Between 23rd and the 10th of March 2 crew members of HWBOT (Dennis and Me) did a rally for charity, the Baltic Sea Circle Rally. We drove from Belgium to the North Cape and back, around the Baltic Sea without using highways or GPS in a 37 year old car, in the middle of the winter.
The car
Our rally car was the oldest car out of 82 to reach the finish, and did fairly well! The only issues we had were:
we completely ruined our rear brakes on day 2 because someone forgot to release the handbrake
it was absolutely not waterproof
every pothole we hit the trunk flew open
when temperatures dropped to -15c and below we had to make a campfire underneath the car to get it started
when temperatures dropped to -30c the engine stalled even when driving
we made a detour of 400km in the middle of the night to fetch spare parts for another team
Together with donations from HWBOT members we gathered 1185 euro for the Belgian Children Cancer Foundation, thank you guys! Now we are back, we can start working on HWBOT again!
Between 23rd and the 10th of March 2 crew members of HWBOT (Dennis and Me) will be doing a rally for charity, the Baltic Sea Circle Rally. We are attempting to drive from Belgium to the North Cape and back, around the Baltic Sea without using highways or GPS in a 37 year old car, in the middle of the winter.
If you ever contemplated donating to HWBOT, now is the time as all donations received between now and the 10th of March will be donated to in full to the Belgian Children Cancer Foundation.
PCMARK VANTAGE Hall of Fame top 20 scores can't be submitted bug
We have 13 more open issues reported on our tracker, but the next 2 weeks there will be no active development on HWBOT. Dennis & me will be on an epic road trip to North Cape with an oldtimer, more about this in a next post.
A community poll was created to gauge opinions in whether competitions should count towards your career points or not. Opinions vary, but 2/3rds are in favor one way of the other, so expect competitions points changes to career points soon.
Found an issue and want to have it fixed, or at least be able to point out our lazy devs that the issue has been open for a very long time? Now is your time to shine! We have made a public repo on github so everyone with a github account can create and track issues.
The 8th revision of HWBOT has gone live, but the discussion whether competition points should be included or not in your career ranking remains unsettled. The seasonal league includes the points gained from the best 10 competitions entries. Should we do the same for career?
Arguments in favor of including competition points:
efforts done in reaching a high position in a competition should be awarded with points which last longer than the current season, as it is often harder then gathering points outside of a competition
encourages competition participation
Argument against:
new members can not compete against old members who participated in a lot of competitions in the past, unless the amount competitions which count towards your career are limited
The 8th revision of HWBOT is currently doing a test run on UAT and will go live this Saturday. Thanks all from the crew and community for useful feedback during the development of this new revision!
As revision 8 of the HWBOT rankings are being finalized, please take some time to leave feedback on how many of your submissions you want to have impact on your yearly seasonal ranking, and all time career ranking. Too many and grinding rankings will be needed, too few and there is no distinction between members having a lot of records and those with just a few.
HWBOT Prime has been given a long overdue update today. Fetch version 1.0.1 while it's hot here.
Noticable changes:
clock adjustment cheat detection
compatible with Java 8, 9, 10, 11 without tweaks. Java 7 and lower support has been dropped.
support for a "stability test", aka HWBOT Prime 30min, which searches for the highest prime number in 30 minutes. The highest found after 30 minutes is your benchmark score.
Update 1.0.1:
remove dependency of javasysmon library as many windows machines seem to have problems with it.
ASUS ROG Crosshair VII Hero Sets the Pace on AMD X470
We’ve been working closely with world-renowned overclockers to push the Ryzen 7 2700X to the brink on the Crosshair VII Hero. Elmor has already set a new record for the AM4 reference clock, decimating the old mark of 151.56MHz with an incredible 240.61MHz. TheOverclocker has claimed records for peak Ryzen CPU frequency with 6GHz on not only a single core, but also all eight cores and 16 threads. Top scores have also fallen in key benchmarks for eight-core CPUs, with TheOverclocker setting the fastest time in GPU PI for CPU 1B, and Der8auer hitting the top of the Geekbench3 leaderboard.
Precise voltage is vital when you’re on the edge, so the Hero tracks important rails from the best spot on the power plane, and it uses differential sensing to ensure accurate readings from both software and the onboard ProbeIT measurement points. Most motherboards rely on single-ended sensing tapped from a location that isn’t ideal, making it more difficult to gauge exactly how much voltage is being supplied to your components.
