The latest edition of the OC Show from OverClockingTV is now available. In Episode 14 of Season 3 hosts Trouffman and Xyala are joined by Canada’s No.1 overclocker marc0053. The show begins with Marc introducing the Radeon 4000 Armageddon, a contest hosted on Overclock.net which is centered on overclocking older Radeon 4000 series cards that are cheap and utterly burnable when benching with Furmark. Xyala also introduces the topic of the Xiaomi Mix smartphone, discussing its relatively revolutionary design. Trouffman also introduces the Northern Arena, the biggest gaming competition in Canada, which held its final event of the year in Montreal last weekend.

Xyala also introduces a HWBOT X event that took place the previous weekend in St. Benoit in France. The FFOC (French Federation of Overclockers) held a workshop at the Gamers Assembly Halloween Edition Lan event were attendees were given the chance to learn how to build and overclock a PC. There was also a simple OC contest with prizes for the winners.

In terms of contest on OC-ESPORTS this time of year typically has fewer contest happening, however Novice Nimble and Rookie Rumble contest continue to attract overclockers. In the HWBOT Team Cup France currently have the lead, while in the ROG Showdown German overclocker Nik leads the way. One of the other topics of discussion is the possibility of Indonesia’s No.1 overclocker Hazzan retiring from the world of overclocking entirely. Hazzan already has his ticket to the World Championship final in Berlin (plus his visa) so it would be hugely disappointing if he didn’t compete. The fact that the World Championship 2016 Finals are just two weeks away also proves to be a hot topic of discussion.

The guys also turn to the subject of the October release of the Steam Survey which offers a snapshot of what hardware PC gamers on Steam are using. The topic of gaming and hardware segues nicely into the topic of VR and current state of the VR headset market.

You can catch the OC Show S03-E14 here on the OverClocking-TV YouTube channel.

Yesterday we brought you news of how DrWeez is currently honing his overclocking skills ahead of the HWBOT World Championship in Berlin in a week or so from now. The talented South African is not the only contender for the title of HWBOT World Champion 2016. Among the eight combatants we will also find Canadian marc0053 who qualified for the contest having won the HWBOT World Tour stop in North America at LanETS. Today we are sharing a video from Marc in which he shares his efforts to be as prepared as possible for the big event next month.

One of the rules of the World Championship Finals is that contestants must use the same motherboard brand that was used during the World Tour event in which they qualified. At LanETS Marc used an ASUS motherboard, so in the Final he will also use an ASUS motherboard. In preparation for the contest Marc has selected two Z170 boards that will the subject of much scrutiny and testing in the next week or so. He has an ASUS ROG Maximus VIII Extreme, a full ATX board with every feature ASUS could cram onto it, plus an ASUS ROG Maximus VIII Impact a Mini-ITX board.

Marc explains that the Impact board offers fantastic memory overclocking among other things due to the fact that the memory DIMM slots are closer to the CPU and there are only two of them. Marc plans to use the Impact as his primary board with the Extreme as back up, not least because many of the benchmarks selected for the Final are memory dependant.In the video Marc prepares his boards for sub-zero overclocking with LN2. Each and every overclocker pretty much has a unique methodology when it comes to board insulation. It seems no two techniques are the same. Marc’s approach starts with the removal of the heatsinks, followed by a coating liquid electrical tape,as substance that takes longer to apply but once it thoroughly dries out it turns out to be much more reliable than Vaseline or other alternatives. Marc also shares his views on using eraser among other things.

Watch the full video of marc0053 preparing for the Final here on the OverClocking-TV YouTube channel.

A few weeks ago Buildzoid gave us an in depth look at the PCB of Palit GTX 1080 GameRock card. Today he’s back at it again, this time focusing on a stripped down AMD R9 Fury card from Sapphire, a card that has a pretty unique, custom PCB. The video sheds a great deal of light on exactly what Sapphire have done in terms of power delivery, component selection and overall design. If you’re interested in getting maximum performance when pushing an R9 Fury card, this video will give you some great insight as to the actual hardware you’re dealing with.

