Abit runs an overclocking competition

ABIT HELD AN overclocking competition late last week with Intel and Kingston. The goal was to try and see if Fugger of Xtreme Systems could break the Kentsfield speed record.

The protagonists were the usual ones, Fugger and Philly-Boy, an Abit AW9D-MAX with some mods, and some Kingston DDR2-1200. Can the i975X do it?

That is the dry as ice, pun intended, explanation. You will notice in the above picture there is something that looks an awful lot like a car radiator on the right. That is a three stage refrigeration unit, a big three stage refrigeration unit. As you can see below, it comes with a big wrench, one that dwarfs my Nokia 6820 sitting on top of it.

Why the BFW (Big Happy Wrench)? Well, it was to turn a little screw on the other side of the cooler, that and vent the tank containing gallons of liquid nitrogen without freezing your hands off. What big tank of LN2? This one, and I mean big. For the record, don't try this at home.

When you use the BFW on the BFT (Big Happy Tank), you get BFPoNS (Big Happy Plumes of Nitrogen Smoke), much to the bemusement of those watching. It takes an expert at union roadworker impersonation to make a LN2 tank look like a shovel, but Philly pulled it off.

In the end, you ended up with a massive insulated tube attached to an exploded refrigerator plugged into a mobo. It sounds like a dorm fridge, can cool a beer to frozen in seconds, and is only slightly warmer than LN2. Go team.

Once the cooling rig got old, they broke out the mugs of LN2 and away they went. With nitrogen smoke boiling off the rig, they did what they came for, the world record for a Kentsfield on an i975. (picture courtesy of Abit)

The raw numbers are 5010.3MHz on an 1178.9MHz FSB, slightly below the 1200MHz of the ram. SuperPi times were 10.5 sec at 4918.7MHz, not a bad number at all. If you want to read more about the whole run, you see the release here. Thanks to all the merry lunatics who participated, and more importantly, the companies who sponsored it.

No animals were harmed in the filming of this madness, although several people danced about like idiots in nitrogen smoke,. Several off color jokes were told, and much food and caffeine was consumed. OK, several animals were harmed, but that was lunch, and they were tasty. µ