With eight onboard headers for fans and pumps, the Hero has the cooling credentials to match its overclocking aspirations. It’s ready for custom liquid loops thanks to a high-amperage pump header that can push up to 3A, plus additional headers for monitoring coolant temperatures and flow rate. If you somehow run out of places to connect fans, the board works with the ASUS Fan Extension card, which supports even more fans and temperature probes.
Taipei, Taiwan (11 April 2018) – G.SKILL International Enterprise Co., Ltd., the world’s leading manufacturer of extreme performance memory and gaming peripherals, is announcing the rules and benchmarks for the G.SKILL 5th Annual OC World Cup 2018 Live Qualifier. This live competition event will be held during the week of Computex 2018, from June 5th through June 7th, followed by the OC World Cup 2018 Grand Final on June 8, 2018. Be sure to check out the main stage at the G.SKILL booth for exciting live overclocking and liquid nitrogen in action!
OC World Cup 2018 Live Competition
G.SKILL OC World Cup 2018 marks the 5th consecutive year of this major overclocking event, where the top 6 qualified overclockers from around the world compete live on stage at the G.SKILL booth during Computex. In the first three days of Computex 2018 (June 5th to June 7th), each Live Qualifier contestant will have two time slots to complete designated benchmarks for the highest scores. At the end of the Live Qualifier round, the top two scoring contestants would secure spots for a final battle in the Grand Final round on June 8th and a chance to win the $10,000 cash prize!
Live Qualifier Benchmarks
Five total benchmarks have been carefully selected to test the 6 semi-finalists’ memory tweaking knowledge and overclocking skills. The following benchmarks will be used:
Highest DDR4 Frequency
Geekbench3 Multi Core 6G
3DMark11 Physics 6G
Cinebench R15 6G
HWBOT x265 BENCHMARK - 4K 6G
Grand Final Benchmarks
For the Grand Final stage, the two finalists must also complete 5 total benchmarks, as follows:
Highest DDR4 frequency with G.SKILL specified memory
1x Contestant A’s choice
1x Contestant B’s choice
2x Benchmarks chosen by G.SKILL
For the contestant’s choice benchmarks, it must be a valid 2D benchmark listed on HWBOT with fixed CPU frequency and approved by the event judges.
Competition Hardware
All OC World Cup 2018 contestants are restricted to using G.SKILL DDR4 memory, 8th Gen Intel® Core™ processor, and Z370 motherboards for the benchmarks.
About G.SKILL
Established in 1989 by PC hardware enthusiasts, G.SKILL specializes in high performance memory, SSD products, and gaming peripherals designed for PC gamers and enthusiasts around the world. Combining technical innovation and rock solid quality through our in-house testing lab and talented R&D team, G.SKILL continues to create record-breaking memory for each generation of hardware and hold the no. 1 brand title in overclocking memory.
Taipei, Taiwan (28 March 2018) – G.SKILL International Enterprise Co., Ltd., the world’s leading manufacturer of extreme performance memory and gaming peripherals, is excited to announce the achievement of an unprecedented DDR4-5000MHz memory in dual-channels. This major breakthrough is the world’s first instance of two DDR4 RGB memory modules breaking the DDR4-5000MHz barrier on just air cooling, when considering that this world-record class speed was only achievable under extreme liquid nitrogen cooling just two years ago. This massive technological feat is achieved with the high performance Samsung DDR4 B-die ICs, and running on the MSI Z370I GAMING PRO CARBON AC motherboard and the Intel® Core™ i7-8700K processor.
World’s First Dual-Channel DDR4-5000MHz Achieved on Air-Cooling
This in-development memory speed marks the first time in history that a pair of air-cooled RGB memory achieving the legendary speed of DDR4-5000MHz. While DDR4-5000MHz memory kits aren’t yet ready to hit retail stores, G.SKILL is taking major leaps in developing much faster memory speeds and demonstrating the brand’s unwavering dedication to continually push DDR4 memory performance into the absolute extremes.
“Previously, the 5GHz memory speed is only achievable in extreme overclocking and in single-channel. We’re excited to share that we’ve been able to achieve the 5GHz memory speed in not only air-cooling conditions, but also in dual-channels. This is a major milestone for us,” says Tequila Huang, Corporate Vice President, G.SKILL International. “We will make every effort to bring this specification onto the consumer market, and bring the experience of extreme performance to worldwide users.”
