HardwareZone Iron Tech 2008: Malaysia Semi-Finals Round

This article is also contributed by By Kevin Boey and Navin Danapal from the HWM Malaysia team.

Introduction

As a new sort of overclocking event pitting skills, knowledge, speed and strategy to find the best PC technology enthusiast, the name Iron Tech might not seem as familiar to people in the OC fraternity, but to the participants of the inaugural HardwareZone Iron Tech regional event in Malaysia, it was a chance to show other their skills in the field. Sponsored by Micro-Star International (MSI), the event held on 13th September 2008 was also supported by various other hardware and software partners as per on the Iron Tech microsite . All contestants were given identical hardware and software from the same batch and were randomly handed out to ensure everyone had a level playing field.

The following Components were handed out at the event:-

• MSI P45 Platinum Motherboard
• MSI N9800GT-T2D512 Graphics Card
• Intel Core 2 Duo E7200 Processor
• Kingston HyperX 1GHz CL5 dual-channel (2GB)
• Seagate Barracuda 7200RPM SATA2 Hard Disk Drive
• LG DVD Writer
• AcBel iPower660 Power Supply Unit
• Thermaltake Blue Orb FX CPU cooler
• AOC 17-inch LCD Monitor
• Thermaltake Casing Fans

Held over a weekend, the tournament was wrapped up on the single day Saturday. Contestants had to complete all three competition segments to pass the judging process for the top two spots that would be eligible for the Grand Finals in Singapore.

Firstly, the assembly or rigging process was contested (phase 1), and bonus points were given to the top three fastest times of the day. Second will be followed by the sandbox or testing phase, where they will install the OS, drivers, utilities and tweak/test their rigs to the best possible overclocked settings within an hour. The difficulty here is that contestants have no idea of the full set of components prior to the competition, so they'll really have to act fast and rely on their skills and knowledge. Again, the fastest 3 wins extra points. Lastly would be the final phase of benchmarking, where the best results win more points, with everyone getting points - unless they fail the benchmarks. They were also given surprise benchmarks thrown in at the last minute!

Of course let's not forget about our brave contestants for this competition, who made it past our initial selection phase and they were:

• Alex Tan Yeat Fai (aka sup3rfly), an IT technical consultant
• Bryan Michael SM Yeo, a student and part-time photographer
• Looi Hou Tee, a consultant
• Ng Teng Liang (aka coolice), a student
• Reggie Chong Siew Meng (aka lolhalol), a student
• Wong Peng Kit (aka storm88), a product/business development manager

The Rigging Challenge - Phase 1

lolhalol (Reggie Chong) took top honors in this segment with a build time of 3 minutes and 48 seconds! He was followed by storm88 (Stephen Wong) with 3 minutes and 59 seconds, and third place was Sup3rfly (Tan Yeat Fai) with 4 minutes and 26 seconds. The others took 6 to 7 minutes to finish. Great completion times indeed. For the readers who're trying to cross-compare these figures with those from other regions, do bear in mind that different hardware is used in each competition and they come in various packaging formats that affect the overall time to completion in this rigging phase.

The Sandbox Mode Challenge - Phase 2

In the 'sandbox' (second) phase of the tournament, each participant was required to install x86 (32-bit) Windows Vista (Ultimate, Business, Home Premium or Home Basic at their discretion), together with the required drivers and choice of benchmarks and tools to begin overclocking and find their sweet spot for the final (third) phase.

While the initial time limit was an hour, the country competition manager granted participants a 45-minute extension, due to popular demand of more tweaking time. By the time the final extension was given, everyone was almost ready for the grueling phase that was coming up - benchmarking! In this sandbox mode, lolhalol (Reggie) once again took top spot with 1 hour 39 minutes, followed by coolice (Ng Teng Liang) with a narrow margin of 1 hour and 40 minutes. Third place was Looi (Looi Hou Tee) with another close shave at 1 hour and 41 minutes. The others finished by 2 hours.

The Benchmark Challenge - Phase 3

Next was the final phase of the event, the benchmarking, where they would use their overclocked settings in the setup/sandbox phase to see if their rigs could pass the benchmarks with flying colors, and the highest scores would win most points. Any crashes, freezes, BSOD (Blue Screen of Death) or failures would mean they have failed this test.

They were given the known PCMark 2005 1.2 Professional benchmark and two other mystery benchmarks which would be revealed to them later to catch them off-guard and see if their tweaked systems could handle surprises thrown at them.

 

Coolice (Teng Liang) won top spot with a massive 10,916 PCMarks, followed by Bryan Michael Yeo with 10,067 and Sup3rfly (Yeat Fai) with 10,062. They were followed by lolhalol with 9,270 and storm88 (Stephen) with 8,745. Looi (Hou Tee) was the only one whose PCMark froze midway, disqualifying him from earning any points.

The Surprise Benchmarks Challenge - Phase 3 (continued)

Next came the shocker when the secret DVDs were handed to each of them to discover they would have to deal with Super Pi and a Media Encoding test. Groans were heard as they began to wonder if their tweaked systems could handle these tests as they were expecting benchmarks like 3DMark instead. However, some did suspect Super Pi so it was no surprise that all the rigs ran Super Pi fine.

Coolice once again took top spot by crunching the Pi number fastest to 1 million decimal places in 12.651 seconds while second place fell to Sup3rfly with 12.714 seconds. Third place went to Looi with 12.823 seconds and fourth went to lolhalol with 12.932 seconds. Fifth was by storm88 with 13.291 seconds and sixth was Bryan with 13.447 seconds.

The acid test came with the Media Encoding benchmark, which required all of them to convert a 1GB DVD MPEG video file (in Malaysia, we used the Elephant's Dream animation) into DivX format via XMPEG 5.03 and DivX 6.8.4. After the settings were done with guidance from the marshals, all six began the same time. Everything ran smoothly during the conversion until one by one the rigs began to fail, leaving only Sup3rfly the reigning champion as his rig pushed on to complete the encoding process! The others were seen baffled at how only one of them could continue running this intense and grueling benchmark which crippled everyone else. Everyone gathered around Sup3rfly's rig in hopes his rig would crumble under the strain but no such luck as he became the only winner in this last and final test.

Results Tabulation and Winners

After the calculation of the scores, it was revealed that Coolice won the tournament, thanks to a consistent performance of both PCMark and Super Pi, garnering him the highest points, while Sup3rfly took second place, thanks to his amazing rig which pushed on in the encoding test while all others failed, and being second place in Super Pi. With this conclusion, both Coolice and Sup3rfly became the winning champs who will represent Malaysia at the Grand Finals in Singapore next month for the chance to win the coveted title of the regional Iron Tech champion!

 

Coolice walked home with an MSI P35 Diamond (DDR3) board, MSI GeForce9600GT 512MB GDDR3 PCIe2 DX10 graphic card, Kingston 2GB DDR3 1.6GHz dual-channel memory, Seagate Barracuda 250GB SATA 7200RPM drive and an Iron Tech T-Shirt, while Sup3rfly took home an MSI P35 Neo 2 board, and similar graphic card, memory, HDD, and T-Shirt.

The others received an MSI sling bag, MSI tumbler, MSI goodie bag, and an Iron Tech T-Shirt each. We would like to thank MSI for gladly sponsoring the hardware and prizes, as well as Kingston and Seagate for the prizes and hardware. To all the other sponsors for the hardware and software, we thank them for making this Iron Tech a success! See you at the Grand Finals!

Our articles may contain affiliate links. If you buy through these links, we may earn a small commission.