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ISSUE 222 JAN 2009
PERFORMANCE GEAR & GAMING
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extreme overclocking The need for speed drives them, Adam Oxford disects the overclocking maestros and their dark art
W
e’re all overclockers now. Having a go at super charging any chip of the last generation or so – and specifically Intel’s Core 2 – has been been easy and safe endeavour. So much so that if you’re not running, for instance, a Q6600 at 3GHz or more, frankly you’re not really getting your money’s worth from the chip.
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Don’t kid yourself that adding 500MHz without so much as unscrewing the heatsink puts you in the big league, though. You’re doing a smart thing, but you are not part of the elite cabal who get to call themselves veterans. No, you’re not made of the same crazed stuff that drives them to ever more ludicrous fleet feats or suffered financial hardship to raise your CPU speed. You’ve also probably never soldered anything to your mobo or kept dangerous industrial chemicals in the house. You, in short, are not worthy!
“I think a lot of the guys have a part of the brain missing. It’s the part that says ‘That’s good enough, you can stop now’” January 2009
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Extreme overclocking
A
t the grassroots level, overclocking has a lot in common with MG Club membership or the kinds of man-in-ashed pastimes that involve swing lathes. It’s born out of the same hackers’ spirit of inquiry that makes one guy install Linux, fit their own kitchen or crack NSA databases looking for proof of aliens. The word ‘enthusiast’ is bandied around far too often in computing circles, but the overclocking fratenity are truly deserving of this moniker – it’s genuine enthusiam for fiddling which drives it. “I think a lot of guys have a part of the brain missing,” laughs Kenny Clapham, a member of the UK’s leading overclocking team, Benchtec. “It’s the part that should be saying to them ‘Thats good enough, you can stop now.’” Clapham’s particular areas of expertise are water and dry ice cooling. His current goal is to be recognised as one of the top 100 overclockers in the world without touching liquid nitrogen (LN2) or expensive cascade systems. He reckons that hitting high scores in benchmarks like Super Pi and Folding@ Home is only part of the motivation, though. It’s an indulgence which quickly becomes an obsession. The reason is that achieving high clockspeeds means more than just mucking about with the BIOS settings. It means individually adjusting every parameter your PC is capable of to its fastest stable settings and then combining them all together for a benchmarking run. Before you can go near a flask of LN2, a lot of time is
cool starters If there’s a hierarchy to overclocking, it goes something like this: air, water, peltier, phase change, cascade, dry ice and the big guy, liquid nitrogen. Air and water cooling are enough for systems you’re likely to use daily and while Peltier – otherwise known as TEC – coolers are potentially effective, but need combining with water or fans to achieve good results. Phase change – or vapour – cooling is the kind of refrigeration system you get in, well, refrigerators. It’s mechanical and expensive, but not as expensive as a cascade set-up, which is essentially a string of phase change coolers working in stages. With the right coolant, a cascade system can hit temperatures of 32
January 2009
Above Serious overclocking requires serious cooling
spend raising one value – such as the FSB – under water cooling and then resetting it and moving on to the next. When the big day for testing comes, the sub-zero materials are pulled out and the known stable points are used as a starting position for record attempts. Every single system, then, has its own particular thresholds and tolerances. The appeal of overclocking to most, says Clapham, is the painstaking research that goes into finding them. And again, it’s not just about fiddling
-100°C and below, but the enormous costs of these systems mean that most people leapfrog from water cooling to dry ice or liquid nitrogen. Dry ice (frozen carbon dioxide) sublimates at -78.5°C and comes in large blocks or small pellets from your local industrial chemist. Because it’s relatively cheap – £50 will get you enough for a day’s testing – it’s also popular with overclockers. It’s applied in a similar way to liquid nitrogen (see page 33), but to ensure an equal distribution of its cooling abilities around the inside of the cryogenic pot, a small amount of acetone is poured in first. When a dry ice cube is dropped into the pot, the acetone speeds up its evaporation and the drop in temperature of the liquid ensures there are no hotspots on the metal surface.
Below Water cooling with kit like the Zalman LQ1000 is a good way to start overclocking
with BIOS settings. Increasing voltages to support huge clockspeeds often means replacing resistors on the circuit boards to allow more current flow – and aside from requiring a steady hand with a soldering iron that means even more investigation and probing. Motherboard documentation is notoriously poor, but at least the technology remains stable enough that an experienced hand shouldn’t take too long to work out which resistors to change in order to alter key voltages.
