A short newspost to serve as reminder that the rules regarding the usage of Engineering Sample CPUs still apply to Haswell. For both the XOC and EL rankings, the usage of engineering samples of the latest generation hardware (in this case, Haswell and Sandy Bridge-E) is disallowed. If you want to submit your benchmark result with an ES CPU for personal tracking, you can still do so by disabling the points for that benchmark result by ticking the "I do NOT want points for this submission"-box at the bottom of the benchmark submission page. Our dedicated moderating staff is going over the latest Haswell benchmark submissions and will remove points from any XOC/EL score. If you come across last-gen ES based benchmark submissions with points enabled, feel free to inform the staff.

By the way, points for submissions with Ivy Bridge based engineering sample hardware can now be enabled.

As a sidenote to the engineering sample story of Haswell you might want to read through the Haswell Q-Spec for Engineering Samples thread on our forums. It should give you more insight in the difference between engineering sample, qualification/media sample and retail product.

Happy clocking!

TAIPEI, Taiwan, June 19, 2013 – Only ASRock motherboards can transcend ASRock motherboards! Following the two record-breaking in memory overclocking happened in early June, today once again the world’s leading motherboard maker ASRock announced that the legendary OC Master Nick Shih has reached an incredible 6947.57MHz with the Intel new Core™ i7-4770K Processor and ASRock Z87M OC Formula motherboard, which tops the chart on HWBOT again.

More information:

• NickShih's submission: click
• Core i7 4770K CPU Frequency Ranking: click
• Full press release: click

There used to be a time when 3DMark Vantage was the benchmark for multi-GPU setups. The more GPUs linked together, the highest the score. However, as it goes with all benchmarks, over time it became more and more CPU bound. Nowadays, turns out two GPUs are enough to break the all-time record and that's exactly what K|ngp|n figured as well.

With two GTX Titan cards clocked at 1800/1900MHz (impressive memory clock!) and an Intel Core i7 3930K at 5700MHz, the OC master from the USA scores a tad over 85,000 points. That is roughly 700 points higher than the previous record set by Brazil's Rbuass. With so far no one seemingly interested (or equiped?) to challenge K|ngp|n in the benchmark, it is quite possible we have not seen his best score yet as he usually has a couple of backup scores in his pocked.

Congratulations!

For more information on the 3DMark Vantage Performance record, please refer to:

• K|ngp|n's benchmark submission: click
• Current WR hall of fame: click
• World record history: click

TAIPEI, TAIWAN, June 14, 2013 – Accidents happen, especially when you try to avoid them. But rest assured that ASRock's latest ATX sized OC Formula Series motherboards, including Z87 OC Formula/ac (with 802.11ac WiFi support) and Z87 OC Formula are protected by a special layer of Conformal Coating. As you've probably already heard, Conformal Coating protects the motherboards from conductive liquids, dust, corrosion and extreme temperatures*. And if you still feel skeptical about the lifespan of your overclocking oriented motherboards, fear not! ASRock guarantees 5 year warranty!

ASRock's Z87 OC Formula/ac and Z87 OC Formula are designed by the world famous overclocker Nick Shih. These two motherboards possess both hardware and software features for extreme overclocking, and they are also fully loaded with a set of lifestyle based features named A-Style. ASRock provides the five year warranty package as long as the malfunctions and defects occur under normal use conditions and aren't caused by misuse or abnormal operations**. If unfortunately the motherboard cannot be repaired, ASRock will replace the product with equivalent or next generation products.

Full press release: click

Taipei, Taiwan - 13th June, 2013 - During the week of Computex 2013, 6 overclocking records were shattered by professional overclockers with G.SKILL extreme performance DDR3 memory.

More information: full press release

Another short newspost to inform our beloved community that we welcome a new staff member this week. We are pleased to announce that Don_Dan, known from the Xtremesystems forums, has accepted our invitation to join the HWBOT staff. Don_Dan is someone who is simply just passionate about overclocking, regardless of records or marketing. A true overclocking aficionado ... someone we like to see on the team!

Welcome Don_Dan, and hope you enjoy your stay!

Another great write-up (check that first sentence) from Dennis about the MSI OC Workship. Lots of cool pictures too, so make sure to check out the article here: link.

They say you cannot build in a vacuum, while this may not apply to space travel it does mean that to make something great without influences from the outside and feedback from your target audience. Gearbox does this during the course of game development and will actually pull people in off the street to play their games in exchange for feedback and suggestions.

The MSI Overclocking Workshop was not designed to be a record setting event but rather an opportunity to allow experienced overclockers the chance to use the latest XPower Z87 motherboard and provide feedback on what they liked, and disliked about the new platform.

At the end of the event MSI gathered everyone up and asked specific questions about what the overclockers liked about the new system and what could be improved. This sort of feedback is crucial for the success of the XPower and MPower motherboard lines and proves that MSI listens to their users.

TAIPEI, TAIWAN, June 11, 2013 – They say Haswell is faster, but do those incremental improvements justify for building a new desktop PC this year? The tech site, TweakTown answers this question by awarding ASRock's latest member of the OC Formula Series, Z87 OC Formula/ac with a Best of COMPUTEX 2013 award!

