The GIGABYTE March Madness overclocking contest kicked off on OC-ESPORTS on March 1st, but in fact the first stage of the contest ends in just a few days, expiring on the 19th of March. It’s a contest that is open to overclockers in all HWBOT leagues with $2,500 USD of prizes up for grabs including GIGABYTE Aorus motherboards, Intel Core i7 CPUs, G.SKILL Trident memory kits, Enermax coolers, Open Benchtables and Seasonic power supplies – in short, plenty of motivation to compete.

One contender in the contest is Buildzoid, arguably overclocking’s most prolific YouTuber, who currently sits in second place on the Stage 1 leaderboard. Patreon contributions have helped Buildzoid get prepped for the GIGABYTE March Madness contest by funding his choice of motherboard. He’s opted to go for the GIGABYTE Z270N-WIFI board, a Kaby Lake-ready Mini-ITX motherboard that has the major advantage of featuring only two memory slots.

Why would he prefer a two slot board for this contest? The advantage is connected to the fact that the March Madness contest requires all CPUs speeds to be no higher than 5,003MHz. A restriction that places infinitely more emphasis on memory overclocking. To be successful in this contest you will have to focus on raising memory clocks and settings sub-timings as efficiently as possible. A motherboard with only two slots offers the distinct advantage of having the memory physically closer to the CPU.

Buildzoid offers an examination of the Z270N-WIFI board and also discusses the tactics he will employ to compete in the contest where he is doing quite well despite being a relative novice at memory overclocking. His score of 6,514 marks in 3DMark Time Spy Physics is just behind UK overclocker kimandsally with a score of 6,528 marks.

Catch the video from Buildzoid here on the Actually Hardcore Overclocking YouTube channel. You can find the GIGABYTE March Madness contest here on OC-ESPORTS.