Just like any good pastime, gaming and PC tuning has its events and summits, although on a grassroots level these are not as big and renowned as can be hoped for.
Some people are trying to make a difference, though, and recently three established overclocking teams congregated in Santa Clara, California to test their mettle against (or mayhap “on”) some of the latest and most capable consumer PC gear around.
Setting up
The event, dubbed the 3X3 OC Summit, started April 10, largely sponsored by ASUS, with participation by Intel, Corsair, OCZ and other companies. The gathering was part of the ongoing ASUS Republic of Gamers Experience Tour, and presumably the name of this summit comes from the fact that three teams were invited – OC Alliance, Team Pure and Xtreme Systems. It could also have something to do with the presence of ASUS ROG Maximus III Extreme and Rampage III Extreme motherboards as the basis for the systems used in the contest.
The teams also used the ROG MATRIX 5870 video card, and new Intel i7 980 six-core CPUs. Dominator GT RAM was supplied by Corsair, while OCZ contributed solid state drives and Antec helped with power supplies. Liquid nitrogen cooling was used extensively, adding that Fast and the Furious touch to proceedings.
Going for OC gold
The whole objective of the summit was to explore the overclocking potential of the hardware at hand using myriad configurations and testing tools, from CPU-Z to 3DMark Vantage and more. This was a contest, no doubt, as each of the three teams did their best to reach those mythically high benchmarks from beyond the pale of normal use.
You can check out the results and updates right here, quite exciting stuff for people interested in overclocking, especially the potential of these new Intel i7 980X processors.