The Final In Amsterdam
Our arrival in Amsterdam: bikes are everywhere. The winners of the French final, Marmott and Florian 76, are ready to compete. The French final, which we covered for you here at Tom’s, was a prelude to these European finals in Amsterdam, with the world finals to be held by year’s end.
The Final In Amsterdam
Arriving at the hotel: our overclockers get their gear ready. Motherboards, canisters for liquid nitrogen, hair dryers, multimeters and glue guns are checked and re-checked.
The Final In Amsterdam
MSI went all-out to pamper the competitors: restaurants, charming Taiwanese hostesses to cheer the overclockers on, and a posh room to welcome us in.
The Final In Amsterdam
The overclockers had been sent part of the hardware before the competition: an MSI P45D3 motherboard, OCZ memory (DDR3-16000 Platinum), an MSI graphics card (9600GT 512 MB), and an Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 processor (3 GHz). As you can see here, some competitors had already modded their cards.
The Final In Amsterdam
The competition venue was marked by an MSI banner. We had to cross a canal to get to it—we are in Amsterdam, after all.
The Final In Amsterdam
MSI planned on most of the overclockers using extreme cooling, so a huge tank of liquid nitrogen (at -196 °C) was on hand to fill the participants’ Thermoses for cooling the processors.
The Final In Amsterdam
In addition to the equipment that had already been sent, the overclockers were provided with an OCZ Vendetta 2 cooler (for the CPU), a mouse and keyboard, and a 750 W power supply (a PC Power & Cooling Silencer 750 Quad). The system support provided (in lieu of a computer case) was pretty original: a motherboard PCB (here, a P45 Diamond) without the components.
The Final In Amsterdam
With liquid nitrogen cooling, motherboard insulation is important. Without it, condensation can cause short-circuits. There are three major techniques: varnish, modeling clay, and neoprene foam (as in this picture).
The Final In Amsterdam
Modeling-clay insulation was big in Amsterdam. A little piece of advice for overclockers, though: avoid a well-known brand whose name ends in a familiar Homer Simpson interjection. It’s conductive, and that’s, well, not really a good thing for insulation (ed.—Doh!).
The Final In Amsterdam
Another stereotype bites the dust: the overclocking world is not male-only. We saw female overclockers at work on the Dutch team.
The Final In Amsterdam
Pouring liquid nitrogen into the canister that sits on top of the processor (or the chipset or other component) to cool it.