Extreme overclocking
or How I Learned to love LN2 Liquid nitrogen, or LN2 to its fans, can be dangerous, but providing you have the right kind of pressurised container to store it and can convince someone that you know what you’re doing, it’s not impossible to use or acquire. Goggles and gloves are essential, and while it’s very tempting to touch a live cryogenic pot to see how cold it is, we’re not aware of any PC enthusiasts who’ve managed to solidify and smash their fingers off. Getting good overclocking results with LN2 is much harder than handling it. Not only is there a considerable risk that any piece of silicon suddenly chilled to -196°C will crack, circuit boards are also good enough conductors that once applied, the cold will spread out from the CPU socket to the rest of the components fairly quickly. For this reason it’s important you’re not tempted to touch any errant capacitor or start pulling out
T
he really dark arts of extreme overclocking are achieving high scores in 3D benchmarks. There are no easy BIOS flags for getting the right voltages that will make use of a graphics card chilled to subzero temperatures, and it means a lot of analysis and trial and error: “It’s really satisfying when you have a fully modded graphics card in front of you,” says Clapham. “It can be quite intimidating to start off with something pure and clean and then cover it in wires and solder, but the reward is that not everyone has the confidence or ability to do that.” For each new graphics card with overclocking potential, Clapham reckons there are probably only about five or six people in the world who’ll probe it thoroughly with a multimeter, in order to reverse engineer some kind of schematic for discovering which pin does which on the card. “Easy points and silverware don’t interest me,” Clapham says, “if the benching doesn’t teach me something, as far as I’m concerned, I’m just wasting my time.” Having said all that, there’s an obvious competitive element to the hobby, too. It’s telling that Clapham describes overclocking as a “sport” rather than as a hobby.
memory sticks with your bare hands at any point. The cold isn’t just dangerous, though. Condensation and ice crystals aren’t good for electrical components either. Preparing a motherboard for LN2 cooling involves not just the feats of electrical engineering that make extreme overclocking possible, but also liberal amounts of waterproofing around the CPU socket, usually with layers of glued on neoprene, and plenty of ‘liquid tape’. That’s a fairly common black paint, which will harden to an insulating layer available from any electrical supplier. Finally, you’ll need a ‘pot’. These are the long tubes that you see sticking up from overclockers’ motherboards. The body can be made from almost anything from a Pringles can upwards, but the contact with the CPU casing must be finely milled to avoid any
Above If you’re going to use LN2, use goggles and gloves
inconsistency in the surface temperature that may cause the CPU surface to crack. Only a few places in the world make specialist cryogenic pots, which can cost hundreds of pounds. Most of those in use in the UK are imported from Germany.
“If the benching doesn’t teach me something, as far as I’m concerned, I’m just wasting my time” “One or two clockers – who will stay nameless – don’t cope especially well with being beaten,” he admits, “And might rock the boat every now and then, but there’ll be people like that in anything competitive sport.” For the most part though, there’s a lot of camaraderie among the community: “A lot of the old-hands know each other and are willing to help each other out, even if it means they’ll get beaten as a result,” says Clapham. How do the world’s best keep track of their status? There are literally hundreds of dedicated forums and groups like Benchtec UK, who meet online and in real life to share tips and test their prowess. In lieu of any ‘official’ database of rankings, the two best sites for keeping track of who’s who and have achievied what, are The Overclocking World Record Database (www.ripping. org) and the more community oriented HWBot.org. The difficulty for both of the most popular sites is attempting to independently verify scores. There just isn’t the infrastructure to double-check
Above Overclocking at its most extreme – LN2 pots on everything barring the northbridge
every screengrab that comes through, which shows a processor running at an outrageous speed, and the occasional porky pie slips through. Wheedling out the cheaters is very much a Web 2.0 activity – the community generally does a good job of self-monitoring for obvious fakes, and can often detect a discrepancy between knowledge shown in forum postings and
January 2009
33
Extreme overclocking once scores start to peak there are people prepared to push things just a little bit further. And the sport itself is booming – in many ways this year has been a major breakthrough for its recognition. Overclocking is nothing new, but there are signs that the manufacturers are starting to pay more than lip service to the people who buy more than one motherboard a year.
