QA
with Darren “(Lays)”Lopez
Country Name and City:
USA, Salem
What language(s) do you speak in
addition to English if any?
Just English, I took a Spanish
class back in middle school,
but I don't remember much of
it anymore. I know enough to
somewhat get me through a quick
conversation if needed.
"Lays", any special meaning
behind it and what does it mean?
I've always liked “Lays” potato
chips and a while back when I
started gaming at a younger age,
I needed a screen-name I could
use on everything. Using my full
name wasn't the best idea. After
thinking about it for a while, I had
a few friends pitch in ideas as well,
I finally decided on “Lays”. If that's
not available, I go by “DarrenLays”
or “LaysDarren”.
On what platform was your first
overclocking experience and what
led you to it?
My first overclocking experience
was on Intel's X79 platform, on
my very first ever PC I built back
in March 2013. I bought an ASUS
Rampage IV Extreme, and an i7
3930k. I really think that's what
got me started. Honestly had no
idea what I was doing at first, but
I watched lots and lots of videos,
and read some guides online and
gave it a shot. I ended up running
4.5 Ghz for a 24/7 overclock at
about 1.3 volts if I remember right.
Towards the end of that PC's “life” I
ended up getting a full custom loop,
and really went and pushed that
3930k, all the way up to 5.1 Ghz for
a Cinebench R15 run when it was
6 The OverClocker Issue 37 | 2016
about -5 Degrees Celsius outside.
How many live overclocking events
have you attended if any and if not,
which ones would you like to take
part in in future?
Unfortunately I have not been
able to attend any events before.
It'd be interesting to meet other
guys interested in this stuff, a lot of
people out in the real world don't
have a clue! If an event ever happens
near me in Oregon or Washington,
I'd really try and make it, seems like
it'd be lots of fun. The HWBOT world
tour would be awesome to go to,
but the finances aren't there. I will
try and tune into the twitch stream
though.
Overclocking, do you do it purely for
HWBOT competitive reasons or do
you perhaps enjoy just setting your
own goals and reaching exceeding
them, in essence what keeps you in
this hobby?
This is a tough one to explain
I think, honestly it's a bit of
everything combined. I love being
competitive about it, but I also love
getting as many HWBOT points
as I can. Tweaking and tuning
hardware is also fun for me, I enjoy
seeing what I can fiddle with to
get more performance. One of my
favourite things to do is looking at
other people’s scores for similar
hardware, and then get a base line
of what to aim for and try to beat.
Most recently I did this with a GTX
480, I looked up Unigine Heaven
Xtreme Preset 480 scores and did as
much tweaking and tuning as I could
to get more efficient runs. Once I
had efficiency down, I went out and
bought some dry ice and ended up