For the record, I’ve become a complete hardware geek.

It started out last December when I built my first gaming rig and it culminated last week with overclocking and liquid nitrogen.

Think you need a quad-core CPU for an extreme gaming PC with impressive 3DMark Vantage numbers and gaming performance?  See for yourself by watching the video of how I overclocked and hyper-cooled an SLI® gaming rig using two of our latest and greatest GPUs—GeForce® GTX 280—an nForce® 790i Ultra SLI motherboard, and a sub-$200 CPU. Since I don’t have solid copper coldplates and liquid nitrogen underneath my kitchen sink—and I’m sure you don’t either!—I made an ultra-fun trip to the NVIDIA® labs for the hard-to-come-by but necessary ingredients and safety gear.

Since I’m sure you’ll ask what was in the system, here are the need-to-know specs:

• 2× NVIDIA GeForce GTX 280 graphics cards running in SLI
• nForce 790i Ultra SLI motherboard
• Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 CPU
• 4 GB SLI-ready Corsair DDR3 memory
• PC Power and Cooling TurboCool 1200W power supply
• Windows Vista 32-bit operating system

The standard clocks on a GeForce GTX 280 are 601 MHz core and 1,296 MHz shader, but I pushed them to 727 MHz and 1,458 MHz, respectively.  I also managed to get the GPUs cooled to a chilly -102.5 °C!

My results may not be as high as the Kingpin’s world-records, but they’re not too shabby!  Given that I had a lot of extra help and equipment, I will leave the record-breaking to the FutureMark Hall of Fame professionals.

Often times I get asked the question if NVIDIA dabbles in the seedy underground world of extreme overclocking using advanced cooling techniques. 

Ok I'm kidding, extreme overclocking is not seedy at all.  In fact, its a terrific way to show your enthusiasm for your NVIDIA products and see how much you can push your PC.  I compare it a lot to adding a nitro tank to your car.  Many of our enthusiasts are always looking for new ways to cool their PC and get their NVIDIA system listed in the FutureMark Hall of Fame., like Vince "k|ingp|n" Lucido.

In fact, my favorite extreme overclocking video of all time has to be the AMD Duron exploding video.

So just in case anyone didn't believe it, yes we do like to dabble in overclocking and here's a picture from one of our labs :)

Oh, how I wish I had more time to both game and blog.  Based on the poll, I started COD4 a couple weekends ago, but got side-tracked by a few things - work, travel, life, and most detrimental to my progress in COD4 - Guitar Hero III on my Wii.  For some reason, once that plastic guitar is slung over my shoulder, my addictive personality kicks in and I can’t seem to put it down.  While I managed to beat Lou and moved onto medium on Wii this weekend, I’m still plodding along in COD4. 

While you FPS pros conquer COD4 in a couple hours, it’s taking me much, much longer.  As a matter of fact, I thought I was reaching the end of the game last night when I found Al-Asad and watched him get shot (!), only to morph into Price in his pre-Captain years in the next sequence. So I decided it was time to check out the IGN Game Guide and realized I’m only a third of the way through the game!  Now here I am maneuvering through Chernobyl radiation in my woolly mammoth suit, getting mutilated by dogs at every corner.  Awesome!

With so many choices in hardware products and endless ways to upgrade your PC, I wonder if overclocking is really needed today. After all, you can usually find an off-the-shelf GPU that will give you the performance you need. I have few friends that have overclocked their systems and are very proud about their performance, and yet I question its purpose.

I remember in the mid 90s people overclocked their CPUs to extend their lifespan and more importantly to avoid having to buy a brand new CPU. Heat became an issue, however, and many dollars were spent on auxiliary cooling systems, negating a lot of the savings.

I am just curious…Why do you overclock your rig? Is it for gaming? Or is it just because you can?