ASUS Advanced Overclocking Championship 2008

Still, there is something odd about running it in a shopping center. Hell, as this story is taking shape, there has already been a couple of people asking what in freezing hell is going on. Overclocking simply isn’t on the average person’s radar. If this were an event promoting, say, Formula 1 racing, everyone would know. The systems that each team is trying to win with don’t even look like a ‘real’ computer as far as most citizens are concerned.

Each team has an array of cooling techniques, from various neoprene wrapped wonders, cooling fan arrays (including fugger’s evaporative cooler), all the way up to the Canadian team’s attempts to build a cold box enclosure. Only the ASUS monitors even hint that there’s anything recognisable as computing going on.

The motion is constant, at least. There are competitors carefully rushing back and forth with top-ups of Ln2, and blossoms of vapour as it’s poured into pots and enclosures. ASUS even put on a DJ to spin some tunes while temperatures – and benchmarking times – dropped.

And of course there’s the drama when a vital piece of hardware fails, which is exactly what happened to the Canadian team, who’s prepared – stripped, plastic coated, volt-modded – GTX 280 simply failed during benching. Within moments they were rock and roll, though, stripping a spare and starting all over again. It’s one thing to do that in the calm before the storm, but to do it fast and confidently in the middle of a competition is another thing entirely. These guys are super hardcore.


And the winner is...
On the first day China had the best of the action, scoring strong firsts in both SuperPi 8m and 3DMark01. Sweden, too, made a very strong showing, with Portugal bringing up a strong third. Some were not impressed, though, and earlier concerns re-asserted themselves. “[China] clearly has the best CPU – 70 or 80Hz better, easy,” one contestant was heard to say. “With a chip like that of course they’ll do well.”

The final stage was looking for the best scores in 3DMark Vantage, and while Australia came out swinging to score an early lead, both China and Sweden quickly overtook them. It was neck and neck, but China posted two killer scores in a row, coming out winners again, and earning them a perfect score for the tournament. Sweden came a fighting second, followed by Portugal, Singapore and Finland. Australia came in overall eighth – not bad for an event with twenty teams competing.

Sweden certainly won on the entertainment stakes, though, displaying considerable skill in drinking Ln2 and blowing a lot of mouth-vapour over the crowd.