Foxconn overclocking and Intel steppings

DESPITE THE company's sheer size, Foxconn is still a bit new in the high-end branded products arena. To compensate for that, the Quantum Force high-end overclockers' product group is aggressively spending dosh to market its kit and gather some of the best experts around to show off their product's capabilities.

This time, not only were the Blackops X48 and Dreadnought 790i mobos on show - yeah, those with the modular chipset cooling blocks including the LN2 feeders - but there was something else: a podium with some of the top overclockers trying their luck with supercooling.

Could LN2, dry ice and / or cascaded freezers exceed 6GHz finally here? Well, keeping in mind that Charles "Fugger" and the gang already could have seen C-1 steppings of Yorkfield (and possibly the E-0 stepping?), we did expect they should be able to have something hand-picked there, and break another record.

At the end, it was not to be - about 5.6 GHz is what they achieved "only" as of Thursday afternoon. Maybe the particular chip used wasn't too great? Or the new stepping is the issue?

Anyway, not bad showing nevertheless - too bad there wasn't much FSB overclocking, as far as we could see. You can see the 'bare naked' Dreadnought 790i Ultra mobo here as well, with the top cover of the North Bridge block removed - yes Nforce does need some exotic cooling anyway. µ