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A new record in Custom PC benchmarks – 2,401
Barron Greenback uses a volt-modded P5K3 Deluxe, a liquid nitrogen pot and a 5.35GHz CPU to reach the top of our leaderboard
While most of us would be quite happy with a score above 1,200 in our Media Benchmarks 2007 suite, some CPC readers like to push their hardware beyond the realms of reason in the carefree name of benchmarking. This is precisely what Richard Bunford, also known as Danger Mouse’s arch nemesis Barron_Greenback, did this weekend, achieving an incredible overall benchmark result of 2,401.
This required some serious commitment to getting the most out of his hardware. Not only did Bunford use a combination of a Gigabyte i-RAM and a Western Digital Raptor hard drive, but he also had his Asus P5K3 Deluxe volt modded to allow a higher vcore on his CPU and MCH. After pushing the CPU vcore up to 1.785V on his 3GHz Core 2 Extreme QX9650, he then managed to overclock the CPU to 5.35GHz.
Of course, this would have been impossible using conventional cooling methods, so Bunford brought in the liquid nitrogen (LN2), using an LN2 pot made by acclaimed Polish extreme overclocker, Duniek. The system was accompanied by 2GB of Patriot Viper DDR3 memory, running at 1.8GHz with 7-7-7-20 timings, as well as a bog-standard install of the 32-bit version of Windows XP.
The end results are astonishing, with the overclocked quad-core CPU racking up a score of 3,361 in our Handbrake H.264 video encoding test. Meanwhile the brute force of the overclock also made light work of our single-threaded GIMP image-editing test, with a score of 2,116.
Barron_Greenback, who is also a regular at UK extreme benchers Benchtec, has now overtaken previous benchmark leader Maverik-SG1 on the benchmarks leaderboard, and it’s going to take some serious work to beat him now. However, the Barron tells us that he has another three i-RAMs waiting in the wings for a silicon RAID 0 configuration for his next benchmarking session, which could improve the score even further. We can’t wait to see the results! Check out the pictures of the benching rig below.
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Whats going on with the ram on a pci card? Im sure I have seem them before but what do they do? Well done in the test scores! awsome rig setup, should have brought the Q9650 rather than the Q9450...
Comment by Bassdominator at 9:20pm 27th June 2008
What a top result. I love overclocking, i have only managed just over 1500 points in the benchmarking table. Congrats, i need to try harder. Keep it up.
Comment by dickiedum at 10:55am 27th June 2008
It doesn't taste as nice as milk - trust me I've tried it :)
Comment by pbryanw at 7:11pm 25th June 2008
if i had the money i prolly wud try more vmods all my old stuff gets vmoded till i kill it or get pissed and think mmm wonder wot 3v's do BANG SMOKE FIZZ.. never new ln2 was that much wonder if BOC want to sponser me LOL.. KEEP IT UP THE UK SCENE NEEDS MORE TOP PEEPS LIKE YOU
Comment by damafia at 2:37am 25th June 2008
If you find enjoyment trying to reach beyond a current level - fine. When you break through what you thought of as a barrier and raise the level - even better. It's after your acheivement that you sit back and think about what you have learned, and what new line of thinking this might provoke. This is also known as research and why we don't still live in caves. So congrats guys, keep exploring.
Comment by sadler25 at 7:55pm 24th June 2008
First off, thanks must goto all the guys from BenchTecUK for all their support and encouragement. It may only be a list of numbers, but de-throning Maverik-SG1 - one of the UK's top overclockers, really puts a smile on my face! All ment to be taken as lighthearted banter on these forums. Also, with regard to LN2 prices - It's not as cheap as u might think, what I used was 25L which costs over £100 inc vat and delivery, so defo no an everyday thing!
Comment by barron_greenback at 7:29pm 24th June 2008
Probably because liquid nitrogen doesn't taste as nice as milk.
Comment by pbryanw at 7:09pm 24th June 2008
I was indeed just pointing out a useless fact but it's nice to know experients like this don't cost an absolute fortune so they are not completely pointless - but imagine how crispy your cornflakes would be! Yes I am joking, for the love of god yes! ;)
Comment by combatus at 12:58pm 24th June 2008
Could not have been dethroned by anyone more deserved - great result and I am sure more records will tumble with this set-up. Great, great set-up, great job and congrats man.
Comment by maverik007 at 12:22pm 24th June 2008
It's crazy to do this to hardware just to get to the top of a list of names on custompc's website. But saying that would i like to be number one on the list, of course i would!!!!!!
