Today we officially announce the arrival of the third and final round of the 2017 Road to Pro Challenger series here on OC-ESPORTS. Round 3 continues where Round 2 left off, featuring the broadest possible expanse of intensive, competitive overclocking.

First a quick recap of the action from Rounds 1 and 2. $@39@ (Greece) won the Pro OC Division and Division I, while rsannino (Italy) claimed Divisions II and III for himself. In the AMD Divisions IV, V and VI, orion24 (France) and Demac (Greece) proved to be utterly unstoppable. Let’s also give a mention to scannick (Italy) who won the retro-centric Division VII in style.

Will we see the same overclockers in contention again in Round 3? Only time will tell. Most of the above mentioned did not win any of the Division titles in Round 1, so it really is difficult to say. It’s highly likely that we may see a return of the overclockers who won in Round 1. Pro OC Division winner Gunslinger (US) may well come back into contention. Then there's rauf (Sweden), newlife (Australia) and of course yudhiagust (Indonesia) and I.nfraR.ed (Bulgaria) who all made Division wins in Round 1 of this year’s contest.

Without further delay, let’s hone in on the uniquely crafted stages that make up each of the Round 3 Divisions.

Pro OC Division - The Pro OC Division is an arena for the Elite and professional overclockers to compete. There are ‘no holds barred’, so to speak, and there are (almost) no limitations on the type of hardware that can be used. This means that overclockers are invited to use the fastest, most expensive hardware on the planet including Nvidia Titan cards, and for the first time, Intel Skylake-X processors (including Core i9 chips of up to 10 cores). The only restriction is on multi-chip systems. Single CPUs and GPUs are allowed only. Here are the benchmarks that have been devised for Round 3.

Pro OC: Round 3 Stages

• Stage 1: Cinebench R15
• Stage 2: HWBOT x265 4K
• Stage 3: 3DMark Vantage Performance
• Stage 4: HWBOT Prime
• Stage 5: Catzilla 1440p

Catch the full introduction to Round 3 of the Challenger Divisions here on OC-ESPORTS.