CLOCK WORKS
Scharon Harding examines the world of the competitive overclocker, and what you need to enter the scene.
Overclocking boosts your performance, but what about your street cred? You can boast about your achievements to friends, but when you’re ready to show the world your skills, there’s competitive overclocking. Competitors enjoy a vast community online and at events worldwide. There are also prizes for winning competitions and breaking records. Competitive overclockers’ ultimate destination is HWBot, which hosts global overclocking competitions and maintains a database of world records. Place near the top of one of its ranking boards, and you’ve made it.
Sound exciting? For those new to overclocking or interested in competing, we’re here to help. Here are successful professional overclockers’ best tips for getting started.
Start with CPUs or RAM, not graphics cards. Premium graphics cards are usually more expensive than CPUs or RAM kits, so you’ll be more upset if you kill one by pushing it too hard. CPUs and RAM are also easier to overclock.
CPUs are the most popular starting point. Like other components, they also have built-in safety features, like thermal throttling, to help avoid damage from excessive voltage or inadequate cooling. In addition, keeping your CPU’s heat at bay is easier than cooling “most reference GPUs” according to Albrecht Mesotten, who’s been competing since 2009. “It’s also much easier to test stability for a CPU than for a GPU,” he added.
You don’t need the most expensive components. When you check out the top scores on HWBot, you’ll see premium, expensive components listed. This makes the idea of buying your way to the top enticing, but overclockers we spoke to said you don’t need the priciest components – you can still gain points and move up the rankings with older parts. And competitive overclocking is about more than pushing GHz, so getting the most expensive components and binning them to find the highest possible clock speeds doesn’t guarantee you victory.
Mesotten points to the different requirements needed for the benchmarks, such as operating systems, even outdated platforms like Windows XP. One of the trickiest parts is that you need a multitude of operating systems available for your setup to get the best performance. If you spend a lot, you’ll be that much more in the hole if a product gets damaged.
Beyond air cooling
If you’re air cooling your CPU, you’ll probably hit a maximum of 4.8-5.2GHz on Intel’s 7th generation and later K-series processors, depending on your luck with the silicon lottery – variances in silicon that result in different performance among processors with the same model number. AMD’s 2nd-generation Ryzen processors will reach 3.8-4.2GHz with a beefy air cooler. If you want to go higher, you need to upgrade your cooling, a milestone for serious overclockers. To be highly competitive, you’ll want to get into liquid nitrogen (aka LN2).
But you don’t have to start with LN2. Cooling is one of the biggest challenges for newbie overclockers. So, consider working your way up from air or water cooling to single-stage cooling and cascade cooling, before graduating to liquid nitrogen. “Whether the new overclocker wants to do 2D processor benchmarking or 3D graphics card benchmarking, the most important aspect to overclocking is ambient cooling testing. The first step for beginners is to obtain a highperformance air cooler or some variety of liquid cooler,” David Miller, a competitor since 2010, told us. Also, consider building your own water-cooling loop. Mesotten said that, while all-in-one water coolers are nice, they don’t offer the same performance as a custom setup.
Single-stage cooling uses a compressor that can let you reach sub-zero temperatures – around -40C to -60C. When you move on to cascade cooling, you can hit around -80C. But liquid nitrogen will let you drop your CPU temps even further, to -197C.
Tools of the trade
Choose your equipment with care. Enthusiasts are very vocal about their preferred brands. Unfortunately, however, there’s no magic formula of brands and products that’ll guarantee a record-breaking rig, but we did get some advice from the experts for building your overclocking system.
“It’s always good to test each individual component and then build them up. The trick is really to find each particular component that is good, and then bring them in and build something out of it.
Because if you have one weak component, obviously that’s going to be your weakest link,” Joe Stepongzi, a competitive overclocker since 2009, explained. “It is good to test each individual component separately in some way, so we use different benchmarks to do that. Once we’re happy with that, we bring them all together and put it to work.”
Choosing components
Which CPU is best to start your overclocking career? Experts we spoke to recommended Intel’s K series, such as the 8700K or 9900K, which are unlocked for overclocking. Mesotten advises against high-end, non-K Intel CPUs, since these are locked and not as overclockable. Almost all AMD CPUs have unlocked multipliers, which will help you bring out a few hundred MHz of extra power.
To work with a motherboard with the Z390 chipset, a popular platform for Intel overclocking, look for memory modules based on Samsung B-die integrated circuits (ICs). This type of memory has become synonymous with high-frequency, tight timings, and the most efficient benchmark results, and certain Intel Extreme Memory Profiles (XMPs) are nearly impossible to hit without Samsung B-die memory.
8GB RAM modules with Samsung B-die are popular and typically sold in kits of two. According to Miller, when buying RAM, the main factors to consider (besides memory size and physical features) are clock speed and timings. Depending on the operating frequency, Miller recommends looking for the following timings for a better chance of ensuring you get Samsung B-die silicon:
Selecting a motherboard
Motherboard choice depends on the competition you’re entering – you can be tasked to work with older technologies, such as Slot A, the socket formerly used by AMD’s
desktop Athlon CPUs. Mesotten recommends a motherboard that gives you ample BIOS settings, and both he and Stepongzi pointed to Asus, whose ROG line is built for gaming and overclocking.
Remember, it’s not just about clock speed, so you’ll want the flexibility to do things like tune memory and dial other settings. “Many overclockers prefer Asus because all the BIOS settings are there, and that’s the most important thing. We don’t have enough options with the standard BIOS settings,” Mesotten said. For overclocking RAM, Miller suggests picking a motherboard with two DIMM slots for memory, which are “far superior” to four-DIMM motherboards, as there’s a shorter distance between the CPU and DIMM slots.
Power and cooling
A decent power supply is a priority for any overclocking rig; you don’t want to be falling short on power delivery. As such, consider high-end brands, such as Cooler Master, Corsair, and Seasonic.
Mesotten recommends a PSU with a minimum of 1,000W for overclocking a single component. But if you’re overclocking multiple graphics cards or using an extreme cooling method (like LN2), he recommends going up to 1,200W.
Additionally, Stepongzi believes your PSU choice should, to a certain degree, depend on the benchmark. Depending on the benchmark, an 18-core CPU can pull 1,300-1,400 watts. You’ll need a solid power supply because many will trip the OCP (overcurrent protection) at a certain wattage and shut down. For example, overclocking an 18-core CPU with liquid nitrogen can even trip a circuit breaker in a home if you have other electronics connected to the same circuit. (Pro tip: Stepongzi usually finds a separate circuit in his house to run the PSU for overclocking, and connects any other electronics to a different circuit).
Make sure that you have a good temperature meter and temperature probes. Stepongzi recommends the Fluke 52 II dual-probe digital thermometer. If you plan on working with liquid nitrogen, you’ll need a dewar, which is a type of vacuum flask for storing cryogens. Stepongzi usually opts for 30-liter dewars. A dewar can cost hundreds or even thousands of dollars when new, but you can find them for a couple of hundred dollars on eBay (warning: you may sometimes come across listings that discuss storing cow semen, another use for dewars). Stepongzi noted that in the U.S. you can also rent dewars from welding supply companies, such as Airgas.
While you’re at it, you should consider grabbing yourself a dewar flask for distributing liquid nitrogen, which usually occurs by pouring it from a large dewar into a flask, and then to the “pot” that holds the LN2 and mates with the component. Also, consider buying a blow torch to heat the pot when needed. For any sub-zero cooling, Miller favors Kingpin products, including the T-Rex line of CPU containers (US$325-$399) and KPx thermal paste (US$11.99).