working to win Master Overclocking Arena 2013 Qualifier

[rbuass]

Master Overclocking Arena Qualifier 2013 from my view

I believe all overclockers, can consider as the most important Overclocking Competition ever, since join since 2008, the elite of not full sponsored* guys (*by motherboard/vga);
I could participate 2009 (Beijing), 2010 (Taiwan), 2011 (Vegas) and 2012 (Taiwan), and can assure that is really a very nice event.
In 2013, most overclockers believed that MSI not carry over the event as it is a very high cost, but different than most thought, MSI decided to again hold the event in 2013, with some modifications.
All accompanying actively overclocking at HWBOT, know that now, only 4 overclockers around the world (in my case, only 1 for Americas), will have a guaranteed spot in the final, in Taiwan.
So after officially announced and published its rules, every overclocker can adapt according his conditions, the strategy to try to win.
In my case, I had no good processors, but only a medium 3960X and 3770K, that maybe they could not allow myself to get to the finals.
But, I had a crazy 1760/1960 Mhz Lightning, what I believed put me in front line to reached my goal.
I thought that if I could not get the 1st place, will need to input again lots of effort, money and time, since here in Brazil, LN2, hardware and also my time, will cost a lot to me.
So, I postpone to started to fight about 10 days to deadline, and as everybody knows, sandybagging is usual.
According my way of view, would need to compete against great overclockers, also, people from Canada and mainly USA.
Also, could see the great job from Splave with his crazy 7 Ghz Ivy Bridge, and 57X Sandy-E, and also Gunslinger with much better chips, make me so far to be close, and let me go think about to win 3D and only try to do a good job in 2D.
So, the bad trip...
Inexplicably my Lightning did not work. The last time I had used, she did a fantastic result, reaching 1760/1960 Mhz, and now, she just did not care anymore.
Immediately a ?shower of cold water ", changed my plans.
If you were in a country where hardware is accessible to all, it was easier, but I could not find any other Lightning.
Also I could not find a Big Bang XPower II and only got a GD65 because a friend brought me from an importer, for no less than U$ 700.
So, atm, I just have weapons to do medium 2D scores, and need to got a good HD 7970 to have chance.
There were two ways to proceed. Give up trying to win in the qualifiers, or go ahead to pro hard way using a reference card (luckily, due to the launch of the GTX 770 and GTX 780, there are offers from people selling HD7970 for a decent price, USD 600 to USD 650, the Standing in Brazil considered a good price.
I chose the second option, bought a reference HD7970 and just as I had done before the release of the non-reference cards, made a Frankenstein card.
The card ? (11 trimpots (PLL, RAM, GPU, OCP); added 10 tantalum caps; changed the stock mosfets to a Lightning mosfets ; added one more extra phase (stock = 5 phases and now 6 phases); control panel to measure voltages; XOC MSI BIOS:









The scores:


Also, I worked to get the better efficiency that?s was possible, since my CPUs did not help to win:

And the regular score to Cinebench, where CPU could not go more. Even to lit bit more than 5500 Mhz, could find good efficiency.


Thanks to: Corsair and 3DTeam X5
**Also to all many overclockers and friends that inspired and encourage me to keep working.

Best wishes.
rbuass

[Olivon]

Great work Ronaldo ! That's real fighting spirit !