HardwareZone Iron Tech 2008 - The Grand Finale!

Countdown to the Grand Final

The quest to find the best PC tech enthusiast in the region reached its climax with the Grand Final of HardwareZone's Iron Tech 2008. Held at Funan DigitaLife Mall on October 12, the Grand Final gathered the winners from the regional legs of the competition, which had taken place in five countries, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore and Thailand over the past two months and pitted them against each other for a shot at the top prizes worth up to US$10,000.

What Makes an Iron Tech Champion?

With the best enthusiasts from the region, this final challenge promised to be an action packed test of their PC tech skills and there was certainly plenty of nerve wracking drama. Some of this was due to the unique nature of this competition, which was unlike the typical contests that involved only overclocking a PC. Those of you who have followed the regional competitions so far would know that there were three phases then, each of which tests a particular tech skillset:-

• The Rigging Challenge - Building the PC from scratch in the shortest possible time and of course, it must boot up successfully.
• The Setup Challenge - Setup the OS, drivers, benchmark tools and achieve a stable overclocked state within the time limit.
• The Benchmark Challenge - Contestants' rigs are tested by judges to find out which rig achieves the best results.

As Iron Tech aimed to find the complete PC tech enthusiast, thus besides the usual criteria of performance, additional criteria like the cost and power efficiency of the assembled PC are included. Therefore, the winner of this competition is someone you would want assembling your system, since he can get the best performance for the lowest cost and with the best power efficiency. In short, a tech guru!

These extra factors were added only for the Grand Final of the competition so we have included two more segments:-

• Choosing the Components - Contestants are given a list of components and their retail prices. They are given two different choices for important components like the processor, memory, graphics card and the motherboard, all of which have varying prices.
• Power Consumption Test - The contestants' systems are evaluated on their power draw when running at load. The goal is to have the lowest power draw while not compromising on performance.

With all these new factors thrown in, even those who had participated in other overclocking competitions previously found this element of uncertainty quite daunting. They would need to do some quick cost/benefit analysis when looking at the list of components while at the same time, keeping in mind that a heavily overclocked system may be either expensive or a power hog.

To ensure that all these factors are taken into account, we will be following a weighted formula. Firstly, the performance benchmarks results will be combined with the cost of the PC components chosen to get the price/performance ratio. This will contribute 50% of the final score in our formula. Then, the power draw of the assembled system is taken and it will have a 30% weight in the formula. Next, the time taken to rig the system will account for 10% of the final score and lastly, the time taken to setup and tweak the system will contribute the last 10%. The detailed scores and breakdown will be listed later when we go through the different phases.

Whoever emerges as the top scorer using this formula will be the Iron Tech champion!

The Grand Finalists

Unlike the semi-finals, the grand final had an additional criteria: the cost of the PC components used, which is determined by the contestants' hardware choices. Instead of being judged purely on performance, they will be evaluated on the performance-to-price ratio of their assembled systems. While the less expensive component is usually also less powerful on paper, the contestants can always try to overclock and tweak that component to be the equal or better than a more expensive part. This is where the judgment, experience and decision making of the contestants are tested.

Before that happened however, the emcee for the occasion tried to get the contestants settled down and relaxed for what was to come. Out of the ten finalists, eight had traveled from neighboring countries like Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines and Thailand after winning the regional semi-finals. The final ten are:-

• Alva Jonathan (Indonesia)
• Rekky (Indonesia)
• Ng Teng Liang (Malaysia)
• Alex Tan (Malaysia)
• Ronaldo Bejarin (Philippines)
• Gil Navarro (Philippines)
• Chen Tianyi (Singapore)
• Jeremiah Ong (Singapore)
• Rangsee Traiwongyoi (Thailand)
• Thirdsak Phokha (Thailand)

Choosing the Components

For this selection phase, contestants were given a choice of two different PC components for each category, namely the processor, memory, motherboard and graphics card. To aid them in this selection process, the latest US retail prices were given for the components (so that pricing is more neutral to all our regional contestants). They are then given sufficient time to look through and decide which components to select. This information is listed as follows:-

Components	Model	Cost (USD)
Processor 1	Core 2 Quad Q9400 (2.66GHz, 6MB L2)	$275
Processor 2	Core 2 Quad Q9550 (2.83GHz, 12MB L2)	$325
Motherboard 1	MSI P45 Neo2-FR	$150
Motherboard 2	MSI P45 Platinum	$180
Memory 1	2GB Kingston HyperX KHX8500D2K2 (DDR2-1066)	$42
Memory 2	2GB Kingston HyperX KHX9200D2K2 (DDR2-1150)	$60
Graphics Card 1	MSI GeForce N9800GTX Plus T2D512-OC	$200
Graphics Card 2	MSI Radeon R4850 T2D512	$190
CPU Cooler 1	Intel boxed reference CPU cooler	Free
CPU Cooler 2	Cooler Master Hyper TX2	$30
Hard Drive	Hitachi Deskstar 250GB SATA HDD	$55
Optical Drive	LG 22x DVD-RW Drive (SATA)	$26
Casing Fan	Thermaltake ModX 120mm case fan	$29
PSU	Corsair HX620W PSU	$170
Keyboard & Mouse	Cyber Snipa Warboard +Stinger Mouse	$119
Monitor	Philips 190CW 19" widescreen LCD	$209

The lowest possible cost of the system is US$1265 and the highest possible cost of system is US$1403.