An initial glance at the PCB reveals the power design of the card which is divided into three distinct areas; the main section to the right of the GPU is the involves a six phase VRM for the GPU, while just above we have a single phase for the High Bandwidth Memory (HBM), then on the far upper left corner there is an auxiliary power phase specifically for the memory controller and other supporting logic ICs. Looking at the GPU itself you can also see the four HBM stacks mounted directly onto the die.

Looking at the Power Stage ICs on the card, Buildzoid identifies them as International Rectifier 3575 chips. This means that the GPU VRM most likely offers 360 amps of current for GPU. The voltage controller is an IR 3567B which is pretty much standard on the majority of high-end AMD cards. The card also includes more capacitors than the AMD reference design, a fact that makes Buildzoid pretty impressed.

If there are any Rookies or Novices out there who need schooling in the PCB design principles used by graphics card vendors like Sapphire who are willing go beyond stock reference designs, this video is an excellent introduction. Check it out here on the Actually Hardware Overclocking YouTube Channel.

DrWeez is the current No. 1 overclocker in South Africa. When the HWBOT World Tour rolled into town in march of this year, he stepped and won the World Series contest, edging out some fierce competition from compatriots Vivi and QuantumX. The win booked his seat on a plane to Berlin where he will one of eight overclockers looking to become World Champion of 2017. World Championship rules however, state that overclockers competing in the finals must use the same brand of motherboard that they used in qualification. In the case of DrWeez, that means he will be benching on an MSI motherboard.

With only weeks to go until the World Championship 2016 Finals DrWeez has been sharpening his proverbial sword, getting himself as fully prepared as possible for the big showdown on the 4th of December. A key element in any live OC contest is of course making sure you are fully familiar with the motherboard. To this end Andrew has been keen to do a little extra homework, especially needed because he has mostly been using the ASUS Maximus VIII Impact in the recent GALAX GOC Qualifier contest.

All motherboards have their own unique quirks, not just in terms of design and features but in terms of how the BIOS works and how the board interacts with memory for example. Overclocking Session #44 doesn’t have a specific target like previous sessions, being more of a chance to see how an Elite Overclocker prepares himself (and his board) for an important live OC contest. The session is about getting reacquainted with the MSI Z170 XPower Gaming Titanium Edition board, creating memory profiles ahead of time and also checking out a mod to help with cold boot bugs.

Catch Overclocking Session #44 from DrWeez on his YouTube channel.

Here’s another interesting video from our buddy Buildzoid and his Actually Hardcore Overclocking channel. It involves modding the BIOS of an AMD RX 480, in this case an XFX card. BIOS modding is not something that I’m sure the majority of overclockers would claim to be experts at, a fact that probably makes this video an enlightening experience for many of us.

As with any BIOS or firmware you are essentially looking at hundreds (or could it even be thousands?) of lines of hexadecimal text. Without very specialized knowledge relating to which line of code relates to which setting or feature set, it’s impossible to make sense of what you’re looking at. Thankfully there are some tools available that can make BIOS modding infinitely more simple. In this video Buildzoid takes us step by step through the process.

The quest, as explained in the video stream, is to mod the RX 480 card to allow for higher voltages (and thusly higher, more stable overclocks). Trying to find the exact piece of hexadecimal code that controls upper voltage limits would be quite a challenge. Thankfully however an app known as the Polaris BIOS Editor (v1.4) can help makes things much easier, offering a UI with options to alter settings for GPU and memory including maximum TDP values and more. Buildzoid illustrates how changes in the app are applied in the code. Boom… the world of GPU BIOS modding just became more accessible.

Check out the video here on the Actually Hardcore Overclocking YouTube channel. It’s a pretty solid introduction to the topic of BIOS modding, as always, delivered in honest and entertaining Buildzoid fashion.