheim Convention Center. Two teams battled it out on October 22nd and 23^rd during Blizzcon at the ASUS booth. Along with the overclocking contest, all of the attendees were able to attend an overclocking workshop on the other side of the booth.

Today’s high end video cards demand more power than ever and with multiple card configurations,  like the 4-Way SLI configuration detailed here, power demand is increased even more. In order to test how much power was being drawn from the wall, four NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 480 video cards were installed onto a Gigabyte™ GA-X58A-UD9 motherboard. The entire setup would be powered by a single Corsair Professional Series™ Gold AX1200 power supply. To measure power draw a Kill A Watt™ meter was used with an accuracy rating of 2%.

Introduction

This application note will explore the benefits of using 8GB of Corsair DDR3 system memory in a dual-channel DDR3-based PC, such as an Intel® Core™ i5 or Core™ i7 (Lynnfield) system, or an AMD AM3 Phenom II™ PC. It will show how the additional RAM allows for a 'snappier' and more responsive PC, with performance improvements of up to 186% versus a PC with 4GB of RAM. And it will also show how adding more RAM allows you to change the way in which you use your PC, by allowing you to 'do more'. This includes running more applications (and never needing to close them), working with more data, and even running another 'virtualized' operating system. For example, you could run a virtual Ubuntu Linux operating system as a pure email / home admin PC, leaving your Windows installation free for office duties, or just as a pure gaming system.

These benefits will be discussed in more detail during the course of this application note, but a summary of the performance results and benefits is shown below.

Read the rest of the Application Note after the jump.

The guys over at Xtreme Systems are all about pushing the limits of what hardware can do. Not only getting hardware to go faster, but getting it colder. Case in point....

The end result? Their 2000C7 Dominator™ GT DDR3 overclocked to a mind-numbing 2600MHz! Click here to see the CPU-Z screenshots and more.

In these videos, Jeff Checchi from our Applications Group shows how to build a Corsair Dream PC using the Corsair Obsidian Series 800D full-tower chassis, a Corsair Hydro Series H50 hi-performance cpu cooler, a Corsair Professional Series HX850W PSU, a Corsair Performance Series P128 solid-state drive, and Corsair Dominator GT DDR3 RAM.   The first video goes over installing the main components in the Corsair Dream PC:

In the second, Jeff shows you how quick and easy it is to eliminate cable clutter in the 800D:

Looking at the rankings of top overclockers you will surely see HiCookie’s name at the top, he is currently ranked 1^st in the world on HwBot.org.  Combining HiCookie’s skill and knowledge with the best components, he was able to set the 3DMark Vantage world record to P67148 3DMarks.  In order to take the record he used four NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 480s on the Gigabyte X58A-UD9, which was powered by two Corsair AX1200 watt power supplies.

Setting a world record in 3DMark Vantage takes several key components.  You will need a 6.35 GHz Intel® Core™ i7-980X, four overclocked GTX480s, high memory frequency with tight timings, two powerful power supplies and lots of liquid nitrogen!  Of course you will also need overclocking skill, knowledge, hard work and dedication.