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MSI Master Overclocking Arena 2011
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Written by Olin Coles   
Friday, 07 January 2011

MSI Master Overclocking Arena 2011

Americas Finals: Pole Position Raceway, Las Vegas, Nevada.

World Ranked overclockers from North America and Latin America have assembled to compete using Intel's high-end X58 platform and NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580 GPU for a seat at the global final in Taipei, Taiwan. This MOA event was timed to coincide with the 2011 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Nevada, the MSI Master Overclocking Arena was set to determine the finalists for the Americas region. Staged at the popular Pole Position Raceway near the Palms hotel, contestants were challenged to produce the best CPU and GPU performance results using identical hardware. The CPU portion of the event used Super-Pi performance results to determine the winner, while the graphics segment consisted of GPU benchmarks using 3dMark 2011.

MOA General Information:

Pole Position Raceway (near Palms Hotel) 4175 South Arville, Las Vegas, NV 89103
January 6th, 2011.

MSI-Master-Overclocking-Arena-2011.jpg

  • Live streaming register page: https://us.msi.com/OperationLasVegas/
  • Live streaming page: https://www.justin.tv/msiusa
  • Website: https://www.msi-moa.com/AM-2011/
  • Competing Overclockers: https://www.msi-moa.com/AM-2011/p2.html
  • Rules: https://www.msi-moa.com/AM-2011/p3.html
  • MOA Online Qualifications: https://hwbot.org/competition/moa2011_americas

MOA 2011 AM Pre-Selection Winners

MSI-Master-Overclocking-Arena-2011-Winners.jpg

Contestant Prizes

The following prizes will be handed out. If you won a prize, you will be contacted by a competition moderator.

Top-2 Winner of each stage

The top 2 winners from each stage will get a ticket to MOA 2011 AM Qualifier. Each winner can team up with 1 team member and be invited to MOA 2011 AM Qualifier, which makes a total of 10 teams. The MOA 2011 AM Qualifier takes place in Las Vegas, USA, January 6-7th.

Lucky Draw - Stage 1: MSI R5770 Hawk

Lucky Draw - Stage 2: MSI N460GTX Cyclone 1GD5

Lucky Draw - Stage 3: MSI P55A-GD65

Lucky Draw - Stage 4: MSI P55-GD85

Lucky Draw - Stage 5: MSI N460GTX Hawk

OC Weapons of Choice

MSI supplied plenty of liquid nitrogen for the Master Overclocking Arena event, and while it seems plentiful the supply was quickly consumed. Because of LN's low boiling point into vapor, overclocking with the material in a controlled environment is relatively safe and free of potential injury. The other side effect is extremely low temperatures, allowing the contestants to maximize their performance with abnormally high hardware settings.

MSI-MOA-LN.jpg

Test System Specifications:

Each contestant at the MOA 2011 event received the same hardware, select by random draw. Overclockers used the following MSI components to reach victory:

  • MSI Big Bang X-Power motherboard
  • MSI N580GTX GeForce GTX 580 video card
  • Intel Core i7-980X EE processor
  • Patriot Sector-7 PC3-16000 (3x 2GB) system memory
  • WD VelociRaptor WD3000HLFS hard drive
  • Antec CP-1000 power supply unit
  • Thermaltake eSports keyboard and mouse
  • Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate, 64-bit operating system

MSI-Master-Overclocking-Arena-2011-Details.jpg

MSI had plenty of helpful staff on hand to manage LN distribution, record scores, and offer general assistance. As far as competitions are concerned, MOA was completely free of team posturing. It was surprising to see so many teams working closely together and sharing information.

MSI-MOA-Girls.jpg

MOA Overclocking Warriors

This leg of MSI Master Overclocker Arena was dedicated for the Americas region, and consisted of eighteen contestants from the USA and Brazil. This event consisted of the following teams and team members:

  • Over the Edge (USA): Patch and Dentlord
  • OCAlliance (USA): Slave and RomDominance
  • Team XS (USA): Chew* and ZenEffect
  • Team Pure (USA): G H Z and Gautam
  • 1213 Xtreme (Brazil): Rbuass and Fugger
  • Team Overclockaholics (USA): steponz and Kal-EL
  • Team Vaseline (USA): Robert and ocgmj
  • Hardcol (Colombia): E-Killer and Nestorky
  • Overclockers Anonymous (USA): Brian y and Chris

MSI-MOA-Finalists.jpg

The camaraderie is amazing at these events. Even though these overclocking teams are in competition with each other, there was absolutely no sign of opposition between members. In fact, on a few occasions the competitors made hardware trades and exchanged gear.

