Just in case you’ve been living under rock, steponz (US) won the Overclocking World Championship Qualifier contest in Las Vegas last weekend. He edged out Indonesia’s Lucky_n00b to clinch an exciting Grand Final where the two battled it out on the latest Kaby Lake Core i7 7700K chips using brand new GIGABYTE Z270 motherboards. Trouffman from Overclocking-TV managed to get hold of steponz after the match to get his thoughts on the contest.

The interview is actually quite revealing. Jo steponz is veteran of several live Overclocking contests so it’s great to see him reveal his thoughts on the contest format. The 1v1 format used in all OCWC Qualifier matches is fairly new to Overclocking. It forces two Overclockers to bench side by side with the same hardware on a randomly drawn benchmark with time limit of just thirty minutes. steponz explains that this format definitely ups the stress levels while also being fun. Having just himself and Lucky_n00b on the stage facing each other added an extra dimension that you cannot get with a group-based format.

Jo also explains his strategy for the 1v1 with Alva. Having experienced certain issues getting the memory timings tight ion Day 1, Jo was careful to take his time dialing in all the memory settings, also testing stability at regular intervals. While he was doing this, Lucky_n00b was busy aggressively making scores with steady improvements on each run. Jo knew he would had to make big score straight off the bat, a feat he achieved by coming in ahead of Lucky_n00b with a run of 1m 6.726sec.

You can catch the full interview with Jo 'steponz' here on the OverClocking-TV YouTube channel.