Tech Reaction

Hey guys, thought I’d share. I had a similar article on my personal blog, but I have added more content just for techreaction.net. Hope you like it.

AMD hosted a fantastic event for the prime purpose of overclocking the Phenom II’s to the utter limits.

Records were shattered, the liquid helium and nitrogen kept flowing, overclockers worked around the clock, camera’s flashed and filmed, and processors and motherboards were killed in the process.

I had the lucky opportunity to attend the event thanks to AMD. I was one of the overclockers although I did not have a benching rig to myself. It was meant more to be a learning and observing experience to me, as I have never dealt with nitrogen or helium on computers. Furthest I have gone as far as exotic cooling materials is dry ice (a video can be seen on my personal blog under videos).

When I first walked into the CEC (Customer Engagement Center), I was welcomed by air conditioning, a good contrast from the hot Austin sun. The front desk was complete with a huge AMD logo behind the receptionist desk, and nice glass wall panes with the slogan “The Future Is Fusion”. The CEC was complete with a board room, theater, demo computers all over, the food bar, and of course, the overclocking setup. The overclocking setup was very cool. A few tables, and lots of hardware (platters of chips, stacks of graphic cards, and boxes of motherboards). What made it so exciting was the monitors in the glass cases behind us. During the event, these monitors were playing back the previous AMD Overclocking event videos. Not only that, but suspended in each one was a naked silicon chip of various past AMD products. Very fascinating.

The CEC was probably the nicest building I have ever been in, not to mention the whole lone star campus was amazing. Good job to whoever designed that one. I’d like to thank all the wonderful people at AMD for putting up with us overclockers taking up all the space in the CEC.

I got to meet some other cool overclockers with great experience and knowledge. [XC] gomeler, chew* and k|ngp|n of xtremesystems.org (chew* is also here on techreaction) were the ones doing all the helium/nitrogen benching on site. Not to mention all of the very kind people at AMD that were just too concerned of taking care of us overclockers (Pat Moorhead, Simon Solotko, Nigel Dessau, Ian McNaughton, Pete Hardman, Matt Davis) and I personally thank all of you for that. Last, but not least, I met HotHardware’s Mat Miranda, the Inquirer’s Charlie Demerjian, and Carl Poirier from Neoseeker.

For the day AMD busted out the dewars of liquid helium and nitrogen (-196C & -269C), some of the coldest liquids known to man. These fluids are sacred to the extreme overclocker. It was really cool watching Hardman and K\ngp|n work with it. Other than that, cooling involved a few pots (one of which was helium) from Aaron Schradin and some of K|ngP|n’s pots (F1, and a prototype)

I spent most of the day observing and watching chew*, k|ngp|n, Hardman and gomeler work their magic. These guys are very methodical and the way they work is interesting. I’m pretty sure chew* knows the new AM3 Gigabyte board (MA790FXT-UD5P) better then Gigabyte’s own engineers. K|ngp|n pushed the frequency envelope by getting some of the worlds (if not) highest all four core quad core frequencies. Gomeler had troubles during most of the event, but did not give up and kept going. Ultimately the next day he got some fantastic 3DMark runs.

A few things that really impressed me: k|ngp|n shattering the 3D06 record as well as hitting ~6.89GHz on helium (-230C~ under chip load), chew* attaining 6.634GHz on LN2, when some of the guys went as far as delidding a few chips for better cooling results and the whole atmosphere of the event. You can ask anyone there, I was at a loss of words. Was probably the quietest guy around.

The clear LN2 pot was really interesting. Aaron Schradin of immersi solutions designed the world’s first clear pot. Aaron was also a very nice and smart guy to meet, enjoyable to have around. The science behind the pot is that they used a clear tube made of lexan material and mounted that on top of the copper base that makes contact with the CPU. Once this was done, they mounted another larger layer of lexan to be the thermal insulator. This layer in between the tube where the LN2 is poured was filled with everclear (grain alcohol, and no, we did not drink the stuff after ) to prevent the whole thing from freezeing solid and breaking. You would think a clear pot would kill cooling performance, however, this one held it’s own at a solid -190C. Great pictures of the pot can be seen in the Inquirer article and the CrunchGear articles.

Another highlight of the day was when some of the press guys and a few others decided to smash a LN2 frozen burrito and watermelon, great stuff.

Last but not least, I got to play around with some LN2 myself for the first time. Of course I did not expect to pull any crazy results just like that. One feat was that I was able to get a NB OC of around 4200MHz easy. Other than that, core frequencies just weren’t working for me. Man LN2 is that cool stuff. Looking forward to experimenting with it at home in my near future! Now….Just to get my hands on a nice pot and dewar.

So, all in all, that was my play by play experience of the overclocking event. Fantastic job with the Phenom II AMD, it is a great product and can pull some monster numbers under extreme cooling!

All this being said, I’d like to say one HUGE thank you to all the people that made this possible. The invitation was definitely an opportunity that I will remember and cherish.

Here I have gathered a few links of some hardware sites with more pictures, information, and overclock results on the event. And yes, I am the guy in the black v-neck shirt and glasses in all the pictures.

Enjoy:

XS Thread
OCN Thread
Inquirer Article
Neoseeker Article
Crunchgear Pics
Crunchgear Full Article
Legit Reviews Article

Overclocker Results:

K|ngp|n Result Thread
Gomeler Result Thread