Playing the devil's advocate here:

What stops a manufacturer from seeding binned hardware to a person who's also buying one. Eg: ECS ships a golden CrazyOC VGA to a user who also bought a retail version. The bill of the retail sample is used as proof of purchase and the golden one used for the competition.

As I mentioned in the OC Pro League thread, at a certain point the community will have to get manufacturers agree to remove themselves from the overclocking game (at least concerning the competitions) to support this way of overclocking. There are a few problems:

- What if competition forms are used to promote new hardware. I suppose this form of competition is no longer accepted then?
- What in non-manufacturer organized competition forms such as HWBOT. Do you tolerate manufacturer interference?

Do you accept reviewers (who do not get paid, have to work 100+h on a review and can keep the board afterwards) to use their samples in competitions? Why or why not?

I always get confused when people 'from the community' act as if the community only consists of people who pay for their hardware. I'm also confused how 'you have to pay for your hardware' and 'competitions should be about skill' line up exactly ... how come there's more skill involved when you pay for your own hardware? Why are you more eligable to be named a winner if you have paid for the hardware?