Shown in the screenshot below, on a system with the MSI Z370I GAMING PRO CARBON AC motherboard and an Intel i7-8700K processor, CPU-Z displays a DDR4-4700MHz Trident Z RGB dual-channel memory kit being overclocked 300MHz past its original rated speed to reach DDR4-5000MHz.
Established in 1989 by PC hardware enthusiasts, G.SKILL specializes in high performance memory, SSD products, and gaming peripherals designed for PC gamers and enthusiasts around the world. Combining technical innovation and rock solid quality through our in-house testing lab and talented R&D team, G.SKILL continues to create record-breaking memory for each generation of hardware and hold the no. 1 brand title in overclocking memory.
Overclock.net Freezer' Burn Overclocking competition starts this Sunday and runs for 2 months. It contains four stages, split in ambient cooling (min 20 degrees Celsius) and extreme cooling. The 2400 USD prize pot will be split over 20 winners. Awesome! Good luck for all participating. :)
Let's take a look at the current standings in the second GIGABYTE contest of the 2018 OC Season
GIGABYTE kicked off their second competition of the 2018 OC Season here on OC-ESPORTS in March with the GIGABYTE AORUS MARCH OC MADNESS 2018 contest. With a little less than 5 days 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 MARCH OC MADNESS 2018 Challenge: March 1st – March 31st, 2018
Running throughout the month of March 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 (March 1st – 10th)
In Stage 1 we find Nik (Germany) at the top of the table with a leading XTU score of 2,822 marks. He used a hexa-core Coffee Lake Intel Core i7 8700K running at 5Ghz, a GIGABYTE Z370N WIFI and Corsair DDR4 memory.
Here’s a shot of the rig used by Nik.
Stage 2: GPUPI for CPU - 1B (March 10th - 17th)
Stage 2 bring us to another challenge, this time involving the GPUPI for CPU - 1B benchmark. At the top of the table we have Lucky_n00b (Indonesia) with a score of 3min 8sec 171ms. He achieved this with a GIGABYTE AB350N-GAMING WIFI motherboard, 2048MB DDR4 SDRAM @ 2661MHZ and a RYZEN 5 1600 @ 4989MHZ (+55.92%).
Here’s a shot of the rig used by Lucky_N00b.
Stage 3: 3DMark11 Physics (March 17th - 24th)
jordan.hyde99 leads with 21582 points, using a GIGABYTE Z370N WIFI with a 8700K.
GIGABYTE AORUS March OC Madness: Current Standings
With one week to go, we find the top ten of the overall table for the GIGABYTE AORUS March OC Challenge to look like this:
At this point jordan.hyde99 (Australia) is in a commanding lead at the top of the table, but he is not unchallenged. Bullshooter, Lucky_n00b and Nik still have a good shot at winning the competition, as they did not yet submit for the last stage. Let’s have quick look at the prizes on offer from GIGABYTE:
GIGABYTE released a major revision of Aorus Z370 Ultra Gaming motherboard. Revision 2.0 replaces the 7-phase CPU VRM of the original with a new 11-phase setup that uses stronger ferrite-core chokes that don't whine when stressed. This new revision will be a part of the prize money of the GIGABYTE HWBOT competitions this winter: the AUROS Winter OC Challenge, the currently running AORUS March Madness and the soon to be anounced april competition too!
The company is also including one M.2 SSD heatsink for the upper M.2-22110 slot, which the original lacks. Besides these, the Aorus Z370 Ultra Gaming 2.0 is identical to the original, including its RGB LED diffusers, multiple RGB headers governed by GIGABYTE RGB Fusion software, two reinforced PCI-Express 3.0 x16 slots (x8/x8 when both are populated) with NVIDIA SLI support, one gigabit Ethernet interface driven by an Intel i219-V controller, and a premium onboard audio solution with a headphones amplifier and 120 dBA SNR CODEC (Realtek ALC1220); and a price ranging between $150-$170.
We will be migrating the forums to invision power board today. As all content will be migrated too, we expect this progress to take a whole day. Commenting on submissions and news will not be possible as it is integrated with the forum.
Edit: come say hi in our new forums!
