Welcome, my name's Splave, or Allen Golibersuch, and I am a professional overclocker. You may have read some of my previous articles on Tom's Hardware, or spotted me in a YouTube video or two. In this column, I will delve into extreme overclocking and muse about what it's like to run your own bespoke system integrator business. But first of all, if you're not acquainted with who I am or what I do, here's an introduction.
For me, overclocking started as just a hobby, but a fairly serious one. I would jet across the world to events like Computex and other live events, winning or placing across overclocking competitions. Unfortunately, not many places or people were willing to pay folks to overclock hardware. Shocking, I know. After some experimentation with launching my own bespoke PC, I knew that I didn't ever want to just sell normal PCs. I wanted to make performance computers that are better than what's out there for a similar price, where my overclocking talents could be used as an added benefit, not merely a pricing burden.
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That's when a company I had a long-time relationship with approached me, and asked if they could take a percentage share of ownership and invest in launching my own brand of PCs. It all initially started as a very boutique operation, but eventually rolled over into a full-on system integrator, which is where I am today. Do you know how many Fractal Design cases you can fit into a garage? Asking for a friend.
Anyway, at this point, building and tinkering with PCs isn't just my hobby, or my work, it's my love. I hope you enjoy the forthcoming columns on Tom's Hardware Premium, where I get a chance to stretch my legs and wax lyrical about the things I love.
For the inaugural edition of Splave's Cave, I pick apart a very special graphics card, the Asus ROG Astral RTX 5090. Yes, the 5090 came out months ago, and yes, there is a gold version, which I sadly do not own. But while the GPU I'm using isn't made of real gold, it's capable of capturing world-record gold. Here's how I set a 3DMark Port Royal World Record. Don't catch your fingers on that silicon, because it's about to get cold.
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While I hate to be late to the party, a lot of work goes into overclocking top-tier hardware. Luckily, Asus has crafted an incredibly performant graphics card, with excellent R&D and overclocking departments that work hard on providing workarounds for the protections that any GPU might have. Yeah, those protections, the ones that make sure that the cards don't go boom or catch fire. We're finally in a place where those protections have extended far enough that we can pull out some wild performance from these GPUs at sub-ambient temperatures.
But, there is one thing: You can't try this specific technique at home. I am using a special, non-public BIOS for the GPU that offers a much higher power limit than the standard one would allow. I want to be fully transparent about this, and I'm sorry, but if you want to acquire the BIOS, it's not mine to give out. With that in mind, I know what I am doing, and I am fully prepared to smoke an incredibly expensive graphics card.
(Image credit: Tom's Hardware)
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