Let's take a look at the current standings in the first GIGABYTE contest of the 2018 OC Season

GIGABYTE kicked off their 2018 OC Season here on OC-ESPORTS just a few weeks ago with the GIGABYTE AORUS Winter Challenge contest. With just one week of the contest left, it’s time take a quick look at the current leaders, the CPUs and boards being used, the scoring and of course the great prizes up for grabs.

GIGABYTE AORUS Winter OC Challenge: Feb 1st – Feb 28, 2018

Running throughout the month of February 2018, the contest allows overclockers to use any Intel processor with 6 or less physical cores (disabled cores not allowed). However, to create a more level playing field, processors cannot use CPU core or cache frequencies above 5GHz. Contestants must use a GIGABYTE / AORUS motherboard and submit using the contest wallpaper to ensure only fresh submissions count. The contest spans three separate stages each starting and ending on a different date to keep interest levels peaked throughout. Let’s take a look at the stages to get a snapshot of who looks in the frame for some great hardware prizes from GIGABYTE.

Stage 1: XTU (Feb 1st – 10th)

Stage 1 of the contest ultimately acts as a tiebreaker with only one actual contest point awarded for all contestants that make a submission. Why do we need that? The way the contest is setup, using a max-5GHz, max-6-core limitations, we can expect plenty of overclockers to be hitting very similar scores. Stage 3 will act as the first tiebreaker, followed by Stage 2 with XTU scores in Stage 1 used as a final decider.

In Stage 1 we find Nik (Germany) at the top of the table with a leading XTU score of 2,825 marks. As you would expect, he used a hexa-core Coffee Lake Intel Core i7 8700K, plus a GIGABYTE Z370N WIFI, which is in fact a mini-ITX form factor motherboard. Crucially he configured his DDR4 system memory at 2,036MHz (12-12-12-28), a configuration that may well have benefited from the smaller motherboard and shorter trace paths on the PCB itself. Every edge counts in a contest centered on memory and OS tweaking, which is what we’re looking at when CPU clocks are limited.

Here’s a shot of the rig used by Nik.

In second place in Stage 1 we find the legendary Lucky_n00b (Indonesia) and score of 2,823 marks. KaRtA (Australia) sits in third place, also on 2,823 marks. You can find the full table for Stage 1 here.

Stage 2: 3DMark Fire Strike Physics (Feb 10th- February 17th)

Stage 2 bring us to another challenge, this time involving the 3DMark Fire Strike Physics benchmark, a test that relies heavily on memory tweaking and OS optimization to gain an edge. At the top of the table we have Bullshooter (Germany) with a score of 23,383 marks. He also opted for a smaller GIGABYTE Z370N WIFI board, configuring his DDR4 kit at 1,933MHz (12-12-122-28).

In second place in Stage 2 we have KaRtA (Australia) with 23,362 marks while in third place we find minicoopers (Germany) with 23,357 marks. Check out this shot of the rig from KaRtA:

Find the full table for Stage 2 here.

Stage 3: Geekbench3 - Multi Core (Feb 18th- February 28th)

With Stage 3, we come to Geekbench 3 (Mulit-core), the only stage currently still in play. At the top of the table Bullshooter (Germany) is again top dog with a score of 31,805 marks with his DDR4 kit pushed to 2,065MHz (12-12-12-28), again using the popular GIGABYTE Z370N WIFI board.

Second place currently belongs to P5ych0 (Germany) who has a score of 31,650 marks, while Nik (Germany) gain shows his class with a matching score score of 31,650. These guys are really close, making me wonder exactly how Bullshooter is gaining an edge. Here’s a shot of the rig from P5ych0 which is based on a pretty sexy looking GIGABYTE Z370 AORUS Gaming 7 motherboard:

GIGABYTE AORUS Winter OC Challenge: Current Standings

With one week to go, we find the top ten of the overall table for the GIGABYTE AORUS Winter OC Challenge to look like this:

At this point Bullshooter (Germany) is in a commanding lead at the top of the table. Unless he can be equaled or beaten in Stage 3, he looks certain to be crowned winner. Let’s have quick look at the prizes on offer from GIGABYTE:

Winter OC Challenge: Prizes

Contest winners will enjoy some fantastic prizes from GIGABYTE, Intel, EK-WB, G.SKILL, Seasonic and HWBOT.

1st Place Prizes

2nd Place Prizes

3rd Place Prizes

Lucky Draw Prizes

Check out the contest web page here and keep abreast of all the action in the final days: http://oc-esports.io/#!/round/gigabyte_aorus_winter_oc_challence_2018