As we enter the first week of January 2018 many of the world’s tech media and industry people will be gearing up for CES 2018, the biggest technology trade show in North America. Back in 2011, CES was also the backdrop for MSI’s first US-based live OC contest. Dubbed the MSI Master Overclocking Arena 2011 Operation: Las Vegas, the contest pitted many of the world’s best overclocker’s against each other, including a few familiar faces that can still found lurking around today. The good news is that MAC and Hardware Canucks were on site in Las Vegas to give us a full report of what was going on.

On January 6th, the first official day of the recent Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, MSI held their very first live Master Overclocking Arena (MOA) event hosted in the Americas. This competition, appropriately dubbed “Operating: Las Vegas”, was the first of the many upcoming MSI MOA 2011 live overclocking competitions that will be hosted all over the world, and that will culminate once again in a huge final event in the heart of the PC hardware industry - Taipei, Taiwan.

For this particular event, there were ten teams made up of 19 competitors (e-killer was missing due to visa issues) from all over North and South America. There were there to compete for bragging rights, some nice cash prizes, a bit of free hardware, and an all-expenses paid trip to the aforementioned MOA 2011 final event in Taipei.

Now obviously this MSI Master Overclocking Arena 2011 Operation: Las Vegas competition was being held to determine who was the very best overclocking team in the Americas. However, MSI didn’t just randomly choose these teams at random though, the preparations and qualifications for this event started way back in October during an intense four week, five stage online competition hosted at hwbot.org.

The contest was a huge a success and will be remembered well by all who took part. In the end team US OC Alliance featuring Splave (US) and Romdominance (US) took the $1,500 USD top prize with US Over the Edge (Patch and Dentford) coming second, winning $1,000 USD, while Team Pure (G H Z and Gautam) arrived in third, going home with $500 USD. Read the full contest report here on Hardware Canucks.