The second round of the Pro OC Championship took place last weekend with Argentina’s nacho_arroyo taking the lead with a excellent performance benching 3DMark03 on Intel’s Skylake Platform. Here’s a quick look at the scoring and places that happened in Stage 1.

The rules and limitations for Stage 1 are simple; overclockers were allowed to use any single CPU on any Z170 motherboard plus any single GPU benching the somewhat classic 3DMark03. Nacho_arroyo submitted a winning score of 30,2645 marks using a GTX 980 Ti GPU boosted to 1,817MHz (+81.7%) and memory configured at a very nice 2,200MHz. Surprisingly he also used a Core i5 6600K nicely pushed to 6,700MHz (+91.43%). Note: The Argentine was the only overclocker in Stage 1 to opt for the Core i5 6600K over the flagship i7 6700K. Nice move.

In second place we have Rauf pushing an i7 6700K to exactly 6,700MHz (+67.50%), coupled with a 980 Ti clocked at 1,900MHz (+76.58%) / 2200MHz (+25.50%). Rauf may feel a tad disappointed as his score of 30,2541 marks narrowly missed top place. Third place goes to [MSI] OGS from Greece on 30,0222 marks. He also pushed a GTX 980 Ti, in his case with an identical GPU clock of 1,900MHz (+76.58%) but with a slightly lower memory clock of 2,100MHz (+19.79%).

Behind the top three we have Round 1 winner Dancop. It’s interesting to note that Dancop apparently ran into issues getting a decent score despite having higher clocks. He clearly figured out the issue however, eventually making a 1st Place Global Ranking score just a few days later using a 980 Ti pushed to 1,970MHz (+83.09%) / 2,200MHz (+25.50%). He will be dissapointed he didn’t quite figure out how to resolve the issue in time to submit the result in the Pro OC Round. Just goes to show, even World No.1 overclockers run into issues on occasion.

In fifth place we have South Africa’s DrWeez with a score of 29,4648 marks. While Andrew may not be too pleased with this score, the upshot for us is that we can watch a full replay of his Round 2, Stage 1 benching session on the DrWeez YouTube channel (published as part of this year’s Pro OC program). As usual DrWeez gives us a fantastic fly-on-the-wall view of his benching den, with a running commentary from the man himself. This is really excellent content for any aspiring overclocker who wants to have a better idea about what these guys get up to in the Pro OC Championship.

If you want to check out the scores and submissions of Round 2, Stage 1 in more detail, check out the Pro OC 2016 contest page on OC-ESPORTS.