Round 1 of the most expansive and comprehensive overclocking contest of 2018 is about to begin. The Road to Pro Challenger Division series consists of eight separate hardware divisions where all overclockers can find the ideal place to compete regardless of ability, experience or budget. The idea is to to promote inclusiveness within the overclocking community and grow overclocking as an organized and competitive hobby. This also includes the Pro OC Championship, a contest designed to attract Elite and Pro overclockers with access to the best hardware you can lay your hands on.

As with previous years the 2018 series will consist of three Rounds with Round 1 running from January 1st to March 31st. Each round of the Road to Pro season involves five uniquely devised stages with benchmarks choices chosen to best fit specific hardware limitations. Let’s take a look at the challenges we have lined up for you in Round 1 of the 2018 series.

Road to Pro 2018: Round 1 Overview

Each Division in the Road to Pro Series is centered on a specific category of hardware to make sure that all tastes and budgets are catered for. Here’s an overview of the hardware categories for each Division and the benchmarks that will make up each stage for Round 1.

Pro OC 2018 Round 1

The Pro OC division is all about the best overclockers in the world pushing the best hardware available, which in 2018, can mean some very expensive components. For most combatants it will be all about pushing high-core-count Skylake-X CPUs and NVIDIA Titan series graphics cards (single GPU only).

Hardware: Intel HEDT (Sockets LGA2011, LGA2011-3, LGA2066) plus AMD TR4 (Socket SP3r2). Any Single GPU.

Stage 1: SuperPi 32M

Stage 2: GPUPI 1B

Stage 3: 3DMark Time Spy

Stage 4: GPUPI for CPU 1B

Stage 5: Cinebench R15

Find the Pro OC, Round 1 contest page here.

Read the full introduction article for Round 1 of the Road to Pro Challenger Series here on OC-EPSORTS.