T claimed achievements. “Some people want insta-success,” observes Clapham, “And they often don’t realise the ridiculous amount of time and money involved in building up a reputation and the abilities to do what the top overclockers do, so they find another
way. They always get found out over time, though.” One thing that’s remarkable about overclockers is that they can always find a new goal to pursue. There’s a flurry of activity around the initial launch of any new platform, but even
Above Overclocking isn’t just about simple cooling
“It can’t be long before a mobo manufacturer recruits the hardware equivalent of Fatal1ty” cooler king Yasukazu Shimokawa also known as ‘duck’ is the currently world title holder for the fastest Intel overclock. PCFormat: When did you first get involved in overclocking? Yasukazu Shimokawa: I started overclocking the Athlon 1 in 2001. PCF: Why did you take up the sport? YS: Because I am very interested in fast things. I’ve always enjoyed working on my car and my motorcycle and tuning them up. I play the guitar high-speed too. PCF: How quickly did you move onto 34
January 2009
advanced techniques like dry ice? YS: It took about three or four years. In recent years, though, an increasing number of young people are overclocking with LN2 from the start. PCF: What do you think keeps you doing what you do? YS: I’m just not content with my past records. Both the hardware of the PC and my own skill are still developing, and I know I can do better. PCF: Do you think there any practical benefits to it? YS: Not at the moment. I don’t even think of it in those terms, although the increasing media and manufacturer interest in overclocking means I have had some sponsorship offers recently. PCF: How much do you currently spend a year on overclocking?
he last few months have seen a flurry of sponsored showcases, from NVIDIA inviting k|inp|n and Yasukazu ‘duck’ Shimokawa to demonstrate their skills on the green one’s hardware at the most recent press launch and at big day tournaments hosted by other brands. In terms of tournaments, the Advanced Overclocking Chamionship (AOCC) is the largest gathering of big names so far, and it’s the most serious attempt to turn overclocking into a stadium sport. The 2008 contest took place in Hong Kong in July, with headline sponsorship deals from Intel, NVIDIA and Asus. A further, but smaller competition was organised in Berlin in August of this year, using the AOCC brand, but competitors were limited to using Asus kit as part of the company’s pre-X58 launch promotion. A more common method of dragging overclockers out of their workshops and sheds, though, is sponsored public displays. Benchtec UK now
YS: I usually put in a couple of hours every day, and spend about 3,600,000yen on LN2 a year (that’s about £22,600) PCF: Do you game, using an on overclocked machine? YS: No, I’ve not used an overclocked rig for gaming, but I intend to learn because I plan to put more effort into 3D benchmarking this next year. Right now, my day to day PC isn’t overclocked – it’s stability orientated [laughs]. PCF: What’s your next goal? YS: My goals are the 3D benchmark world records. I’ve held the record for best overclock of a marketed CPU for several years and I applied to the beer company that’s in your country for the Guinness World Record three years ago, but they’ve left me out of the scheme. One major goal for me is to change their attitude towards the sport of overclocking.
Scores courtesy of www.ripping.org except * courtest of hwbot.org.
Extreme overclocking
World records A few of the highest scores
Title
Processor
World record
Fastest Intel overclock
Pentium 4 631
8.22GHz
duck
Fastest AMD overclock
2.5-Athlon 64 X2
4.3GHz
SingleStage
Core 2 E8600/GTX280 SLI
131,072
k|ngp|n
Core 2 E8600/GTX280
380,406
k|ngp|n
Core 2 QX9770, Radeon HD4870 x2
20,653
k|ngp|n*
3DMark01 Aquamark 3 3DMark Vantage
Title holder
demonstrates its skills regularly at the Multiplay i-series events, for example, and most of the manufacturers have paid well-known overclockers to perform their stunts at trade shows in order to prove their kit can stand the rigours of extreme performance and gain fame by association. At a total kitty of $11,500 for the AOCC 2008, the prize funds aren’t in quite in the same league as gaming, and we’re unlikely to see a ‘professional overclocker’ any time soon. It surely can’t be long before one of the motherboard manufacturers recruits the hardware equivalent of Fatal1ty to its ranks for box branding, though. In some respects, it’s already begun. Take a look at the NVIDIA ‘Priceless’ pastiche of Mastercard ads featuring k|ngp|n at www.youtube.com/ watch?v=TV-1kYMh2G4.
