The second stage of the GIGABYTE Summer Spectacular contest is currently underway on OC-ESPORTS, finishing up in just over four days time. The contest challenges overclockers to push budget grade Kaby Lake and Kepler silicon, namely the Core i3 7530K and Nvidia GT 730 graphics cards. Stage 2 is very much GPU centered, requiring combatants to score highly as possible in the 3DMark Ice Storm benchmark. The leader at the moment is Elite Greek OC master OGS who currently holds the top rank with an impressive score of 165,159 marks, the highest ever with this particular card. This was achieved by pushing his GT 730 card under LN2 to 2,080MHz, a massive +130.60% beyond the cards meager stock settings.

To push the GK208 GPU this far it takes a lot more power than the card was designed to deliver, thus pretty much all competing overclockers have performed a hardware mod. In most cases this involves simply soldering a more robust VRM to the card. As one of the competing overclockers in the contest Buildzoid also took the time to modify his GT 730 card, soldering a VRM he rescued from a dead RX 480 card to his wee GT 730. The result is what he calls a GT 730 ‘Suicide Edition’. As you would expect Buildzoid modded his GT 730 during a live stream with commentary throughout so that noobs and other interested parties can learn a thing or two about graphics card hard modding.

You can find the GT 730 mod video here on the Actually Hardcore Overclocking channel. Interestingly you can also check out a fantastic GT 730 Mod Guide from Alva ‘Lucky_n00b’ Jonathan here on JagatReview (Google Translate version). Finally, don't forget that you can find all the scores and submissions from the GIGABYTE Summer Spectacular contest here on OC-ESPORTS where $2,500 USD in prizes are up for grabs.