Soft Technology

Hi Overclockers from all around the world! GIGABYTE designed a new overclocking competition for you guys, and the winnings are big…real big! Get your GIGABYTE Z97 and GIGABYTE X99 platforms ready and fire up XTU for a chance to win one of the $1,000 USD in cash prize, one of the GIGABYTE X99-SOC Champion motherboard giveaway, or even better, a trip to COMPUTEX 2015!!!! You can find all the rules about the competition on HWBOT’s website here: http://oc-esports.io/#!/round/gbt_z97x99_xtuchallenge Here is our official press release: http://www.gigabyte.com/press-center/news-page.aspx?nid=1349 The comp runs from March  1st until April 29th. Wish you all good luck!!!

I saw this image posted on Twitter this morning by Tony Vincent @tonyvincent  and it rocked my world. I hear this reason for not attending/hosting/having/participating in or paying attention to directions and staff development more often than I'd like to think. AND I use it TOO. Note to self, I am NOT too busy to learn a more efficient way to operate. Created by Hakan Forss  +Håkan Forss   http://hakanforss.wordpress.com   ·

Vrworld reported recently that Intel recently gave an update on their 10nm process and the push to 7nm. According to Vrworld, Intel is expecting to move to 7nm architecture by 2018. What this effectively means is that Intel will move to a new material as Intel’s current silicon etching techniques will be sufficient to bring it to 10nm method. All I can think of is bring on the MHz and more cores .

When a person applies himself, the result shows. This can certainly be said for Larry Anderson with his latest case mod featuring a GIGABYTE Z97X-Gaming G1 Wifi Black Edition which gave him the honors of wining the Best of Show Case Mod Contest at LANFest Sacramento Fall 2014. With the added special touch from Larry, the finished system is simply spectacular! Impressive work! You can learn all about the build log here : http://forums.evga.com/Terminator-Velox-Project-m2265355.aspx Here are a few pictures for your pleasure!

GIGABYTE Z97X Gaming G1 Black has been selected as the “Motherboard of the Year” by PC PowerPlay Magazine in Australia. PC PowerPlay Magazine is the biggest gaming magazine in Australia and clearly rates our top spec Z97 Gaming board as the best of the best. Make sure you get one on your next upgrade! The magazine doesn’t have a definite pick on the CPU side so we’ll take the liberty of suggesting for a good match. We’d recommend the Intel 4690K or 4790K for high end or as a pure gamer even the Intel Pentium G3258 Anniversary Edition is a killer performer in 3D!

I came across a pretty hands on review of the Brix 2807 compact PC and thought it would be a an interesting one for you to check out. THe reviewer goes into a lot of detail, pulls the Brix PC apart to talk about what’s inside and installs Linux and does some video tests. Very informative!

We recently wrote about Steponz, an overclocker from USA, passing 10K points in single card 3DMARK Fire Strike Extreme. He did not rest there and decided to attack all major single card 3D scores and took everything out in an emphatic fashion. The rig was powered with the GIGABYTE X99 SOC Champion running a 5960X at 5.8GHz and a single GTX980 running 2260MHz, incredible stuff! Congrats Joe!

Last week has been very interesting at HWBOT, particularly from some of the amazing overclocks Steponz from USA put up. One that impressed me the most was the magic 10K barrier being broken in 3DMARK Fire Strike Extreme with a single graphics card. The hardware used was GIGABYTE X99 SOC Champion with 5960X clocked at 5.8GHz and 1x GTX980 graphics card running at 2250MHz core. Congratulations and keep up the good work!

Zeropluszero from Australia put up a guide on how to insulate a motherboard for subzero overclocking. Subzero overclocking refers to using copper pots or containers attached to CPU or memory or graphics cards and pouring liquid nitrogen or dry ice inside the container to cool the CPU/memory/GPU. Once you cool down the copper container, moisture in the air condensates and creates ice or water puddles depending on how humid your place of benching is. This means that the hardware requires some protection to ensure it does not short circuit and die. Here are a couple of shots from the guide but for the real McCoy, jump over to HWBOT forum !

OCAU forum runs some interesting overclocking competitions from time to time and this one is no different. GIGABYTE sponsored the X99 SOC Champion for top spot which was fought over in a friendly OC showdown which ended up a 3 way tie for first place. This has not occurred in the past so moderators found a crafty little competition for the 3 contestants. To make things more interesting the comp is now run as a crazy underclocking competition for the 3way tie places to be decided and competitors now have to score the lowest possible score in 3DMARK03 to win. This is after running a comp with a highly competitive month long comp which required purchasing a low end GPU and applying crazy modifications. Current leader in the 3way tie showdown is Chilli-Man with a hilariously low score of 89 points in 3DMARK03 (btw world record held by TeamAU on GIGABYTE Z97 platform is over 300,000 points!). You have to check out this OCAU competition at: http://forums.overclockers.com.au/showthread.php

If you're headed to #TCEA15 this year, I look forward to seeing you there! Please check out my schedule below and let's catch up if we get a chance.