The 2018 Season of the Road to Pro Challenger Divisions just kicked off. Let's take a look at the challenges in store for Round 1

Round 1 of the most expansive and comprehensive overclocking contest of 2018 is about to begin. The Road to Pro Challenger Division series consists of eight separate hardware divisions where all overclockers can find the ideal place to compete regardless of ability, experience or budget. The idea is to to promote inclusiveness within the overclocking community and grow overclocking as an organized and competitive hobby. This also includes the Pro OC Championship, a contest designed to attract Elite and Pro overclockers with access to the best hardware you can lay your hands on.

As with previous years the 2018 series will consist of three Rounds with Round 1 running from January 1st to March 31st. Each round of the Road to Pro season involves five uniquely devised stages with benchmarks choices chosen to best fit specific hardware limitations. Let’s take a look at the challenges we have lined up for you in Round 1 of the 2018 series.

(Above) The Official contest wallpaper, a requirement for all score submissions

Road to Pro 2018: Round 1 Overview

Each Division in the Road to Pro Series is centered on a specific category of hardware to make sure that all tastes and budgets are catered for. Here’s an overview of the hardware categories for each Division and the benchmarks that will make up each stage for Round 1.

Pro OC 2018 Round 1

The Pro OC division is all about the best overclockers in the world pushing the best hardware available, which in 2018, can mean some very expensive components. For most combatants it will be all about pushing high-core-count Skylake-X CPUs and NVIDIA Titan series graphics cards (single GPU only).

Hardware: Intel HEDT (Sockets LGA2011, LGA2011-3, LGA2066) plus AMD TR4 (Socket SP3r2). Any Single GPU.

Find the Pro OC, Round 1 contest page here.

Division I Round 1

Division I is about pushing regular high-end Intel platforms which today includes all mainstream platforms from Sandy Bridge to Coffee Lake. In terms of graphics cards, only NVIDIA Titan cards are exempt:

Hardware: Intel Core i7 (Sandy Bridge), Core i7 (Ivy Bridge), Core i7 (Haswell), Core i7 (Skylake), Core i7 (Broadwell), Core i7 (Kaby Lake), Core i7 (Coffee Lake) processors. Any Single GPU, excluding NVIDIA Titan.

Find the Division I, Round 1 contest page here.

Division II Round 1

Division II takes things down a notch in terms of Intel platform overclocking and the expense to your wallet. Here we find Intel Core i5 processors using mainstream platforms, again from Sandy Bridge to Coffee Lake. In terms of graphics cards, all Titan and hi-end cards are banned:

Hardware: Intel Core i7 (Sandy Bridge), Core i7 (Ivy Bridge), Core i7 (Haswell), Core i7 (Skylake), Core i7 (Broadwell), Core i7 (Kaby Lake), Core i7 (Coffee Lake) processors. Any Single GPU, excluding NVIDIA Titan, GTX 1080, GTX 1080 Ti and AMD Vega.

Find the Division II, Round 1 contest page here.

Division III Round 1

Division III bring us to the realm of Intel Core i3 overclocking Here we find Intel Core i5 processors using mainstream platforms, again from Sandy Bridge to Coffee Lake. In terms of graphics cards, all Titan and hi-end cards are banned:

Hardware: Intel Core i5 (Sandy Bridge), Core i7 (Ivy Bridge), Core i7 (Haswell), Core i7 (Skylake), Core i7 (Broadwell), Core i7 (Kaby Lake), Core i7 (Coffee Lake) processors. Any Single GPU, excluding NVIDIA Titan, GTX 1080, GTX 1080 Ti, GTX 1070 Ti, GTX 1070 and AMD Vega and Fury cards are banned.

Find the Division III, Round 1 contest page here.

Division IV Round 1

Division IV brings us to AMD processor overclocking, kicking off with a fight over who can get the most from the latest AMD Ryzen 7 chips. In terms of graphics cards, any AMD card will suffice, although anything less than Vega would be unwise:

Hardware: AMD Ryzen 7 (17h gen1) processor only. Any Single AMD GPU.

Find the Division IV, Round 1 contest page here.

Division V Round 1

Division V stays with AMD processor overclocking, focusing however with AMD Ryzen 5 and 3 series CPUs. In terms of graphics cards, any non-Vega, non-Fury AMD card will do nicely. An AMD RX580 perhaps?:

Hardware: AMD Ryzen 3 or 5 (17h gen1) processor only. Any Single AMD GPU. AMD Vega and Fury are banned

Find the Division IV, Round 1 contest page here.

Division VI Round 1

Division VI is once more AMD-centric although it does offer a chance to relive the older architecture CPUs that existed before Ryzen and the Zen architecture was unleashed upon us. Any Pre-Ryzen CPU with and AMD Graphics card upto AMD R300

Hardware: Any AMD FX-Series (15h gen1), Sempron X2 (15h gen2), Athlon X2 (15h gen2), A-Series (15h gen2), FX-Series (15h gen2), Athlon X4 (15h gen2), FX-Series (15h gen3), A-Series (15h gen3), Athlon X2 (15h gen3), Athlon X4 (15h gen3), Athlon X4 (15h gen4), A-Series (15h gen4), A-Series (16h gen1), E-Series (16h gen1), A-Series (16h gen2), E-Series (16h gen2), A-Series (16h gen3), E-Series (16h gen3) processor. Any Single AMD GPU. AMD Vega, Fury, RX500 and RX400 cards are banned

Find the Division IV, Round 1 contest page here.

Division VII Round 1

Division VII is as always devoted to older hardware. In Round 1 of 2018 that means revisiting Intel’s Sandy Bridge architecture platforms. Your graphics card choice is also limited to NVIDIA GTX 400 series cards.

Hardware: Any Intel Sandy Bridge family processor (no server chips). Any Single NVIDIA GTX 400 series graphics card.

Find the Division IV, Round 1 contest page here.

Good luck to all HWBOT members in the 2018 Road to Pro series. Don't forget that all submissions must use the Official contest wallpaper (above).