The HWBOT World Tour 2017 landed in Poitiers, France for Gamers Assembly this weekend, hosting overclocking workshops and contests to generally spread the word of overclocking. From a competitive overclocking perspective, the highlight of the event is the Overclocking World Championship, a series of extreme overclocking contests that are held at each World Tour location where winners get a seat at a Grand Final at the end of the year. Yesterday we saw the Qualifier Segment of the contest with twenty overclockers pushing their hardware to the limit to score as highly as possible across three benchmarks. Let’s take a peek at yesterday’s action.
Stage 1: Super PI 32M - In Stage 1 we find current HWBOT league No.1 Dancop of Germany taking top spot. Dancop managed to complete a Super Pi 32M run in just 4min 38sec 922ms, a score made by pushing his Core i7 7700K to 6,798MHz (+61.87%) with system memory configured to 1,800.5MHz (12-17-17-28)(note: all overclockers were given two CPUs which were drawn at random). In second place we have French No.1 Wizerty with a score of 4min 49sec 218ms while orion24 arrived in third place with 4min 54sec 195ms. All the scores from Stage 1 can be found here.
Stage 2: Cinebench R15 - Stage 2 is all about benching Cinebench R15, an area where Niuulh certainly shines, taking the win with a score of 1,461 cb points. This was done with a Core i7 7700K clocked to 6,595.18MHz (+57%) with DDR4 configured at 1,800.1MHz (13-18-18-28). Second place goes to Wizerty with a score of 1,458 cb points while another French Extreme overclocker Mylth arrives in third place with 1,445 cb points. You can find all the Stage 2 scores here.
Stage 3: 3DMark11 Physics - Finally in Stage 3 we face a test using the classic 3DMark11 Physics benchmark. Wizerty tops the table with a score of 18,430 points, pushing his Core i7 7700K to a very healthy 6,654.78MHz with memory pushed to 1,747.4MHz (13-18-18-28). His closest rival is orion24 with 18,076 points while Dancop takes third place with 17,730 points. Check out the scoring for Stage 3 here.
After three hours of furious benching Wizerty, Dancop, orion24 and Niuulh will now contest the Final segment later today. The contest will feature Semi-Finals plus a Bronze Final and a Final, all of which will use a 1v1 format where overclockers compete side by side on the main stage. It should be pretty exciting.
You can check out all the scores from the Qualifier segment here on OC-ESPORTS, plus a replay of all the action from yesterday thanks to the OverClocking-TV Twitch channel where you can also find tonight’s live action.
Just in case you missed it, the latest episode of the OC Show from OverClocking-TV has been available for a few days now. Edition S03E12 as usual covers a great deal of ground with Xyala and Trouffman this time around joined by tech reviewer MrTechQC. Among the broad variety of topics being discussed on the show is the arrival of a new 5G modem from Qualcomm, the launch of the Google Pixel and Pixel XL smartphones (and all the high-end components inside including the latest Android 7 OS). Other gadget related discussion includes a look at the latest 960 Pro 2TB M.2 drives from Samsung.
As usual Xyala gives us a great overview of all the happenings over on OC-ESPORTS where Indonesia’s Lucky_n00b won the HWBOT World Championship Wild Card contest. Lucky_n00b joins the six winners from the HWBOT World Series contests which were held during the World Tour 2016. Interestingly, it was actually the first OC contest on OC-ESPORTS with paid entry. The contest proved to be a tense affair at its climax with Dancop and Lucky_n00b literally tied at the end of it.
Towards the back end of the show the guys get down to discussing the relative merits of the new GTX 1050 and 1050Ti cards from Nvidia. MrTexhQC gives a great break down of the huge potential value of these cards from an enthusiast and overclocking perspective.
Did I mention that they also discuss the possibility of flying hundreds of people to Mars? Plus Trouffman's recent exploits at TwitchCon? Trust me, this show has something for everyone. You can find it here on the Overclocking-TV YouTube Channel.
ASUS ROG Crosshair VII Hero Sets the Pace on AMD X470
The company is also including one M.2 SSD heatsink for the upper M.2-22110 slot, which the original lacks. Besides these, the Aorus Z370 Ultra Gaming 2.0 is identical to the original, including its RGB LED diffusers, multiple RGB headers governed by GIGABYTE RGB Fusion software, two reinforced PCI-Express 3.0 x16 slots (x8/x8 when both are populated) with NVIDIA SLI support, one gigabit Ethernet interface driven by an Intel i219-V controller, and a premium onboard audio solution with a headphones amplifier and 120 dBA SNR CODEC (Realtek ALC1220); and a price ranging between $150-$170.