As you might have guessed, Z87 OC Formula/ac is designed by one of the best overclockers around, Nick Shih, just like its predecessor. This overclocking oriented motherboard does not simply inherit the great overclocking capabilities from the former model, it is also equipped with numerous new features. Such as a Status OLED that displays the motherboard's frequency, temperature, BCLK ratio and other crucial information. There's also lifestyle based features, A-Style, including the only genuine conductive liquids, dust, corrosion resistance solution for motherboards, Conformal Coating. 2T2R 802.11ac WiFi for up to 867Mbps internet connections. Purity Sound™ which provides excellent bass, more details, less distortion, and supports 600 ohm high impedance headphones. HDMI-In for allowing two devices to share one monitor, and allowing users to instantly toggle between the two devices. Lastly, ASRock's remote wake and remote desktop solution, Home Cloud.

Another 8 Series motherboard worthy of mentioning is ASRock's Z87E-ITX. TweakTown used an Intel® Core i5-4670K CPU, plus a total of 16 Mushkin Chronos Deluxe 240GB SSD drives and a new Areca RAID controller on ASRock's Z87E-ITX to break the PCMark Vantage HDD world record by 592754!

Check this link to learn more about A-Style: http://www.asrock.com/microsite/intel8/

Something all the attending overclockers will agree on is that Computex 2013 was a crazy event. A lot of overclocking, a lot of overclockers and even more records. The most interesting battle to follow was without any doubt the memory clock validation battle between GSKILL and TeamGroup on the memory side and ASRock, GIGABYTE and ASUS on the mainboard side. Haswell can hit high numbers ... really high numbers. We already saw DDR3-4000 a while back and the battle went on during Computex.

With the record first broken live at the GSKILL booth, NickShih just uploaded his best(?) result to HWBOT. The mini-ATX ASRock Z87M OC Formula pushed the record up to DDR3-4286. Crazy!

Dennis, better known as Redmax, from Ninjalane was at the GIGABYTE OC Gathering yesterday and made a small picture coverage. Cool pictures!

Overclocking is a huge marketing vehicle for motherboard and video card vendors and over the past several years many of them have participated in or, hosted their own overclocking demonstration at Computex. One of the first major overclocking shows was hosted by Foxconn in 2008 to show off the capabilities of the Quantum Force motherboard line. Shamino and Kingpin were hosting the event but also invited other famous overclockers to help out. This grand style show has since been carried on by GSkill who invites motherboard partners to participate in an overclocking demonstration that both attracts people to their booth and allows them to show off what their products can do.

A side benefit to having overclocking shows and competitions is that after the show you can get everyone together in a social setting to overclock or simply share war stories. Gigabyte was kind enough to invite me out and it was quite an experience.

The highlight of the event goes beyond meeting some great overclockers but also the ability to see 4-way GTX Titan being benched along with an AMD APU running "full pot". Full Pot is an overclocker term which describes having the LN2 container at its coldest setting allowing the liquid nitrogen to simply boil away instead of evaporating off after the initial pour. AMD is really good about having chips without cold bugs and is the only reason you can do this.

The overclockers from GIGABYTE just uploaded a bunch of useful tools for the Z87X-OC motherboard

I've noticed a few comments online asking about drivers for Z87 platform for Windows XP so I've decided to upload the version that works properly. We've also just received our copy of GTL2.0 (GIGABYTE Tweak Launcher software) just in before the weekend for most. It still has a little bit of functionality to be added but we figured the key ones would be useful for you to use in the meantime.

• GTL2.0 download
• Intel ME driver for Windows XP (Z87 chipset)
• Windows XP Z87 OC Buttons driver
• Windows 7 & 8 Z87 OC Buttons driver

TAIPEI, Taiwan, June 6, 2013 – The global leading motherboard manufacturer ASRock Inc. launched its latest products on June 6^th at COMPUTEX Taipei 2013. ASRock's COO, LL Shiu, stated that "With a highly innovative spirit, ASRock topples the traditional motherboard industry and tries to combine daily life with motherboard's features, therefore we have created the A-Style features which includes Conformal Coating、Purity Sound™ 115dB、Home Cloud and 802.11ac WiFi+Wi-SD BOX."

Besides gaming competitions, overclocking shows are another can't-miss event at ASRock's booth. The world's top 3 overclockers including Nick Shih, Splave and John Lam displayed their skills yesterday. Nick Shih, who topped the Professional Overclockers League for 18 months straight, is no doubt a legendary Overclocker. Splave is the world's top Overclocker and a master in memory overclocking. John Lam is the founder of HKEP OC Lab and the Champion of 2013 ASRock Z77 OC COMPETITION. It was an intense performance with all three masters at the top of their game. Overclocking shows will continue until June 8^th. Don't miss them!

Another small post-Computex news article to inform you that the 3DMark Fire Strike Extreme benchmark can be benched for HWBoints from June 8, 2013. The benchmark has been enabled for world record, global and hardware points. Enabling points for the benchmark follows on a poll we held amongst members to which most responded positively.

Good luck all!