O
utside of the very small semiprofessional arena, hardware companies have also realised for some time that there’s value in involving overclocking teams before components are released. Many companies enlist the help of the leading lights with BIOS design and early silicon testing, and both NVIDIA
Above Protecting the area around the CPU socket is essential to prevent cracking
Below Understanding your motherboard is more important that spending a fortune on kit and LN2
and AMD claim that their motherboard control panels are the result of a two-way dialogue. “We work closely with hardware enthusiasts,” says Foxconn’s Sascha Krohn, “People whose hobby is testing, tweaking, overclocking, modifying and pushing hardware to its limits. They have an immense amount of experience in using computer hardware and they know what could and should be improved and what features are rather useless or they think are unwanted.” Asus’ Iain Bristow agrees. “The benefits of working so closely with the overclockers,” he says, “Is the wealth of ideas and innovation. Our current range of Designed for Overclocking motherboards, namely the Rampage Extreme and Rampage II Extreme have both been designed and created with the help of numerous world-class overclocker experts.” It’s not always easy, though, according to Foxconn’s Sascha Krohn. Getting the right kinds of feedback from ardent enthusiasts can be a tough process and will occasionally lead to design black holes: “Their feedback is
crucial to getting a product to where it should be, but you need to know how to work with it,” he says, “Some will tolerate anything so long as they get good numbers, and if you only listen to their feedback you end up with a great enthusiast board that won’t be too popular with regular users who have less patience – a problem we sort of ran into with the QuantumForce BlackOps X48.” One person often called on for these consultancies is CPU speed champion duck (interviewed on page 34). “I think that what they get out of it is information about durability and operability,” he told PCF, “The sorts of data that are uncertain, while designs are on the drawing board. It’s the sort of discussions car manufacturers have with race drivers.” Benchtec’s Clapham is slightly more philosophical about this aspect, though, and feels that even the best manufacturers still have a blind eye when it comes to certain areas of design: “It’s simple things like good hardware documentation and leaving plenty of room around components for cooling that gets frustrating,” he says, January 2009
35
Extreme overclocking 1 2
3 5
4 6
7
1 Pot luck Carefully machined pots ensure a clean contact with the CPU surface, and they won’t crack in extreme temperatures. 2 Insulated The metal sides of the pot get very cold. To prevent condensation dripping down the sides, a foam coat is applied. 3 Fill with care It’s not so much of an issue with dry ice – or
“What I really want to see is something that’s straightforward to set up and simple to use.”
O
ne thing that everyone agrees on, though, is that there’s more to the courting of the overclocking community than endorsements. The component manufacturing process means that improvements made to the high end pieces of kit filter their way down to regular consumer level before long. Just look at the proliferation of high quality, durable capacitors and power regulators on low price motherboards that are available these days.
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dice – but lowering the temperature too quickly with LN2 can crack components. 4 Highly modded New resistors and other modifications need to be physically engineered onto the mobo, to allow for the high voltages of overclocked CPUs and components. 5 North(pole)bridge Often, the northbridge can be left alone. The temperature of the motherboard PCB will
Sometimes, though, it can result in problems. Clapham reckons at least one company understates memory voltage in its BIOS settings in order to make it appear that faster speeds can be achieved at stock currents. The result, all too often, is RAM that burns out early from being overcharged. The only way to be sure is to physically measure the current to the memory controller with a voltmeter: something that hardware reviewers are unlikely to do, but a hardened overclocker might. What all this exposure means is that ‘serious’ overclocking is getting more popular – despite the high cost of kit in these financially strained times: “We’ve seen a turning point this year,” says Yasukazu Shimokawa, “Especially among young people, and the overall
drop far enough to chill it below zero. 6 Ramshackle These are not off the shelf parts. You’ll have to cut and create your own retaining mechanism – make sure it’s not likely to fall over when full of the cold stuff. 7 Sealed in Components around the CPU are coated with liquid electrical tape to prevent moisture getting inside and freezing.
Above You don’t need that much kit to go extreme yourself, just some knowhow
population of overclockers has increased a lot.” If, however, you’re tempted by the increasing amounts of glory heaped on top overclockers and the possibility of sharing in the emerging prize funds and sponsorship pots, it’s worth being sure of your motivation. Do it for the thrill of extracting performance from your machine or just being more creative with your rig than those who are happy to install a PC and leave it. Don’t do it for the cash, and don’t forget that the roots of the hobby/sport are still as relevant now as they were at the beginning. “When people realise that the basic point of overclocking is to make a cheap computer perform the same as a more expensive one,” concludes Clapham, “Their eyes light up.” ¤