Overclocking the $30,000 Computer! - 7 Gamers 1 CPU Part 3
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2016-05-06
·
2,862 words · ~14 min read
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okay so we built seven Gamers one CPU a
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$30,000 computer running unraid as an operating system and using it and some
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really cool open- Source virtualization technology to run seven discret gaming
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virtual machines at once all fully capable of like high performance gaming
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so that was cool $30,000 computer two thumbs up very awesome 10 out of 10 IGN
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Etc then what we did was we showed it off at CES okay so we got that out of
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the way the world was able to see it in person then after that we brought it
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back to the office converted our entire conference room here into a land Center
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and had an inter office gaming competition complete with tan being
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terrible at video games yes the very worst one here except he did kill me
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once and you can check that video out here so you might be asking yourself why
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is lion is still milking this damn thing what could possibly be left to do and
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the answer is of course we're going to overclock
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it Intel brings ddr4 to the mainstream
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with their core i7 6700 K and core i5
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6600k processors check out the link in the video description to learn more so
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the first step anytime you do any Performance Tuning is to get a baseline
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measurement because if you don't then you have no idea if the dials you're
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turning are doing anything at all so I'm
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going to introduce you guys to the benchmarks that we're going to be running cinebench R15 is going to tell
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us what we need to know about CPU performance we are going to be using
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Crystal dis Mark to tell us what we need to know about our SSD array performance
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IID to 64 cash and memory Benchmark is going to be interesting especially once
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we run it on all machines at once more on that later and we're going to be
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using fire strike extreme to see how our
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gpus are doing some of the stuff that's open is just tempor monitoring and stuff
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like that and finally we're going to be having a look using our handy dandy wall
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power meter dudad here at what kind of power consumption we see when we're
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hitting the whole system at once but let's start with a single VM Baseline
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with all the other ones sitting idle and I'll show you guys on screen hopefully
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right now how I plan to go through this entire test suite and show you guys the
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scores so here we go we're getting a cin bench score of around 600 we're getting
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Crystal dis Mark scores in the uh area of sort of you know two uh gigabytes per
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second reads and around 400 megabytes per second rights to our array our
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memory scores we're seeing about 5 GB
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per second so on average reads and wrs to our quad Channel ddr4 memory and our
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3D Mark fir strike extreme score is 6148
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so the next test and this one I will
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need some helping hands for is going to be to hit all 7 VMS at once for our
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Baseline score to see what happens when they have to actually share resources
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which especially for things like memory it's not very pleasant sometimes okay so
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I've assembled a crack Squad of helpers whose intelligence and physical
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coordination uh lead me to believe that it is probable nay likely are both kind
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of the same thing that they will be able to perform the skills that I set out for
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them today task actually not skills don't worry too much about that basically what you guys have to do is
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all press a button at the same time oh that's that's not not going to work okay
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Colton you're fired again thank you okay
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so two of you will have to press two
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buttons at once at the same time Johnny
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you got this okay Johnny you're on machines one and two yvon you're on
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machine three Colton you're here Nick you're here and I'll go over there and I
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will tell you which button to press and you will all press it at the same time
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you're going to click the button that says Run next to CPU in the cinebench
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R15 program has everyone got your cursor positioned yes okay so I'm going to say
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don't do it yet I guess teran's not here I don't have to give instructions like
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that okay it 3 2 1
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go okay so you can see here with our seven instances of cinebench running we
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are actually pinning the entire CPU here
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at 100% usage that was exactly our intent and will tell us without any
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extra a turbo boost for only activating a couple of cores at a time how all of
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our VMS can run in a worst case scenario where they are sharing as much resources
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as possible okay so we're scoring around 500 points which is about 100 lower than
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we did when we were just running it on a single VM fascinating okay everyone
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ready 3 2 1 go okay so this is
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interesting on the read side of things really there wasn't much an effect from
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the numbers I've looked at so far but on the right side of things some of our VMS
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were so starved for disc time that they
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actually timed out on their sequential right Benchmark very very interesting
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this isn't something we're going to retest after we overclock because we can't overclock storage but uh I just
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wanted to have this as just a for my information sort of number Ida 64 cash
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and memory Benchmark it's a gray window this one I'm really interested in
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because desktops really don't care much
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about their memory bandwidth these days I mean dual Channel quad Channel DDR3
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ddr4 it's all fast enough but if you're trying to hit
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something with s VMS at once I'm
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expecting the performance to be affected somewhat it's this is really interesting
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so you can actually see the systems are running the benchmarks at different
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speeds NX VM over here so this is player
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number five is actually still running
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the memory benchmarks or at least at least it was before I uh and mine is
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almost done running all of the level one and level two cash benchmarks so it does
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seem like their ability to even run these tests is affected by the fact that
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we're hitting them all at once here we go last one position your cursor over
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Run 3 2 1 fire strike
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extreme thank you for that clicking like random times like okay I guess that's it
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3 two one f with extreme okay you guys are dismissed for
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now thank you I'll call you back once I overclock the system so check this out
