BETTER THAN EXPECTED
A
s we approach Computex 2014, which
is undoubtedly going to see the biggest
overclocking gathering of the year. There
should be plenty of things to look forward to,
including the G.Skill overclocking competition.
Finally we break into the $10,000 USD mark for
prize money. Sure that’s the entire purse and
coming in at number two will net you nothing at
all. However, it is a positive trend and in many
ways something that Overclocking has been in
need of for a very long time.
If you think that is an excessive amount of
money, consider that gaming competitions
regularly award upwards of $50,000 for
competitions and some going into the six
figure region. In comparison, overclocking
is for all intents and purposes unrewarding
financially. Think also about just how much the
average competitive overclocker spends on
buying hardware. Sure they may sell it after
they have used it but most of the time there is
a huge knock in the reselling of the hardware
and in a normal calendar year it’s not unusual
for an individual to spend upwards of $6,000
for hardware. If you include LN2 costs to it
you easily reach the $10,000 mark. A single
GTX 780 Ti depending on where you are in the
world will cost you up to $1,000 or more, add a
X79 CPU to the mix and some useful memory
and you’re already at half the spend stipulated
above. This is before binning, the pots, time
spent and all things related to it. As far as
earning prize money is concerned, competitive
overclockers are still spending far more than
they can ever hope to make doing this.
Yet it is going strong and the incentive is
still being number one or in the high ranks
rather than how much financial gain you can
get from it all. Hopefully G.Skill will encourage
others and we as a community can implore
vendors to take it from here and improve upon
these competitions. The days of a $3,000 first
prize must be left behind us, because just in
preparation for such a competition you may end
up spending twice as much. Make no mistake
about it, at the upper levels of overclocking; it is
a very expensive hobby.
It is great though to see an upward trend in
vendors supporting the hobby and actually
releasing products that are geared for extreme
overclocking despite all the so called risks
involved. One such example is the Rampage IV
Black Edition which despite its price seems to
be doing surprisingly well in the retail channel
with all things considered. It’s a three year old
platform yet a motherboard built around this
platform can still command a $500 USD price
tag and sell contextually well.
On the flip side of that we have the
GIGABYTE Z87X-OC, the best value for money
overclocking motherboard that’s ever existed
and one that we hope to see in its Z97 soon.
Even though it is an identical board, at this
juncture with the updated K SKU Haswell
CPUs showing up soon, it is still a worthwhile
investment.
With Z97 I also have a feeling that MSI
will likely be a very competitive as they
refine their initial Z87 outing once again.
The others that cater to the high end and
competitive overclocker market such as
ASRock, GIGABYTE and ASUS are unlikely
to offer something tremendously better, but
I do have a feeling that MSI will surprise us
all by delivering a very competent board that
will be near indistinguishable from the other
celebrated boards for this socket and CPU
generation.
Where VGA cards are concerned, as much
fun as the 780 Ti has been and continues to
be, I have to say I’m looking forward to what
Maxwell will bring as far as the next generation
of performance. At worst I hope NVIDIA has
the same restrictions on overclocking as they
do at present but not worse. The one thing that
I keep hearing from everyone concerned with
making NVIDIA powered graphics cards is
that it is increasingly difficult to get the kind of
control that overclockers desire without risking
the business end of the deal between NVIDIA
and the vendor. It’s a situation that is dire and
certainly could do with some improvement.
However, all we can do is hope right now that
things improve. There is some positivity though
regarding all of this, if INTEL could change
its tune from a company that in its legacy
discouraged overclocking to one that makes
specific CPUs tuned for overclocking. NVIDIA
and perhaps even AMD may do the same in
future. Hopefully that future is sooner rather
than later.
Overall, things are much improved in 2014 in
the overclocking economy. We will return after
Computex to see how it all went down, with our
biggest issue yet. Until then, keep pushing.
[ Neo Sibeko - Editor ]
Issue 29 | 2014 The OverClocker 3