HWBOT today is extremely proud to announce that we now have an entirely ‘bug-free’ version of the site now hosted on our UAT site. After thousands of man hours, head scratching and some very late nights the new version is now a perfect implementation of the HWBOT vision.

As you may well be aware the HWBOT UAT site is a version of the site where new revisions of the site are hosted in order for members to test. It’s proved to be a valuable way to get feedback regarding the changes and improvements that we are trying to implement. HWBOT members are of course entirely free to visit and use the UAT site, although we recommend some degree of caution as the functionality of the site is in fact so polished and smoothly functional that some members may experience dizziness and an overwhelming sense of finality.

HWBOT member can experience this new sense of calm here on the UAT site. Under no circumstances is feedback required.

The ASUS Straight Edge podcast is one of those rare moments when we get a peek behind the curtain of the PC industry and hear the thoughts of some of the industry’s most influential players. The latest edition is no exception and features two Intel employees that between them have more than 40 years of experience. The podcast covers a lot of ground including some historical musing around previous architectures like Conroe as well conversations that cover the future for Intel.

The ASUS Straight Edge podcast initiative is of course organized in cooperation with the guys over at Overclock.net, and as you would expect the topic of overclocking takes center stage for a large chunk of the broadcast. If you are in any way interested in Intel’s role in overclocking including how the company’s position has changed over the years, you will find the interview with Dan and Aaron rather interesting. The podcast also covers the hot topic of Intel’s official stance on non-K overclocking, as well as less controversial topics such as VR, Gaming and Mobile processor platforms.

To listen to the podcast, simply visit the forum thread on Overclock.net.

The OC-ESPORTS points are a part of the equation for the HWBOT Overclockers League leaderboard as the league is based on a member's best 15 combined global and wr scores overall, best 20 hardware scores overall, and the 10 best OC-ESPORTS points from the past 365 days. To help you understand why you may lose points this point, below you can find a table of the competitions which will lose their points this month.

Competitions Losing Points in April 2016
Competition	Date of Losing Points	Level	Winner
Novice Nimble #1	2015-04-04	1		Cowcotland
Rookie Rumble #16	2015-04-04	1		Zwitschler
Rookie Rumble AMD #13	2015-04-04	1		Roony
2015 HWBOT World Series - Europe Gamers Assembly	2015-04-05	2		Der8auer
2015 HWBOT WSA - Europe Gamers Assembly	2015-04-06	2		Orion24
ROG OC Showdown Formula Series Round 1	2015-04-06	1		Nvidiaforever2
ASUS ROG CAMP 2015 Live Final	2015-04-12	2		Chrissi
G.SKILL OC World Cup 2015 Qualifier	2015-04-13	1		Dancop
GIGABYTE BIG XTU Challenge Round 3: X99 6 cores	2015-04-29	1		Slythz
GIGABYTE BIG XTU Challenge Round 4: X99 8 cores	2015-04-29	1		Etoile
MSI MOA 2015 – Extreme Master	2015-04-30	1		Wizerty

Taipei, Taiwan (1 Apr 2016) – G.SKILL International Enterprise Co., Ltd., the world’s leading manufacturer of extreme performance memory and gaming peripherals, announces new high-frequency, high-capacity additions to the Ripjaws SO-DIMM family with DDR4-3000MHz CL16 kits at 1.2V, available in 8GB to 32GB (16GBx2) configurations.

Foreseeing the growing demand of high-end gaming laptops and small form-factor PCs, G.SKILL continues the development of higher speed DDR4 SO-DIMM memory. Today, G.SKILL is excited to raise the maximum support of DDR4 SO-DIMM frequency to 3000MHz CL16. Most importantly, this frequency speed is achieved at a low voltage of 1.2V, while DDR4-3000MHz kits typically require a higher 1.35V. A lower operating voltage is the ideal power-efficient solution for laptops and small form-factor PCs with a smaller thermal footprint.

Full Press Release at G.SKILL

Extreme overclocker Alva Jonathan debates the importance of DDR4 overclocking in a competitive overclocking environment using HyperX Fury DDR4.

PC system memory, or RAM as we usually called it, has been getting faster and faster with every generation. At some point after the DDR4 platform was introduced, some believed that DDR4 had become so fast that memory bandwidth was no longer a bottleneck in a PC system.

Many power-users today believe that memory overclocking is basically a waste of time, since there seems to be very little gain for overall system performance by DDR4 overclocking. Especially compared to overclocking the CPU or GPU. Not to mention that DDR4 tuning requires a lot of effort and understanding as well

Full article at OC-ESPORTS.io

In the aftermath of the HWBOT World Tour leg in S.Africa a few weeks ago, here’s a news piece that highlights the success of the first ever rAge event in Cape Town. As for the HWBOT gang? We thoroughly concur. A good time was had by all.

[Press Release] The really Awesome gaming expo (rAge) made its first appearance in Cape Town last week and the consensus from exhibitors, visitors and the organisers is: “We’ll be back!”

According to Michael James, owner and Senior Project Manager of rAge, “I was really pleased with the high level of enthusiasm and excitement with which rAge Cape Town was received. I’m extremely happy with the turnout, especially for an inaugural expo and LAN. The venue in my opinion worked very well, and for 2017 GrandWest management have informed us that they’ll have a lot more space for us to use and grow into. I believe it was a solid start and the future of rAge in Cape Town looks very bright.” The 9,091 visitors didn’t disappoint the exhibitors who committed to the first event, and their presence brought much joy to gamers and geek enthusiasts in the Cape.

