We love the summer. This is normally the time of year where folks get out and enjoy the sun, take the family to the beach, or load up the car for a trip to the amusement park. But for a small group of elite overclocking enthusiasts, it's GO OC time.  The 3rd Annual Gigabyte Open Overclocking Championship was held this past weekend at the Pacific Palm Golf Resort in sunny southern California. It's where twelve of the biggest names of the extreme overclocking scene get together and battle it out, locked in the same room, provided identical hardware components, and given a time limit to produce the fastest benchmark results. Who needs to go outside and enjoy the weather?  We've got two full tanks of liquid nitrogen to burn through!


If you're not up to date on the latest competitive overclocking news, here's the scoop. GO OC is an annual competition consisting of several events held all over the world. Regional finals are held in North America, Asia/Africa, China, Europe, and Latin America. The North American competition is the last one before all of the winners are flown to the World Finals, held in Taiwan at the end of September. Although there are some really nice prizes available for regional finalists, the championship in Taiwan is where glory is eventually earned.

The components used by each contestant consisted of the following:

• Intel Core i7 980X Extreme Edition Processor
• Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD7 Motherboard
• GV-N240D5-512I Graphics Card
• Kingston KHX2250C9D3T1FK3/6GX Memory
• Kingston SNV425-S2/64GB SSD
• Thermaltake Toughpower Series Power Supply
• Gigabyte Keyboard, Mouse, Monitor