And then it's time to select the components. Like a buffet table, contestants lined up to collect their components and return to their assigned workbench. There, they will report to the marshals on what they have chosen and this information will be used later to determine their performance to price ratio.

Here's what the contestants chose for their systems:-

Contestant	Processor	Motherboard	Memory	Graphics	CPU Cooler	Total System Cost
Ng Teng Liang (coolice)	Intel Core 2 Quad 9550	MSI P45 Platinum	Kingston DDR2-1150	MSI Radeon R4850	Stock Intel	US$1363
Alex Tan (sup3rfly)	Intel Core 2 Quad 9550	MSI P45 Platinum	Kingston DDR2-1066	MSI Radeon R4850	Cooler Master Hyper TX2	US$1375
Alva Jonathan	Intel Core 2 Quad 9550	MSI P45 Platinum	Kingston DDR2-1150	MSI GeForce 9800 GTX+	Cooler Master Hyper TX2	US$1403
Rekky	Intel Core 2 Quad 9400	MSI P45 Neo2-FR	Kingston DDR2-1150	MSI GeForce 9800 GTX+	Cooler Master Hyper TX2	US$1323
Thirdsak Phokha	Intel Core 2 Quad 9550	MSI P45 Platinum	Kingston DDR2-1066	MSI GeForce 9800 GTX+	Cooler Master Hyper TX2	US$1385
Rangsee Traiwongyoi	Intel Core 2 Quad 9550	MSI P45 Platinum	Kingston DDR2-1150	MSI GeForce 9800 GTX+	Cooler Master Hyper TX2	US$1403
Ronaldo Bejarin	Intel Core 2 Quad 9400	MSI P45 Neo2-FR	Kingston DDR2-1066	MSI GeForce 9800 GTX+	Cooler Master Hyper TX2	US$1305
Gil Navarro	Intel Core 2 Quad 9400	MSI P45 Platinum	Kingston DDR2-1066	MSI Radeon R4850	Cooler Master Hyper TX2	US$1325
Chen Tianyi	Intel Core 2 Quad 9400	MSI P45 Neo2-FR	Kingston DDR2-1066	MSI Radeon R4850	Stock Intel	US$1265
Jeremiah Ong	Intel Core 2 Quad 9550	MSI P45 Platinum	Kingston DDR2-1066	MSI GeForce 9800 GTX+	Cooler Master Hyper TX2	US$1385

The Rigging Challenge

Following the selection of the components, the contestants will then proceed to the rigging challenge, which will test them on their speed and precision in assembling the PC components and getting the system to boot up successfully. The marshals will record the time taken and the contestants will be ranked accordingly. The top contestant will get 100 points and the second one will get 90 points and so on in intervals of 10, descending all the way to 10 points for the last contestant.

Taking just 5 minutes and 33 seconds, Singapore's Jeremiah Ong came in first in the rigging phase, followed closely by Malaysia's Alex Tan aka sup3rfly in 5 minutes 51 seconds. Ronaldo Bejarin from the Philippines rounded out the top three finishing in 6:16. Unlike the semi-finals where only the top three were given bonus points, all the contestants were awarded points from this phase, so everyone was working as fast as possible.

System Setup and Tweaking

Now that all the systems have been assembled without any hitches, the contestants would go through the longest and most testing phase. This challenge required them to install the operating system provided, Microsoft's Windows Vista and all the necessary drivers and utilities.

1 hour and 30 minutes were given for all contestants to try to tweak and overclock their systems to the best of their abilities. While doing so, they had to keep in mind that stability was as important as performance and power efficiency could suffer from extreme overclocking. Additionally, contestants were also ranked according to the time taken for this section, so time was of the essence. In short, this was the most crucial part of the Iron Tech challenge for the contestants.

While all the contestants were concentrating on their rigs, there were also other happenings at the competition venue. For those interested in the hardware used for Iron Tech, all they had to do was drop by the MSI booth besides the stage and they could check that out in detail. There were also MSI motherboards and graphic cards sold at a discount at certain periods of the day, known as 'Golden Hours'.

If you were not shopping for any PC components, there was still the MSI giveaways up for grabs. Any member of the audience could participate by answering a simple question from the emcee. They could also attempt to guess the winner for Iron Tech 2008 and stand a chance to win a MSI motherboard.

Meanwhile, the contestants were using all the available time to tweak and optimize their systems. Even as we passed the 1 hour mark, no contestants had declared themselves satisfied with their system tweaks and it was not till another 9 - 10 minutes later before the Thai duo, Rangsee Triwongyoi and Thirdsak Phokha finished their tweaks and officially handed their systems over to the marshals. Most contestants took almost the full 1 hour 30 minutes to complete.

