Computex 2014 is on next week, make sure you drop by and visit GIGABYTE

GIGABYTE has some interesting products to show off at Computex next week. Make sure you come over or watch the coverage here and elsewhere.

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Most people these days read reviews before deciding which PC component to buy from their favorite retailer. Tell us about your "go to" review sites...

Newegg shows off extreme overclocking live

Check out Newegg’s video on extreme overclocking featuring the GIGABYTE Z97X-SOC Force motherboard.

Z97X-Gaming 3 ready for action

Goldfries.com got their GIGABYTE Z97X-Gaming 3 ready for action, you got yours yet? Click on the image to find out more about our new gaming boards

Kids react to old computers! This is brilliant, check it out hahah

OCAU Z97 comp is over, winners announced

I wanted to congratulate all the competition winners from the recent Z97 OC comp on OCAU forum (Overclockers Australia). GIGABYTE sponsored the competition with all top 3 prizes being Z97X-SOC Force and a participation prize (Z87X-OC).

This competition was based on 3 tests:

• Stage 1 Catzilla - 576P - CCC (crap card challenge) GT610 test
• Stage 2 Superpi 8M - 4GHz Cap 
• Stage 3 3dmark01 - CCC (crap card challenge) GT610

The competition was not that straight forward. Contestants had to learn how to solder modifications on a really cheap graphics card (Nvidia GT610) and see if they can extract more MHz out of the GPU via mods and various cooling techniques. The modified card could be used on two different stages and it proved to be more than a handful. In the end, Robbo2 was the overall winner with the first place in Catzilla, while Newlife managed to snag the 3DMark01 round and bullants took the 8M superpi but has not contested the rest of the stages. GT610 GPUs operate at 810Mhz stock core and 600MHz memory. There guys were able to run them at 1400MHz core and over 900MHz memory for good measure!

• Robbo2 @ 26Points - First Place Winner
• Newlife @ 18 Points - Second Place Winner
• T8y @ 16 Points - Third Place Winner

Participation prize (Z87X-OC) went to a new Aussie rookie overclocker Paulie_AU who put a fantastic effort and is one of our future overclocking hopes with some great performances in HWBOT Rookie Rumble cups. Good luck Paulie on the next stage of that competition!

I’ll leave you with some memorable images from the competition itself which you can check out at OCAU forum. 

Big shout-out to Matt (zeropluszero) for his hard work in organising and managing this competition. Great ambassador for the OCAU HWBOT team!

Gaming tournaments getting close to the US$10 million prize money mark, Olympics next!

New era of sports tournaments is upon us and it’s growing exponentially. I know this sounds unbelievable but I can see how Olympics will have a gaming tournament element in not too distant a future.

Alright, I’ve said it. E-Sport will one day be just as big and popular as just about any other sport we currently have at Olympics. I can see the 40+ year old’s cringing now and blurting out one liners, “when I was a kid, we used to…”. Those days are long gone! I was in the transitional phase so I should know a thing or two. My generation is the first of its kind to grow up with gaming platforms such as Spectrum, Commodore64, Amiga, Atari, PCs and many others. I am showing my age here but it’s worth reminiscing about those all-nighters me and my friends put in playing all sorts of games. Competing in the virtual world and getting a taste for something new, something exciting that no one has experienced in our history.

Physical sports have been around for a very long time and technology has opened our minds to new possibilities, new ways to compete and have new lifestyles. Attitudes are changing from generation to generation as most of us from the first “gamer” generation have grown up now and have our own kids. Our kids now have taken gaming to a whole new level and it is literally becoming a professional sport with pro teams, team managers, sponsors, huge prize pools and big audiences. Gamers are becoming celebrities in their own right and they are the role models to a lot of kids. The technology at the same time is also much more accessible from simple iPods and Android phones to consoles and PCs. Some of the “old” gamers are now team managers or sponsors or supporting fathers and mothers of these crazy kids. Before long we’ll be the grandparents and will tune in to watch some some Korean dude slaying everyone in Dota 5 LOL

Our friends from MEKA.Tt eSPORTS page put up a stunning graph showing where the tournament prize money has sky rocketed to currently and it is only going to get bigger! It’s pretty clear that Dota2 and League of Legends are the games predominantly driving this push and what they both have in common is they are easily accessible, inexpensive and can be played on very basic hardware due to such strong technological advances of recent time.

This is not a new idea that I am discussing here but it is one that has opened up to me in the last couple of years as a real possibility for someone who is in the industry and is sponsoring professional gaming teams and can see such a large amount of young generations investing serious amounts of time into this hobby. I ended up coming across a petition website today which has close to 100K signatures for gaming to becoming part of Olympics. I guess there are another 100K likeminded individuals out there who share my views and I didn’t even sign that petition! Phew!

There are still a lot of hurdles that present themselves for future gamers. One is internet infrastructure which is a very important aspect for some types of games. I remember speaking to the best Counter Strike and other FPS (First Person Shooter) gamers in Australia and getting told that ping times (essentially internet/game response times) affect a lot how well you can play online against other people. It was also evident that some of the best players were in healthy internet infrastructure countries such as USA, Northen Europe (Sweden, Finland, etc) or Korea. This is one area which will drastically improve over the next decade as many countries are now investing in this type of infrastructure. Places such as USA (Google fiber), UK, Germany, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, China, Indonesia, etc, all have plans in near future to improve in this area.

TV coverage is another major change that will probably evolve over time. Every time I travel to Taiwan for work, I am surprised to see video gaming channels dedicated to competitive gaming because Australia is still so far behind the times when it comes to that. You would expect otherwise as we certainly don’t lack gamers here. It’s just not reached that level yet I think. It will and that will be the major break through.

The real question is will gaming be included in Olympics by 2024 or before that, enjoy your weekend guys and happy fragging!

