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.

On October 25 FinalWire released a new stable update to the desktop editions of its popular system information software. AIDA64 v5.80 supports the latest Windows 10 builds and the most recent hardware components, including the AMD RX 400 series and NVIDIA’s GTX 1050 GPUs.

As a new feature, it now allows users to define global hotkeys with which they can enable or disable the AIDA64 hardware monitoring panels or switch between multiple hardware information pages on external displays, even when AIDA64 is running in the background. Using these customized key combinations, PC enthusiasts can also start and stop saving temperature, voltage and power measurements as well as fan RPM readouts to a CSV or HTML log file. The developers have made AIDA64 v5.80 DPI aware so that all elements of its graphical user interface scale properly when the DPI zoom is active in Windows. In practice, this means that users will see no more blurry or incorrectly sized graphics or text on high-resolution screens as AIDA64 now looks crisp even on 4K and 8K LCD and OLED displays.

Read the full press release at aida64.com

It’s the time of the week when get all nostalgic and look back at point in time when something truly astounding happened in the world of Overclocking. This week we take you back just a few years to August 2014 when a well respected Finnish overclocker by the name of The Stilt managed to break the World Record for the highest ever CPU frequency.

To the uneducated, Overclocking sounds like it’s simply a matter of raising the clock speed of your computer to make it go faster. In some respects that is mostly true, but an even truer fact is the reality that CPU clock speeds have strict limitations. AMD’s Piledriver architecture CPUs however are designed in such a way that the clock speeds can indeed to pushed to pretty amazing heights, a fact proved so emphatically by The Stilt back in 2014. The talented Finn took an AMD FX-8370, an Octa-core 4.0GHz processor, and pushed it to a massive 8.72GHz, a percentage increase of +118%. The record was made with the Vcore voltage set to a huge 2.064v using an ASUS Crosshair V Formula-Z motherboard and AMD Radeon Performance DDR3 memory clocked at 2,218MHz.

The Stilt's World Record still stands today, but perhaps the fact what makes it all the more impressive is that the FX-8370 was using all 8 cores at the time. Most competing CPU frequency submissions actually only use one or two active cores.

You can check out the original article from August 2016 here, plus the World Record submission from The Stilt. It’s worth a look if only for the comments.

Greek overlocker Sofos1990 has been a very busy chap in the last week or so, claiming a Global 1st Place ranking for a 4x CPU run in GPUPI for CPU 1B, a World Record score for PiFast (twice) and also the World Record score for SuperPi 32M. You could definitely say this guy is in a rich vein of form.

Last week we noted how Greece’s No.1 Overclocker had managed to nail his the World Record for the fastest ever PiFast run hitting a score of 9sec 170ms using a very handy i7 6700K processor clocked at 6,850MHz which is an incredible +71.25% beyond stock settings. Today he just went one better. Or perhaps I should say 10 milliseconds better as he submitted a new World Record breaking score of 9sec 160ms with Sofos1990 managing to squeeze an additional 25MHz out of his Skylake chip, pushing it to 6,875MHz (+71.88%).

Sofos will be pleased with this run which keeps World No.1 Dancop at bay for the time being at least. In fact Dancop did actually manage to equal the original 9sec 170ms record from last week. It will be interesting to see if that extra 10 milliseconds can help keep the World Record in Greek hands for the near future.

Let’s not forget also that with a run of just 4min 25sec and 578ms Sofos1990 is currently the holder of the SuperPi 32M World Record, ousting previous record holder, who is non-other than Dancop, by a margin of 156ms. The score was made using the same i7 6700K pushed to 6,834MHz, a solid +70.85% beyond stock settings. Other notable hardware includes a GIGABYTE Z170X-OC Force LN2 motherboard and a G.SKILL Trident Z DD4 memory kit (3600 C17).

Will we see a response from Dancop in the coming days? It’s very possible that we will. In the meantime however the standing ovation belongs to the Greeks. Congrats to Sofos1990! You can check out his World Record score for Super Pi 32M here as well as his World Record Pifast submission here.

The final qualification round of the World Series Asia contest got underway earlier today with the highest turn out seen on any day of the week. 26 overclockers again went head to head benching on Intel’s latest and greatest Extreme Edition processors in an effort to clinch the final seat in the Semi-Finals on Saturday. The three benchmarks used in today’s three hour qualification round were XTU4GHz (i.e. CPU clocks restricted to 4GHZ frequency or below), 3DMark Fire Strike Physics and Memory Clock Single Channel.

