Today Gigabyte kicks off its regional finals for its world-wide overclocking competition. The regional finals is occurring in the Los Angeles area today and tomorrow.

However, the most critical day for the regional finalists that made it this far, will be today. As of right now, the competition is only just starting off. Final scores will be presented roughly 4 hours from now. Competitors spent a considerable amount of time setting up their boards. Coating boards with insulation to avoid condensation from liquid nitrogen use. Some even brought significant equipment along for the competition, especially Fugger, who brought along his own cooling setup that took up an entire food service cart (pictures to follow).

There's no doubt that we're going to see some impressive frequencies and scores. Some competitors are already hitting 5 GHz and faster speed.

There are a total of 13 competitors from all across the country, including one representing Canada. The following is a list of competitors.

- 3oh6 (Jody Bailey)
- Buckeye (William Harmon)
- Fugger (Charles Wirth)
- Gautam (Gautam Bhatnagar)
- Gomeler (Chris Morrell)
- Maxi (Mark LeaMaster)
- miahallen (Jeremiah L. Allen)
- Mikeguava (Michael Graf)
- Rdrash (Matthew J. Kinley)
- Ross (Ross Lapkoff) -- Last year's regional winner
- sno.Icn (Jeremy Clifton)
- Titon (Vachira Khowdee)
- Vapor (Eric Hassett)

All competitors will be competing using Intel's Core i7 965 processor and are allowed to use any form of cooling up to liquid nitrogen.

The standard overclocking system are based on the following specs:

- CPU: Intel Core i7 965
- Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD4P (BIOS F8A)
- Graphics: Nvidia GTX260 (driver 181.22)
- Memory: Kingston HyperX KHX16000D3K3/3GX DDR3
- Storage: Intel X25-M 80 GB SSD
- Power supply: Enermax Revolution 85+ 1050W
- OS: Microsoft Windows XP SP2

The competition will be judged using timed events. Each competitor will have a limited amount of time to try to achieve the highest (or lowest) scores for the following benchmarks:

- Super PI 8M
- 3DMark 2006

Allowed software utilities include:

- Gigabyte's own Easy Tune 6
- Rivatuner V2.22
- CPU-Z v1.49
- CPU-Z v0.3.1

What are the prizes? The top three winners get grabs at the following goodies:

The 3rd prize
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD4P
Graphic card: Gigabyte GV-N26OC-896H-B
Memory: Kingston KHX16000D3K3/3GX DDR3 Memory
Power Supply: Enermax Revolution85+ 1050W

The 2nd prize
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD5
Graphic card: Gigabyte GV-N28-1GH-B
Memory: Kingston KHX16000D3K3/3GX DDR3 Memory
Power Supply: Enermax Revolution85+ 1050W

Champion prize
Flight ticket – Roundtrip to Taipei
CPU: Intel Core i7 965
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-EX58-Extreme
Graphic card: Gigabyte GV-N285-1GH-B
Memory: Kingston KHX16000D3K3/3GX DDR3 Memory
Hard drives: Intel X25-M SSD 80 GB

We're going back into the competition now to take pictures and check out the most recent scores. More to follow!

Update: check out our mid day photos here!

Update 2: Jeremiah L. Allen (miahallen) takes the top spot and wins the regional finals for Team USA. Jeremiah will be representing the U.S. in Gigabyte's finals held this summer in Taiwan. Jeremiah is also part of Team IRONMODS, which happened to win Tom's Hardware's overclocking competition held last year. Congrats to Jeremiah for the victory!

Source : Tom's Hardware US