ASUS Advanced Overclocking Championship 2008

From the 27th to the 29th of July ASUS threw a big old overclocking shindig. David Hollingworth was there...

ASUS is very much of the opinion that overclocking has come of age, both as a spectacle and an arena to promote its wares. The hobby has been making the slow drift from maverick past-time guaranteed to void your warranty and piss off Intel to mainstream acceptance for some time of course, but the recent Advanced Overclocking Championship in Hong Kong pushed getting the overclocking to the public to new heights.

On a steamy summer’s day in the sprawling Dragon Center mall in downtown Hong Kong, over 25 of the world’s best overclockers gathered to push each other to the freezing limit – and well below! Contestants had been gathering for days beforehand, seeing the sights of the town and impatiently waiting for the real first stage of the event. Over a day before they got the officially start, the release of the hardware – all stock, all standard, all non-binned – was a serious affair.

Imagine something akin to a shark feeding frenzy. Except you’ve got a lot of serious tech heads from as far afield as Turkey, Portugal and the UK shouldering each other aside for motherboards, CPUs and graphics cards. Within moments, their tech in sweaty hands, they’re running back to packed hotel rooms to start the serious bidness of modding and readying the gear for the big day. From feeding frenzy to ghost town (complete with tumbling anti-static bags for tumbleweeds) in no time flat.

The blind draw is probably the best way to keep the playing field level, but it did draw some criticism. One ‘clocker from the UK was afraid that it turned the competition into little more than a lucky dip. “Someone could have already won, at this stage, if they’ve got the right chip. If you draw a dud and they draw a good one, what can you do?”

Others were more philosophical. “It’s still going to come down to skill,” said YoungPro of Australia’s own Team.au. “You’ve still got to know about how to push your hardware.”

Which is, really, exactly the kind of attitude that ASUS wants to foster, and be known to be involved with.

Bernard Lim, ASUS Sales Group General Manager, is very excited to be able to sponsor such events. “This places ASUS as not only a market leader, but a part of a community,” he said after he opened official proceedings, alongside representatives from Intel, Kingston and NVIDIA. The fact that each overclocker represents a unique mix of passion and skill doesn’t hurt either. “These are the top people in the world, and they can really help us make our products better. In three days, maybe we’ll have even more new ways to improve our motherboards!”