QA
with Jon “Elmor” Sandström
Country Name and City:
I grew up in Härnösand, Sweden but
I’m currently living in Taipei, Taiwan.
What language(s) do you speak?
Swedish, English , some German and
Chinese
Your nickname elmor, seems like
this story has been told lots of times,
but once again for those who do not
know. How did you come about this
nickname?
Pretty much it’s a name I randomly
came up with for using while playing
games at LAN parties with friends.
Your overclocking, I’m talking LN2
and all that, when did it begin and
what got you hooked?
After building my own computer as
a teenager I started comparing its
performance with friends’ setups
using 3DMark01. This soon resulted
in discovering overclocking through
internet forums which lead to
competing with people online. This
got me hooked and I started trying
out voltage modifications, dry ice and
from there the step to LN2 was not far.
Which is your favourite benchmark if
any and what is your least favourite
and why ?
3DMark01, it’s what got me started
and has always been a lot of fun during
my years of overclocking through all
its dimensions.
You’ve worked with MSI for some
time or at least through various
generations of both motherboards
and graphics cards. How did that
relationship begin and what was it
that made you go your separate ways?
The initial connection was made
during the yearly MOA competitions.
When I decided to go to Taiwan for
6 The OverClocker Issue 29 | 2014
exchange studies they contacted me
and offered me a part time position.
It’s been an on and off thing whenever
I was around in Taiwan. Last time
it ended because I went to Berlin in
order to finish my Master’s degree.
for MSI. This is mostly because of
declining interest due to actually
overclocking for work and because
competition is not really fair if you
work at the heart of a company in the
industry.
In your context, what do you consider
to be your main challenges regarding
overclocking? Do you compete for
ranking in any of the leagues or cups?
That would be companies locking
down their products. Let’s say
INTEL decides to stop making a
K-skew, there’s not much we can
do. Nowadays most products are so
highly integrated at an IC level that it’s
close to impossible to do hardware
modifications to adjust frequency.
The days where you could achieve a
50% overclock by simply changing the
clock crystal are over.
I haven’t been competing seriously
pretty much since I started working
Between NVIDIA and AMD graphics
cards, which ones do you prefer
to overclock or does it make no
difference for you?
I don’t really mind either way but
traditionally I’ve preferred NVIDIA
cards due to high overclocking
margins and less issues related to
overclocking. Their advantage in
3DMark01 is not hurting things either.
You’re originally from Sweden
but have lived all over the place
essentially? What’s the place that is
the most fun for you and which place
has the cheapest LN2 (and beer)?
Sweden (Stockholm) is a very