Last week saw the conclusion of Round #52 of the Rookie Rumble contest series and a first win for encrypted11, our first ever winner to hail from Singapore. German Rookie CSN7 finds himself in runner up spot again while Canada’s MeinFehr makes it into third place. Let’s take a look at the hardware and scoring that took place in a little detail:

Rookie Rumble #52: January 23 - February 15th, 2018 - Firstly however, let me give you a quick reminder about what the Rookie Rumble series is all about. The central idea is to give Rookie-class HWBOT members a place where they can compete against each other on a level playing field. For this reason Enthusiast, Extreme and Elite Overclockers are not eligible to compete. Round #52 of the contest was set up with three distinct stages featuring these three benchmarks; Intel XTU, Super 32M and Geekbench 3 (Single Core). Let’s examine each stage in isolation, starting of course with the ever popular XTU benchmark and Stage 1.

Stage 1: Intel XTU

The Intel XTU benchmark is without doubt the most popular benchmark with Rookie members on HWBOT which is why it is no surprise to see 367 overclockers competing here in Stage 1. Its popularity is due largely to the fact that many newcomers experience overclocking for the first time through using the XTU benchmark. Plus it has a simplified and integrated system tweaking UI and a very simple submission process. Unlike previous contests, in Stage 1 of Round #52 we find that scores remain undivided by core-count, a fact that heavily favors the latest high-core count, Skylake-X processors.

The win in Stage 1 was,was taken by CSN7 (Germany) who used a custom water-cooled Intel Core i9 7920X processor that he pushed to a very impressive 4,980MHz, which is +71.72% beyond stock settings. His rig (pictured below) also featured an ASUS ROG Rampage VI Apex motherboard and a GeForce GTX 1080 Ti card. The winning score was 4,272 marks, which is quite a away ahead from second placed stafel (US) with 4,040 marks using a Core i9 7940X clocked at 4,560MHz (+47.10%). Third place belongs to HailHappen with 3,681 marks using a moderately more affordable Core i9 7900X clocked at 4,630MHz (+40.30%).

Read the full roundup article for Round #52 of the Rookie Rumble series here on OC-ESPORTS.