MSI Master Overclocking Arena 2013 - Breaking World Records

MSI MOA 2013 Worldwide Grand Finals

For those into overclocking and PC tweaking, overclocking events held by the major names in PC technology often give you a glimpse into the best of tech and how much can they be pushed to their limits. This often sets the new performance bar to beat as enthusiasts around the world (both professional and hobbyists) strive to tweak their systems as close to the feats accomplished in these events. MSI's own grand overclocking event on the worldwide scale first started in 2008 and HardwareZone has since been following them nearly every year to see how the event and competition mechanics differ. But prior to MSI's venture into the world of the 'fast and furious', a lesser known fact is that HardwareZone has in some ways helped MSI build up this momentum. Long time readers of our site would remember the industry's most ambitious tech enthusiast challenge yet - HardwareZone's Iron Tech 2008. As MSI was one of the key sponsors of our event, the winners from Iron Tech 2008 were catapulted to carry on the very first MSI MOA event later in that same year.

Fast forwarding to 2013, we were here at MSI's grand finals of the Master Overclocking Arena (MOA) 2013 at Taipei (Taiwan) where 16 extreme overclockers emerged from regional qualifiers to join this hallowed battleground. It started off with the Classic Battle (covered on this page) and ended the following day with a Freestyle Battle (covered on the following page).

Opening the event was MSI's Corp. Executive Vice President and General Manager, DPS BU., Charles Chiang. He and the representatives from Intel, Corsair, Cooler Master, Plextor, and BenQ welcomed the participants for this year's MOA Grand Finals.

After the opening ceremony, a lucky draw was done to find out the order for the selection of components, which includes two motherboards, two graphics cards, two CPUs, memory kit, and SSD.

For a detailed list of components that were used for the first day of overclocking, visit this page.

For a complete list of those who qualified for this year's Worldwide Grand Finals, visit this page.

Day 1 - Classic Battle

Starting off the Master Overclocking Arena 2013 is the Classic Battle were participants used MOA-provided equipment along with their own overclocking gear (cooler, copper container, thermal bottles, etc.) and electronic equipment (multimeter and thermometer). With the theme for this year's MOA being "No Limits", LN2 cooling was allowed from the very start.

The participants were given three tasks for the first day. These tasks involved the use of Super PI 32M, CINEBENCH R11.5, and 3DMark Fire Strike benchmarks. Two hours was allotted to the first two phases (Super PI 32M and CINEBENCH R11.5) of the battle while three hours was given for the 3DMark Fire Strike phase of the event. The sixteen overclockers tweaked their systems and applied their own methods when it comes to cooling to achieve the highest possible clocks for the highest or fastest possible marks for each benchmark.

For this battle, a baseline score was generated for each benchmark and the contestants' overclocked scores were calculated to show the percentage of performance growth between these scores. The baseline score for each benchmark were as follows: Super PI 32M - 7min 3.441sec, CINEBENCH R11.5 - 8.93 points, and 3DMark Fire Strike - 9891 marks.

The final score for each participant is the weighted average of the benchmarks, 40% for Super PI 32M, 20% for CINEBENCH R11.5, and 40% for 3DMark Fire Strike.

Winners of the Classic Battle

After a grueling whole day of extreme overclocking, Ukraine's Tolsty took pole position while Indonesia's Lucky_n00b and Poland's Xtreme Addict took 2nd and 3rd place respectively. The competition was tight and intense as the each of them led by just a small margin.

Check the breakdown of scores below to have an idea how the larger weight of Super PI 32M and 3DMark Fire Strike had significant effects to the standings.

MSI MOA 2013 Freestyle Battle – Breaking World Records

The second and final day of MSI MOA 2013 is the Freestyle Battle. Compared to the Classic Battle, participants were given a total of nine (9) hours to break ten specific benchmark world records. The ten world records to be broken are as follows,

• Haswell CPU Frequency
• SuperPI 32M (Overall)
• XTU (Ivy Bridge-E)
• CINEBENCH R11.5 (4x CPU)
• CINEBENCH R11.5 (6x CPU)
• 3DMark Vantage Performance (Overall)
• N780 3DMark 11 Performance (1x GPU)
• N780 3DMark Fire Strike Extreme (1x GPU)
• HWBOT Unigine Heaven – Xtreme Preset (1x GPU)

Memory Clock (Overall)

These world records are to be broken using the following equipment,

• Motherboard: Any MSI Z87 or X79 chipset motherboard
• Graphics Card: Any MSI N600 series, N700 series, or Titan graphics card
• CPU: Any Intel Haswell or Ivy Bridge-E processor
• Memory: Any memory
• SSD: Plextor M5 Pro Xtreme (provided by MOA)
• Power Supply: Any power supply
• Operating System: Windows 7 Ultimate SP1 64-bit and Windows XP Professional SP3 (provided by MOA)

To start things off, a lucky draw similar to the first day was done. The only difference was what the participants got for the day. The participants were called in one by one to pick two Intel Core i7-4770K processors, a choice between an Intel Core i7-4930K or 4960X, and an MSI X79A-GD45 Plus. As for the graphics card and memory kit, the ones they got during the first day or their very own cards and kits were the ones they used.

A few hours in to the benchmarking process, Rbuass was the first one to break a world record. He broke the record for Unigine Heaven – Xtreme Preset. The previous record of 4,571.3 marks that was set by SniperOZ was matched by Rbuass’s 4,600.62 marks. Rbuass continued to run Unigine Heaven and upped his score multiple times and reached 4,697.82 marks as his best record. (Click here to check the record)

Soon after Rbuass broke the world record for Unigine Heaven, Vivi broke the CINEBENCH R11.5 (x4 CPU) world record. The previous world record was held by Smoke which had 13.84 points using an Intel Core i7-4770K at 6.1GHz. Vivi was able to beat this score by just a bit with his 13.85 points using the same processor model but at 6.3GHz. He continued benchmarking the same benchmark and was able to achieve 13.91 points. (Click here to check the record)

Before the day ended, oc_windforce managed to beat the record for Intel’s Extreme Tuning Utility (XTU) for Ivy Bridge-E. The record that was broken was that of steponz at 1,883 marks using an Intel Core i7-4930K rated at 6,059.8MHz. The Korean overclocker managed to knock steponz down with the use of an Intel Core i7-4960X with a frequency of 6047MHz. (Click here to check the record)

To cap things off after a whole day of extreme overclocking, MSI Vice President for the Motherboard Department Ted Hung and Corsair Regional Sales Director Tim Handley thanked the participants during the closing remarks.

Following the closing remarks, all the participants were given a certificate of recognition for joining the worldwide grand finals of MOA 2013. The one’s who were able to break world records – Korea’s oc_windforce, Brazil’s Rbuass, and South Africa’s Vivi – were awarded with cash prize as well.

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