Case modding done right!

Check out this video from Made By Kier featuring the new GIGABYTE Gaming logo using CNC. Nice work!

GIGABYTE Z97 overclocking guide by sin0822

Sin0822 does a lot of forum write ups from OC guides to indepth looks at board spec when new gen stuff comes out. There are always interesting tidbits in there to have a look at. In this particular instance, sin0822 has done a full out overclocking guide with the new Gigabyte Z97X-SOC Force motherboard and also compares some differences to the old Z87X-OC. There is also a video covering overclocking and some main features.

Check out the OC guide at your favourite forum here: Xtreme Systems, Overclock.net, Overclockers Australia and Tweaktown Forums.

G.Skill brings another OC show to Computex 2014

Last year G.Skill put a crazy overclocking show for Computex crowds which was very popular, had lots of giveaways and records were broken left right and centre.

GIGABYTE is joining the show this year as well with HiCookie, Sofos1990 and dinos22 on the stand. This year there is also a US$10,000 overclocking tournament happening on the stand as well, should be good fun. Here are a couple of videos from this year and last year’s show wrap up, check it out!

Best custom PC mod by a PC shop, check it out because it might just be THE one you are after!

I often see PC shops have a good crack at making cool custom made PCs but this one from Scorptec in Australia is seriously the best looking PC I’ve seen in a long time. How awesome does this green beast look? Good to see a nice G1 Sniper Z87 and GIGABYTE GTX780 GHz edition in the spec, very nice guys!

Give these guys some love on Facebook over here!

Plextor M.2 drive has some pretty crazy speeds, upgrade to M.2 SSD yet?

Have you guys tried the new M.2 drives yet on the GIGABYTE Z97 motherboards? They are crazy fast!

Plextor sent us their Plextor M6e M.2 PCI-E 256GB Solid state Hard Drive (PX-G256M6e) to use in one of our demo PCs at Intel show and we are pretty impressed with the impressive speeds the little solid state drive gives. Check out the ATTO test attached!

The 20 most bizarre and innovative motherboards: 1999 - 2010

Hardware.info guys from UK put up an interesting article in which they examine some of the most bizarre motherboards that have ever reached their lab. Some are amazing engineering feats for the time and others are just wild. I am a bit of a veteran and remember all of these boards and must say some of them really bring back the nostalgia of the good old days.

GIGABYTE features with some wacky cooling during the 975 chipset days as well as the blue board that started it all for us (journey away from the dull brown boards).

Let’s also not forget the ever so cool Gigabyte GA-8N-SLI Royal (2005): with upgradable power delivery module. Here is what the magazine thought about that:

A motherboard with expandable CPU power supply. In 2005, there was such a thing, in the form of Gigabyte the Nvidia nForce 4 SLI Intel Edition-based GA-8N-SLI Royal. It was one of the first SLI motherboards for Intel processors. Behind the CPU socket there's a connector where you can an expansion card with extra phases for the CPU power supply. The DPS module (Dual Power System) was supposed to improve overclocking results. This idea never really gained traction, except we just saw ASUS' brand-new Maximus VI Impact Mini-ITX board with the exact same thing due to a lack of space. It also has a vertical CPB with the CPU power supply. 

GIGABYTE hardware installation guide e-book, check it out!

We’ve got a PC DIY guidebook 2013-2014 which goes into detail how to build or assemble your own PC. This guide should apply to the latest 9 series chipset if you are just looking at putting a new PC on the latest chipset. The guide has a pretty simple layout, it goes over the choice of components and how to put it together as well as how to use some special features on GIGABYTE boards.

Click on the image to go to the GIGABYTE “How to build your own PC” guide e-book

Gigabyte Z97X-SOC Force Extreme OC bios

Hey guys, here is the extreme OC bios for Gigabyte Z97X-SOC Force motherboards we used in most of our recent benching.

Z97X-SOC Force X04 bios link: https://www.mediafire.com/?v23ea3jffju22er

I also got some requests recently for the Gigabyte X58A-UD9 GOOC bios, here it is as well!
X58A-UD9 GOOC bios link: https://www.mediafire.com/?ejcuuy9b64yi138

WARNING: These bioses are specifically designed for liquid nitrogen/dry ice overclocking. Do not flash these bioses for normal air or water cooling PCs!

STAY FROSTY GENTS!

Hardware Asylum podcast #40 is live

The guys over at Hardware Asylum have gone live with the latest podcast, #40. Computex is one of the main topics. Click on the image to go to the podcast:

Show Notes

A look ahead at Computex 2014
Computex is one of the largest technology trade shows in the world and happens to be Dennis's summertime destination.  His trips to Computex started over 10 years ago and has been a great make new contacts and witness firsthand what new bits of computer hardware will be available for the Christmas shopping season.  Over the years the Computex show has grown quite a bit, not only in size but with elaborate booths and cool overclocking demonstrations.

This year Dennis is looking forward to the GSKill OC World Cup which will likely replace the normal overclocking demonstrations at the GSKill booth.  During the week there will likely be two on two overclocking competitions with the finals being held on the Friday of the show.  An open qualifier was hosted on HWBot with the top 6 getting an open invite to the semi-finals and finals. 

Back in 2009 Dennis hosted a small get together in Taiwan to celebrate the 10 year anniversary of NInjalane.com and as luck would have it, HWBOT is celebrating their 10 year anniversary this year after Computex  By the looks of it they are planning a fun filled weekend of overclocking and general mayhem. 

Related Links:
G.Skill OC World Cup 2014 Qualifier

9 Series Launch in Korea and Japan

Last week GIGABYTE held a few launch events in Asia for its new 9 Series motherboards One took place in Seoul and the other in Tokyo. Here are some pictures from these events.