During CES (Consumer Electronics Show), which took place between January 6 and 9, 2011 in Las Vegas, MSI promoted its big overclocking competition, the MOA (Master Overclocking Arena) 2011 - Americas Finals. The prize for the winning team: a trip to the grand finals in Taiwan, plus USD 1,500 in cash.

The top ten teams of the Americas had been previously selected via online competitions and headed to Las Vegas in order to fight for the grand prize. Hardware Secrets was there to check out the machines and their "pilots".

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Figure 1: The competitors

Each team received from the organizers a set of components that were provided at the event and some that were provided earlier, such as the motherboard and video card. All teams received exactly the same components, making the competition fair.

Competitors could adjust the equipment according to their needs, but it was not allowed to change the BIOS of the motherboards or video cards. It was also not allowed to use any hardware or software not supplied by MSI for the occasion, including hard drive, optical drives and flash drives. Each team could take its own overclocking equipment (coolers, etc.) and tools (multimeter, thermometer, etc.).

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Figure 2: Each team was responsible for their own cooling techniques