Pro OC Cup 2014 Round 1 - HWBOT Prime

As the first season came to a closing end mid-December last year, the teams who started off in round one had a clear advantage. KPC Pro OC, the team of K|ngp|n and AndreYang, took the title of the Champions of the first Pro OC Season. With excellent performances in every round, they defeated United Overclockers and Kronos Pro OC. The title of Most Valuable Player of the first season went to Gyrock from Japan, who managed to keep an upcoming 8 Pack behind him in the very last round. Reading through the overview of the last round, it’s clear that last season was full of amazing overclocking and amazing benchmark scores.

And we’re getting ready for more! From February 1, the Pro OC superstars are getting ready for Season 2. In the first round, running from Feb 1 until April 30, the Pro OC teams again have to face each other in five different stages. The hot topics of the moment are of course the GeForce GTX 780 Ti – a challenge between Lightning, DirectCU and Kingpin Classified – and the Radeon R9 290X. Each have their place in the first round, and no doubt we’ll see great scores.

Next to the 3D GPU bonanza there are two CPU benchmark stages. First of all, we have Cinebench R15 limited to the most prominent quad core/module CPUs of the moment: 4770K, 3770K, 4820K, FX-8150, and FX-9590. Next to that, there is the HWBOT Prime stage feature everything that has maximum 8 cores. This might be a round for Skulltrail, Piledriver, or (who knows) one of the overclockable server CPUs.

Last but not least, a challenge which is somewhat out of the comfort zone of the top overclockers. It’s a “cheapazchips” challenge featuring the low-end Radeon R7 240 graphics card. The Pro’s are free to use as many cards as they want, and of course as many modifications as they want. Who will figure out the magic combination of mods to make this card fly?

The concept of the Pro OC Cup series remains unchanged. From February 1 until March 1 12:00 GMT+0 you can sign-up for the Cup, create or swap teams, or simply opt-out. After March 1, the teams and players are locked down until the end of this round. To register, simply submit one score (per team) before March 1 12:00. Two weeks before the end of the competition, on April 16 12:00 GMT+0, the elimination round takes place. This means that only the best 10 teams of the round will be allowed to continue the competition.

As you can see on the right hand side and on the Pro OC overview page, the points of the first round of last season have been removed. Once teams start submitting in the new round, the ranking will automatically update. Good luck everyone!

More information

• Current Pro OC Rankings (overall + MVP): click
• Pro OC Q4'13: click
• Pro OC Q3'13: click
• Pro OC Q2'13: click

Just like last season, Pro OC Cup 2014 Round 1 counts five stages:

• Catzilla 720P Single GPU
• HWBOT Prime 8c (or below)
• Heaven DX11 Single GPU
• Cinebench R15 Quad Core
• Cheapazchips 3D: Radeon R7 240 3DM11-P

Each Pro OC Team can consist up to five members. The members are linked to the Pro OC Team and will no longer be participating in any of the other user leagues, excluding the Hardware Masters, for the duration of the Pro OC Cup. The members are not obliged to submit any results, so joining a team can be merely to point out you are part of the team. For example, if someone takes up the role as Team Manager, he or she may be responsible for finding sponsors but may never submit a single result. Once the Cup finishes, all members are free to stay with the team, leave it, or join another one. As each competition starts from scratch, moving from one team to the other will not affect the team’s ranking.