My my, it has been soooo long
If i'm not mistaken, the last time i benched was November, 2008
There has been a lot of water rushing by under the bridge in my absence from the OC scene: new faces, hardware, OS, tricks, and tweaks.
Luckily the the one thing that hasn't changed is the fantastic OC community and the generous support and information sharing amongst competitors and peerswithout which this thread would not be possible.
To demonstrate this, i'd firstly like to thank the following people for helping me out both big and small in the recent months leading to my return:
- Team.AU - youngpro, dinos22, eva2000, bob(nz), kayl
- Benny (great overclocking buddy!)
- Ken (best supplier in Indonesia!)
- Gigabyte Taiwan (UD9)
- Zolkorn (tool)
- sofos1990 (mod)
- CL3P20 (mods)
- XS, i4memory, Javaextreme, kingpincooling forums
So the story leading to this thread is thus:
After moving to Indonesia from Singapore in December 2008, and re-entering the bachelors club soon thereafter, i spent near on 9 months enjoying the many tasty fruits that Indonesia had to offerThis consumed almost all of my spare time, and towards the end i was a shadow of a man living off minimal sleep, alcohol drenched, and rapidly approaching a train wreck if any of the many 'fruits' had gone sour
Following that i settled down with a particularly tasty fruit, and over the course of the next 6 months achieved a much more balanced and healthy lifestyle. Which brings us to around April this year.
With more time on my hands to stop and look at the surroundings, catch up with some of the old forums i used to frequent, and casually taking notice of the latest gen hardware releases (5870 Lightning, 480, 980x, new boards), i was starting to get the niggling OC bug again (actually, it was only suppressed all that time).
When i saw the the Taiwan UD9 testing thread, i just knew it was the right time to jump back in
First up, i contacted my teammates to catch up on the latest gossip and collect some grease for the wheels, and in turn caught up with my good friend Tim Handley at Gigabyte Taiwan who made some arrangements to support my come-back.
Next up was to source hardware, as my bucket loads of old gen hardware sitting unused for so long was not going to be of any use (except the good-ol OP1000
Onto Benny and Ken, my Indoensian buddies, advisers and suppliers of all things hardware. The shopping list went something like this:
2 x 980x (3003B396) on release day
1 x Gigabyte X58-UD7 (thanks Benny for the loaner!)
1 x EVGA E762 (died after 30mins subzero)
3 x 2Gb G-Skill PC3 17600 (difficult to find Hyper ICs locally)
1 x Enermax 1250W
1 x MSI 5870 Lightning (480's too expensive at the time)
After a few weeks of testing on air, my results were starting to approach respectable and then i began some DICE testing to get my sub-zero legs back (and it is easier to buy here). The results were promising, and i was getting my confidence back ready for the return to LN2.
Then my new baby arrived, the Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD9 Rev1.0 retail
Wow what a board! Great BIOS, rock stable, no annoying CB, andloads of features.
My only gripes with the board is the crowded socket area layout (thanks Zolkorn for the CPU retainer key!) and Easy Tuner 6 - the horrible piece of software that Gigabyte expect us to use for overclocking (20 second loading time no thanks!)
With the right tools in hand, and enough practice under my well worn belt the real benching could begin, plus i added Corsair GTX2 kit to the shopping list somewhere in the middle of it all :P)
The UD9 requires no modding at all, but the 5870 Lightning needs a little encouragement to get the volts required for top clocks (thanks sofos1990 for the mod!)
Here's my noteworthy results so far, but by no means are these polished, tweaked, optimised, or world class.
Just the results i've obtained and proud to share so far. Most 3D results not shown because they are still very much a work in progress.
Amidst it all, i had the honour of being a guest judge at GOOC Pan-Asia Finals here in Jakarta and really enjoyed catching up with all my friends
See you all in the next installment with some bigger numbers
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Originally Posted by To(V)bo Co(V)bo
)
Saaya yupp, I agree
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