The Cheapaz Chips Season 1 contest on OC-EPSORTS urges us to get down to some pure overclocking. It’s not about breaking word records or pushing the frontiers of performance, it’s about squeezing the utmost out of cheaper hardware using every possible tactic at our disposal with a special emphasis on old fashioned hardware modding.

The contest involves three stages, each centered on a GPU benchmark. The hardware restriction however limits combatants to using an Nvidia GT 710 graphics card, one of the cheapest entry-level graphics cards available today. The contest kicked off in mid-July and runs until the end of August – let’s have at a look at the standings.

At the top of the leaderboard we currently have France’s orion24 sitting on a points haul of 146 points, just 4 points off the maximum. The closest competitor is Aussie newlife on 140 points, followed by Digg_de from Germany on 126.

If we take a look at Stage 1 scoring on Catzilla 576p, orion24 leads the way, hitting a score of 3,979 marks. The card itself was pushed to by a remarkable 141% to hit a clock speed of 1,868MHz with memory tuned to 1,868MHz / 1,140MHz (+26.67%). In terms of CPU orion24 opted for a Core i7 6700K clocked at 4,804MHz (+20.10%).

Stage 2 is all about the classic 3DMark01 benchmark. Here we find newlife hitting at a score of 62,339 marks thanks to a GT 710 with its GPU pushed to 1,647MHz (+70.32%) and the memory tuned to 1,260MHz (+40.00%). Newlife opted for a Core i7 4770K which he overclocked to 4,800MHz (+37.14%). Interestingly, the rig was in fact ice water cooled. Not far behind we also have contest leader orion24 on 62,213 marks, quite away ahead of Digg_de on 58,498 marks in third place.

Finally, looking at the GPUPI 1B fight in Stage 3, we find American SDhydro in the driving seat with a run of 5mins 53sec 155ms. This was achieved with a GT 710 with the GPU cranked up to 1,907MHz (+146.06%), and memory at 1,100MHz (+22.22%). The GPU was indeed LN2 cooled. SDhydro’s choice of CPU here was an i7 5960X pushed to 4,707MHz (+56.90%).

The contest has just under three weeks to go and I get the feeling that especially in Stages 2 and 3, there’s plenty of time to see some action at the top of the leaderboard. YouTube’s OC modding master Buildzoid for example has claimed a third place spot in Stage1, but has yet to submit a score in either of Stages 2 or 3.

Check out the Cheapaz Chips contest here on OC-EPSPORTS.