“We had a very successful rAge Cape Town. We were blown away with not only the number of people but also their enthusiasm. The visitors loved the games we showcased and for us it proved a unique opportunity to interact with people in Cape Town in a way we haven’t been able to engage them before. We’ll definitely be back. We were super pleased,“ says Ronelle Hendriks, Ster Kinekor Entertainment Independent Product Manager.

Karl Klöpfer, Marketing Manager of BT Games, added, “We were thrilled to be part of rAge Cape Town. It’s great to see the level of excitement of our Cape customers and the value they place in our brand and that of rAge. It may have taken a while for us to get to the Cape, but we hope that gamers in the region see how much we value them and their contribution to gaming in SA.”

The feedback from gamers who attended the NAG LAN was equally positive.

A HUGE thanks to @rAgeExpo @MonsterGaming @nagcoza for making this weekend memorable. What an Amazing Event.

Source

Elite overclocker Elmor has certainly been burning through the LN2 of late, pushing his Nvidia Maxwell architecture GPUs within an inch of their lives (with a little help from an old friend I might add). The upshot is that last night Elmor posted a World Record 3DMark Fire Strike score of 45,906 marks, obliterating the previous record from k|ngp|n of 45,044 marks made earlier this month.

The result involved 4 Nvidia GeForce GTX 980 Ti cards (ASUS Matrix Platinum Editions) pushed to 1,927MHz, a sizzling +79.09% beyond stock settings. The VGA array was joined by a Core i7 5960X pushed to an equally impressive 5,750MHz, +91.67% over stock running on an ASUS Rampage V Extreme motherboard.

The World Record breaking submission earns current the Swedish No.3 a tidy points haul of 100 points for the Fire Strike WR, 44.9 points for the Fire Strike 4x GPU Ranking ( 1st out of 110) with an additional 2 hardware points for the Fire Strike 4x GTX 980 Ti Ranking ( 1st out of 20). Congrats Jon! Nice work.

Feel free to chime in with comments and/or praise in the thread below. You can also check out the submission on HWBOT and of course peruse the 3DMark Fire Strike Hall of Fame should you feel the need.

The HWBOT World Tour 2016 made its third stop of the year at Gamers Assembly in Poitiers, France last weekend. As with previous World Tour visits to S.Africa and Brazil earlier this year, the event involved holding workshops and overclocking competitions for amateur players as well as some serious extreme overclocking with a place the World Championship Final at stake. But along with extreme overclocking, the best amateurs of the event were also invited to take part in the HWBOT Amateur World Series contest. Before we go any further, congrats to eventual winner Estep who is who can now refer to himself as the Amateur World Series Champion of Europe.

Congrats to all the 180 overclockers who took part in the MSI OC Workshop over the course of the event, and especially to eventual winner Estep who could well follow in the footsteps of Orion24 and return as an Extreme overclocker next year. We can only hope. The top three of the contest also get to walk away with some very nice prizes thanks to event sponsors Seasonic, MSI, Klevv and Streacom.

Read Full Article Here

It’s not every day that the Old School is Best School contest throws up a record breaking submission, after all it is a contest that centers on really old hardware that probably spends more time in your loft than your benchtable. With this in mind it is a touch surprising to see an overclocker dust off a platform from fifteen years ago and make a submission that breaks a hardware global record.

Enter I.nfraR.ed and his wPrime 32M score of 24sec 437ms which is the fastest ever recorded by dual Athlon XP-M 2500+ CPUs. The score is even more remarkable when you factor in the fact that he pushed these Barton architecture beauties to 3,220MHz, a whopping +72.56% beyond stock settings.

The rig used included a MSI K7D Master (MS-6501) motherboard, 1GB of DDR memory and a classic Riva TNT2 M64 (NV6) VGA card. The submission will give his team a good chance to win Round 3 of the Old School is Best contest, although they will need to make some kind of submission on Stage 1 (3DMark01: Socket A + GeForce 4) to have a chance. With this rig at his disposal, I.nfraR.ed may just have a chance.

Check out the submission here on HWBOT as well as the wPrime 32m 2xCPU rankings with Athlon XP-M 2500+ CPUs.

Having given the media sneak peek at the SC17 at CES a few weeks ago, the device is now officially available for pre-order at hefty price of $2,699 USD. Of course for that amount of cash you would expect a very high specced system and in this regard you won’t be too disappointed; it packs an Intel Core i7-6820HK Processor (4-cores, 8 threads, 8M Cache, up to 3.6GHz) and a GTX 980M GPU flanked by 8GB of GDDR5. Most importantly however, the device is being marketed as the first true overclocking laptop with both CPU, memory and GPU ready to be pushed.

The SC17 is the first laptop from EVGA that is 100% in house designed. It certainly looks the part. The display on the SC17 is a 17.3 inch 3840 x 2160 (4K) from Sharp. Other specs include a 256GB M.2 NVMe PCI-E SSD plus a more standard 1TB SATA HDD (7,200 RPM), plus 802.11ac Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.2, Realtek ALC 255 audio, a 1080p webcam, Gigabit LAN, 1 HDMI and plus 2 mini DisplayPorts, two USB 3.0 Type A ports plus a single USB 3.1 Type-C port.

In terms of overclocking EVGA have clearly done a lot to try and give users a real overclocking experience similar to what you would get on a desktop PC. As you would hope that includes a full graphical UEFI BIOS that gives you access to all the settings you would expect, plus they have even included a Clear CMOS button on the chassis. According to EVGA the CPU is capable of hitting 3.8GHz at the click of a button with plenty of room to push both CPU and GPU further.

“A FULL GUI BIOS with full mouse control gives you complete control over all aspects of performance, voltage and advanced settings right at your fingertips. Not to mention, a Clear CMOS button directly on the chassis, this is the world’s first TRUE overclocking laptop.”

Read more at MaximumPC.