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this is what our uh memory and cach
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benchmarking looked like this is what our benchmarking looks
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like in fir strike extreme so with seven
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instances of it running we're actually getting up near 100% utilization closer
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to like 90 here
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okay very interesting so 3D Mark scores not affected much by our CPU and RAM
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sharing because 3D Mark is mostly dependent on the graphics card and each
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VM has its own R9 Nano so all that's
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left now to do is to record our score so we can create some average score graphs
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for you guys and establish our Baseline so that we can find out if our
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overclocking helps now most Server Motherboard makers
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do not have any overclocking features but this is a Seuss and this is
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technically a WS or workstation board so
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in the AI tweaker menu we've got their
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AI overclock tuner which has two settings neither of which I have played
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with at all manual and OC
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tune so I'm just going to go let's OC
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tune it level three and find out if the system works
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there's a very good chance this not going to work I have not tested did
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this at
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all so this is actually a really bizarre Quirk of this system it starts up
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here oh oh if it turns on at all it
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starts up here oh wow yeah that's not
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posting let's clear simos and then
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uh we will go from there
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okay something to see if that does
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anything oh that was it I need this bar
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to get past like
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here oh that wasn't it like I I
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oh I know what it is because we did a
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seimos clear that bio setting that I need the 4G
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decoding setting is not enabled so we
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are not able to boot with all of these PCI
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devices so maybe by
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unplugging all the video cards I will be able to have them not
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get picked up and I will be able to get into the
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BIOS this is how you remove the graphics
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cards from Seven Gamers one
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CPU there we go okay they're out so
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now can try again okay so that was
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it the problem with having a system that doesn't Post in its default
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configuration okay so let's try manual this time um
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my understanding is that on these types
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of boards you can expect somewhere in
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the neighborhood of like5 MHz so just
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for LS let's try 105 and see what
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happens I'm guessing not a whole lot and
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that's what I
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got okay then okay so after four
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attempts we're back in the BIOS our setting did stick but obviously didn't
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work so let's try a more conservative 103 which would be a 3% overclock okay
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so because we have no video card we have to use VNC to get into our VM and find
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out if everything is working as intended
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well that is not reporting correctly at
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all so that's a thing so we're going to have
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to run a benchmark and find out okay I
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tell you VMS really screw up hard
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Hardware reporting both CPU
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Z and Ida 64 are reporting numbers that
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would indicate that our CPU is not overclocked but cinebench is reporting
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that it is overclocked and even though these scores are not directly comparable
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because we don't even have any of the other VMS booted we're getting 900 in
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cinebench which would indicate that everything's working properly at the
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very least so now we can proceed to the next step and put our graphics cards
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back back in okay all our video cards are showing up which basically means we
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can start the array and fire up our
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VMS did it just do that or did you do that hey all
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right say that again so now it is time to overclock our video cards now the R9
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Nano isn't uh really known to be much of
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an overclocker uh but we're going to go
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ahead and increase the power limit as high as it goes and we're going to
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increase our core clock to like I don't know 1050 and see what happens hey
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Graphics 1050 MHz just like that I guess
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water cooling helps a little bit with the whole overclocking the R9 Nano
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situation very nice what the hell
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afterburner is detecting all seven gpus
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that shouldn't be possible cuz we've passed them through
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to separate VMS it's also detecting wow
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afterburner doesn't know what's going on so it's got them all being used while
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we're running The Benchmark so it knows there's seven but it doesn't know that
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it's only using one of them and it's just cloning this core clock graph which
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actually has the card not reaching uh
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not reaching 1,000 mahz anyway
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so I guess all that's left now then is to run some benchmarks and find out if
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we got any benefit for our trouble everyone ready overclocked cin bench
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Benchmark what damn it Nick if ID wanted someone to just start The Benchmark
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early I'd have asked Taran to help please work please
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work please work no no what no just kidding player
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whatever it is so it's 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 and
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then you put OC score in a bench but my
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keyboard says six don't worry about that
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okay actually that does seem to be
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faster good yeah 40 points better on
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mine 30 points everyone ready ready 3 two 1 run
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it please don't
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crash oh M oh
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why it's okay give it
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time power draw 1,600 Watts so did
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everything but Nicks launch yeah okay so
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after much struggling we managed to achieve whopping overclocks of anywhere
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from zero to 70
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mahz on our graphics cards you building
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fire strike extreme scores in the very
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very close to what we were already getting range leading us to believe that this
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whole thing was a terrible idea but I'm really glad that you guys got to come
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