The eventual winner with a pair of outright wins in stages 1 and 2 was in fact yesterday’s 1v1 runner up, the passionate Pole that is known in OC circles simply as Xtreme Addict. In second place we have Swiss No.1 racoon who proved his worth pushing DDR4 memory clocks with a win stage 3. Third place on the podium went to India’s foremost overclocker, Toolius. Here are the prizes and standings for the qualification round:

1st Place: $500 USD: Xtreme Addict (Poland)

2nd Place: $250 USD: Racoon (Switzerland)

3rd Place: $125 USD: Toolius (India)

Note: For several reasons that we will outline here in some detail, the actual 1v1 contestants for day 4 did not end up being the top two on the leaderboard. Xtreme Addict takes his place in the 1v1 as qualification round leader, simple enough. This is where it gets a little more complicated.

Day 1 winner Rauf will not be in Taiwan for the Finals on Saturday and thusly had to concede his place. His place would ordinarily go to Day 1 runner up Hazzan, except that Hazzan already has a place in the finals as 1v1 winner of Day 2. The Finals ticket was then handed to third place finisher Bullshooter who in fact declined due to the fact that he would rather arrive at the final using a GIGABYTE board as opposed to the ASRock boards usedon Day 2 (Note contest rules dictate that overclockers must use the same board in the finals that used in qualification).

This means that his place now goes to Racoon who now claims the Day 1 final berth in the finals with Bullshooter facing Xtreme Addict in the Day 4 1v1 contest. The upshot of this complicated state of affairs means that in Day 4, Bullshooter actually managed to position himself in line for a Semi-Final ticket benching on GIGABYTE.

Bullshooter and Xtreme Addict arrived on the HWBOT mains stage benching on randomly drawn i7 6950X chips and GIGABYTE X99 SOC Champion motherboards. The two contenders saw the random benchmark draw throw out 3DMark Fire Strike Physics, a benchmark that once again was accepted by both overclockers without veto.

With just over ten minutes of bench time remaining, Xtreme Addict was flying high with a score of 33,239, while Bullshooter had not yet actually made a successful run – signs that something was wrong with his system. Possible condensation issues due the humid Taiwan climate, a very real issue in live benching, or possibly just the Gods of irony, with the GIGABYTE board not giving the German the competitive edge he was looking for.

With just seconds to go Bullshooter finally posted a 3DMark Firestrike Physics score of 32,009 points. By the close of the contest however Xtreme Addict had managed to win the 1v1 contest with his score of 33,239.

Congrats to Xreme Addict! The Semi-Final line up for tomorrow will involve Dancop vs Xtreme Addict and Racoon vs Hazzan.

You can find the score and submission from the qualification round here on OC-ESPORTS.

You can follow all the action from tomorrow on the OverClocking-TV Twitch channel Plus you can enjoy full replays of today’s action on on the OverClocking-TV YouTube channel

G.SKILL have just announced their plans for Computex 2016 where once again we will be treated to a World Record Stage where five local motherboard vendors go head to head live on the show floor to see who can whip out the best scores and records. Then of course there is the third edition of the OC World Cup which pits some of the best overclockers in the world against each other for some seriously tasty looking wads of cash of up to $10,000. This year will see Dancop, Alex@ro, Hazzan, Splave, Wizerty, and Lucky_n00b compete.

[Press Release] G.SKILL International Enterprise Co., Ltd., the world’s leading manufacturer of extreme performance memory and gaming peripherals, is extremely excited to announce and host the two largest annual extreme overclocking events at Computex this year – the 5th Annual OC World Record Stage 2016 and 3rd Annual OC World Cup 2016.

Gathering an all-star lineup of professional overclockers from around the world, G.SKILL is ready to rewrite overclocking benchmark world records with the newest hardware from the leaders of each field, including the top 5 manufacturers of performance motherboards, Intel, Samsung, and NVIDIA.

Both events will be held at G.SKILL Computex Booth I0608, located at Taipei City’s Nangang Exhibition Hall, 1F.

Read more at the G.SKILL website here.

The high-end desktop, or HEDT Extreme Edition processors from Intel are seemingly edging closer and closer. For example MSI announced support for the forthcoming Broadwell-E series of processors just a few days ago with updated BIOSes that that categorically state Broadwell-E support. We’ve seen news regarding details of what appears to be the new HEDT to SKU, the Core i7-6950X, which briefly popped up on an Intel customer support page.

So what have we learned about the i7 6950X? We know it will be clocked at 3.5GHz and have a nice substantial 25MB of cache (25% more than the current top dog the i7-5960X). While it has yet to be confirmed by Intel, there are substantial rumors that are gaining momentum regarding core count.

According to wccttech.com the i7 6950X will have a total of 10 cores. With hyperthreading enabled that results in a total of twenty threads. The retail price for the first HEDT platform in almost two years is also rumored to be pushed a little higher with the i7 6950X costing in the region of $1,500 USD. Other details out there include a TDP similar to Haswell-E of 140 watts, out of the box memory support for DDR4 at 2400MHz and of course compatibility for current X99 chipset boards.

Read more about the leak here on PC World.