Like the rigging segment, contestants were awarded points depending on how fast they finished this section, ranging from 10 to 100. Rekky and Gil Navarro however encountered some issues during setup and were unable to finish the system setup and tweaking within the time allocated. Although they were given extra time to finish, they received no points from this segment. Do note that similar to the rigging phase, the system setup and tweaking section will account for 10% of the final score. Hence, at this moment, the contestants had just finished 20% of the competition.

Passing the Benchmarks

After the tweaking and setup phase, the fate of our contestants were sealed. They were not allowed to adjust anything else on their systems and the marshals would now take over control for the next phase and run the competition benchmarks.

The standard benchmarks to be used for the final included a general system performance benchmark PCMark05, Super PI, a processor intensive benchmark and a video encoding test. Two other surprise benchmarks were announced on the day and the two were 3DMark06 and Devil May Cry 4 Demo.

All the marshals were instructed to install and run the benchmarks, while the contestants were allowed to witness at the side. Like before, the systems were ranked from the highest score or the fastest time to complete, depending on the benchmark and allocated points accordingly. In this case, the top position came with 20 points and the last position, 2 points. The total points from these benchmarks were then used to calculate the performance to price ratio which will be the actual result taken. In terms of the overall ranking, this segment will contribute 50% of the final score, the largest proportion of the Iron Tech competition.

 

There was lots of drama in this phase, with contestants anxiously hoping that their systems would pass the benchmarks. Nevertheless, not all their prayers were answered, especially in the two surprise tests, 3DMark06 and Devil May Cry 4, which garnered the most system crashes. Contestants were allowed another benchmark run after a reboot in the event of a system crash but that was all they were given. It was truly a grueling test of their system stability and performance.

At the end of the day, two competitors, Jeremiah Ong from Singapore and Indonesia's Alva Jonathan emerged as joint winners of this segment, with identical performance to price ratios. They were both awarded the full 100 points from this phase. Thailand's Rangsee Traiwongyoi finished third, slightly edging out Rekky from Indonesia.

Looking through the results, it was clear that these four top scorers had systems that finished all the benchmarks safely without crashing. The rest had at least one failure. Stability is the name of the game here and these four gentlemen showed that they got that spot-on.

Power Consumption Test

With the important performance segment completed, there was one last twist in the competition. This was the power consumption testing, which aimed to find out which system had the lowest power draw when running at full load. The contestant with the system that had the lowest power draw would get 100 points and so on, descending down to 10 points for the most power hungry system.

To fully stress the system, Furmark, a rendering benchmark and a media encoding test were running simultaneously. The peak wattage number was then taken at a similar point in the benchmark progress and used in the competition.

Since this segment contributed 30% of the final score, all the competitors were obviously concerned about how their rigs fared, especially since even a 1W difference could mean a position in the rankings and 10 points.

From the way the results turned out, it seemed that those who chose the ATI Radeon HD 4850 generally had lower power consumption figures than those who selected the GeForce 9800GTX+. This was expected given the lower TDP rating of the ATI graphics card but with only 30% of the final score for this segment, would it make any difference in the final reckoning? We'll know soon enough.

The Iron Tech Champion

With all the competitive segments completed, it was time for the judges to do their jobs. While the results were being crunched and processed, the contestants and marshals alike took the opportunity to have a much deserved rest. Even then, there was a tension in the air that slowly built up as time passed. Everyone was keen to know how they fared in the competition.

 

And the champion of Hardware Zone's Iron Tech 2008 is none other than local favorite, Jeremiah Ong. With an overclocked rig that passed all the benchmarks with flying colors and the fastest rigging time, he managed to secure top spot comfortably with 78 points, 12 more than his closest rival, Alva Jonathan from Indonesia, who had to be content with second place. Rangsee Traiwongyoi from Thailand was a very close third, losing to Alva by a single point. It had certainly been that kind of competition, with all the contestants showing that they were among the best of the region in terms of their tech skills.

The scores below are derived by taking the points awarded to contestants in the various segments adjusted according to the percentage stated. This meant that the final score = rigging (10%) + setup (10%) + performance/price ratio (50%) + power consumption (30%). Hence for example, a score of 100 points for rigging will translate to 10 points in this formula.

We also took a look at the overclocked settings of the top three contestants and as you may notice, the difference separating Jeremiah and Alva appeared to be the GPU overclock. It was certainly a closely fought competition.

The competition was finally over! But the celebrations were not, as the top three winners were presented with their prizes onstage by representatives from main sponsor, MSI. All three winners earned themselves a trip to Taipei next month, where they will face greater challenges against the best from other countries in MSI's Master Overclocking Arena. We'll be bringing you more of that when that happens so stay tuned!

There was also still time for Editor Vijay Anand to pick more lucky winners of the many MSI giveaways and the main lucky draw prize, a MSI P45D3 motherboard. All in all, everyone who participated, whether as a contestant or a member of the audience, had a great time at Hardware Zone Iron Tech 2008.

We would like to again thank our main sponsors, MSI, Intel, Microsoft and Kingston for making Iron Tech 2008 a success. We would also like to thank Hitachi Global Storage Technologies, Thermaltake, Fuwell, Philips, Corsair, Cyber-Snipa, LG, Cooler Master, Corbell and Convergent for contributing to this event.

 

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