MSI-MOA-212.jpg

These overclockers deserve tremendous respect, as they worked to set world records for their team and at the same time helping their neighbors qualify. At one point early on, just as one team was close to posting the top score, the power for the entire table was accidentally shut down by one of the contestants. They all took it in stride, however, and accepted the opportunity to restart with higher settings.

MSI-MOA-237.jpg

During the processor performance segment, it was a regular occurrence to hear one team share their settings and configuration with another team. As a whole, the entire event was filled with genuinely courteous enthusiasts, and served as ambassadors to the overclocking community. It was refreshing (for me) to see so many elite-level overclockers conduct themselves professionally, and without the elitist attitude that sometimes comes with this hobby.

MOA Competition Results

After many hours of continuously tweaking hardware settings, and nearly a hundred litres of liquid nitrogen, these MOA warriors had finally made their mark. In the end, overclocking world records were set and broken in a span of minutes. By the time final scores were computed and the LN fog had finally cleared, a few teams were (at least briefly) the proud owner of several overclocking world records. Here are the final official results:

MSI-MOA-Results.jpg

Judges observed overall scores to compute the final standings. After the official scores were announced, the Americas leg of MSI's Master Overclocker Arena had its finalists. The top placing teams will advance to the MOA final in Taipei later into 2011. The official results are as follows:

  1. OCAlliance (USA): Slave and RomDominance - Super Pi 32M = 6:31.795 / 3dMark11 = 9213
  2. Over the Edge (USA): Patch and Dentlord - Super Pi 32M = 6:26.257 / 3dMark11 = 8893
  3. Team Pure (USA): G H Z and Gautam - Super Pi 32M = 6:40.437 / 3dMark11 = 8938
  4. 1213 Xtreme (Brazil): Rbuass and Fugger - Super Pi 32M = 6:48.518 / 3dMark11 = 8926
  5. Team XS (USA): Chew* and ZenEffect - Super Pi 32M = 6:33.651 / 3dMark11 = 8579
  6. Team Vaseline (USA): Robert and ocgmj - Super Pi 32M = 6:56.224 / 3dMark11 = 8778
  7. Team Overclockaholics (USA): steponz and Kal-EL - Super Pi 32M = 6:55.865 / 3dMark11 = 8477
  8. Overclockers Anonymous (USA): Brian y and Chris - Super Pi 32M = 7:18.688 / 3dMark11 = 8188
  9. Hardcol (Colombia): E-Killer and Nestorky - Super Pi 32M = 7:9.406 / 3dMark11 = 4161

For more images from this event are available inside our Facebook photo album. Join and become a fan while you're at it!


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Comments 

 
# WHAT?Juan Pablo Cuervo 2011-01-07 06:24
No Winrar BenchMark Test ?
No Passmark Test?
Antec Power Supply ?
WTF!
Winrar Benchmark test on youtube.com please!
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# RE: WHAT?David Ramsey 2011-01-07 09:01
MSI chooses the benchmarks used in the competition, not us.
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# Not entirely safeP Simmons 2011-01-07 12:44
I noticed in the article you state that LN (liquid nitrogen) is safe and free of potential injury. Liquid nitrogen being used from the large containers poses significant risk. Nitrogen being heavier that oxygen will displace O2 in closed spaces and is a significant suffocation hazard. Please recognize this risk when using large quantities for any application.
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# Quite True, SimmonsRobert 2011-01-08 11:28
Fortunately, none of the many OCing competitions using liquid N2 have ever experienced the effects you mentioned, apparently. The venues where these competitions happen are fairly large, open spaces with much activity, and the competitors usually have small fans running on their equipment, so the resulting air movement in that environment is enough to prevent the situation you describe from occurring, apparently. Still, the potential problem exists, and it may be wise for extra air circulation to be provided to ensure the scenario you describe never happens. Perhaps this has already been acknowledged and we simply are not aware of what is done to prevent it. Excellent point nonetheless.
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# RE: Quite True, SimmonsServando Silva 2011-01-08 12:05
This applies for dry ice too. But you'd need a lot of CO2 to fill a small room, not to say when you're benching on a large stage or open spaces. Every-time I bench on extreme conditions with some friends, we promise that the last one needs to take out every other (fainted) persons before fainting, of course, as a joke.
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# RE: MSI Master Overclocking Arena 2011James 2011-01-20 07:43
What core, bus and memory speed for big overclock champion?
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# RE: MSI Master Overclocking Arena 2011feralshad0w 2011-02-14 15:37
I am a little late to post this, but whats up with the prizes? lol I understand that this is about the experience and enthusiasm for the technology, but but the highest prizes are variations of the gtx 460? I am pretty shocked there isnt some more scaling leading up to a gtx 580 for first place.

I am a big fan of the event and I think this is the kind of thing that motivates many enthusiasts and the technology. How far can we go right? Very good post.
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