Comment by erratum1 at 8:51am 24th June 2008
Can I just say that I appreciate the discussion on here without the usual childish insults and put downs. It's about time there were some adult opinions freely discussed... lol
Comment by PokerMuppet at 12:11am 24th June 2008
I don't think I am missing the point. Using your example, car tuning. Tuning the car to go faster or to be able to perform tricks... etc, still has an end result. But extreme overclocking to me is more like taking the engine out of the body of the car and then tuning the engine to hit an extreme rev limit. I totally get and understand the benefit of overclocking a system for real world benefits. But going to these lengths, using PC componants in a way that isn't actually used as a PC, but merely to gain a high score? I would be much more impressed if someone modded and tweaked an overall system to benefit real world usage... if Barron_Greenback, with this system could play Crysis at the resolution of 1920x1200 with an average fps of 100 with all settings maxxed out, I would be looking to see what aspects of his mods I could implement to increase performance of my own system. But doing all this just for a high score... that is what is beyond me.
Comment by PokerMuppet at 11:45pm 23rd June 2008
To me extreme overclocking is all about finding a processor's maximum capacity. For a better anology than yougotkicked used - it's almost like a person tuning their car to make it faster, even though in reality the benifts of this can never be exploited, the sense of achievement and accomplishment are still felt anyway. A common human behaviour; even to a possession we consider to be good already, is to take it far granted as it is and start thinking, can it be better? or, can it go faster? it's what makes us human. The people doing extreme overclocking aren't in the position to make any tangible changes in order to achieve this 'high', so they overclock the chip by any means possible, thus making it faster and one's natural human behaviour is suppressed (for a while). Btw' well done Barron nice overclock!
Comment by TKSnatch at 9:27pm 23rd June 2008
Go Barron! Nice. shame to have knocked mav off the topspot. its margo, din't realise i had a login here! @ people thinking there is no rules - there is loads of rules for benchmarking, just not rules that would make sense to you if you didnt bench :P
Comment by megamau at 9:13pm 23rd June 2008
Oh, and just to add. You should be careful of the reasoning of -'he had fun, that is what he acheived. if someone enjoys doing this sort of thing, why not take it to the extreme?'- Just because someone likes doing something doesn't always justify the action. There are boundaries. This is in no way in regards to this article of overclocking, just a general response to your reasoning and justification of it.
Comment by PokerMuppet at 8:45pm 23rd June 2008
I understand what you are saying but I disagree with your comparison. If you wish to use football (I refuse to use the word 'soc...') then this is not an active competitive sport that brings people together. It's more like someone in their bedroom/frontroom doing kick-ups or headers and then just posting their best score. You also make the point of unified kits and rules. There are no kits involved in this, there are no rules or restrictions (hence the use of liquid nitrogen). It's purely based on who can get the highest specific benchmark score which doesn't even translate in to real world performance. I bet he still can't play Crysis (lol). On a personal level I have no issue with it, people do have some strange hobbies. I get overclocking and in most cases these days with a fairly recent CPU, it's just common sense for a performance boost. But that has a real world benefit that you notice.... as I said, I don't get it.
Comment by PokerMuppet at 8:40pm 23rd June 2008
If you weren't joking with your comment, the first person whose hand fell off when they spilt the Liquid Nitrogen all over the place would sue Tesco or any other seller. That's why.
Comment by KHenry_07 at 6:22pm 23rd June 2008
that is one crazy setup, and the idea of three I-RAM's in raid 0 is enough to make me drool. i would love to do something like that, not for a while thou... @PokerMuppet, he had fun, that is what he acheived. if someone enjoys doing this sort of thing, why not take it to the extreme? why are there competitive sports players? there are people who enjoy playing, and people who enjoy watching, so major events are organized to watch a game, the fanbase for overclocking is a fiar bit smaller than that of, say, soccer, but the principle is the same, they enjoy doing it, and we enjoy watching it (that came out wrong...), and frankly it would be rather boring to watch someone sit at their desk and reboot the system over and over again as the case fans spin away, so we lost the desk, replaced it with a workbench, ditched the case, brought in some extravagant methods of cooling and made it extreme. would soccer be fun to watch if there were no clear rules, people played in their jeans and T-shirts, the feild was someones back yard, and people only had a loose idea of the score? i think not.
Comment by yougotkicked at 6:11pm 23rd June 2008
I understand and can appreciate the skill needed and applied to set up and acheive such high overclocking. I just don't understand the point. This is not experimenting for the benefit of general use by the public and cannot even be used as a PC as the componants have to be treated in Lab conditions due to the dangerous substances used. This just seems to be more about bragging rights which no matter how good your brain is, you cannot partake in such contests unless you have a silly wallet to back it up. Congratulations to Barron_Greenback for the overclock, but what really have you acheived?
Comment by PokerMuppet at 5:53pm 23rd June 2008
Awesome overclock. I saw a program recently about quantum physics and during the section on super conductors it was mentioned that liquid nitrogen is as cheap as milk. Why the hell don't Tesco's sell it!
Comment by combatus at 3:14pm 23rd June 2008
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