We broke the news few month ago that the MSI MOA will run again in 2014 and it is now real for the qualification process ! Go qualify now it’s open !

MSI officially kicks off the qualifying rounds of this year’s MSI Master Overclocking Arena (MOA), the global overclocking competition reaching its seventh annual event that has set a class of global overclocking masters. A true attraction for the most skilled overclockers to come and compete at the overclocking battleground. MSI shapes the start of this extreme event of the worldwide online qualifiers together with the world-class overclocking community website HWBOT.org on July 1st, 2014.

MSI Master Overclocking Arena 2014 Qualification process

The Qualifier competition is separated into A and B Class. Only A Class branched into AM, EMEA and APAC regions, moreover, split USA in eastern and western conference. On the contrary, B class sets its own stage and open for worldwide contestants without divided in any region. Each group has different competition durations, rules and benchmarks. Every overclocker can only chose one of group to participate in. The best 18 online qualifier contestants will be invited to the MOA 2014 Grand Finals, with an opportunity to compete with the most extreme hardware gear in the world and win plentiful prizes.

Everything will be held online on HWBOT, you can check the official MSI MOA 2014 @ HWBOT Competition Page. Like last year, the qualification process will see two class with different kind of hardware. Choose wisely as you can compete in only one Class at a time.

Class A :

Class A is intended to select the best overclockers around the world, the hardware is powerful and skills required are indeed high but something anyone in the top 100 in the OC League or Pro OC can compete.

America (AM) ONLINE QUALIFIER

Start: July 1st, 00:00 GMT+0
End: July 31th, 20:00 GMT+0

There is 4 seats open for this qualification round, with a subtilty that alow USA to have 2 contestant qualified, one for each conference : East and West. The general rule still apply of one overclocker per country maximum can qualify.

Europe & Middle East Asia (EMEA) ONLINE QUALIFIER

Start: July 15th, 00:00 GMT+0
End: August 15th, 20:00 GMT+0

A total of 6 seats are up to grab in this qualifier, get ready, get ln2 and bench HARD !

Asia Pacific and Africa Collection (APAC) ONLINE QUALIFIER

Start: August 1th, 00:00 GMT+0
End: August 31th, 20:00 GMT+0

Five plane tickets to the finals are to be awarded in this qualifier, with the general rule that only one overclocker per country can qualify.

You will have to prove yourself in SuperPi 32M, 3DMark03 and Unigine Heaven benchmarks, a good mix of frequency, tweaking and capability to run 3D benchmarks on cold.

To compete in class A you will need an MSI Z97 motherboard and use a retail desktop CPU and a single GPU MSI graphic card from the R9 Series. The external power circuit are not allowed, but that is not a big limitation as the R9 mostly don’t need it for the benchmarks that are selected.

I can already see the R9 290X lightning being widely use, especially with the last announcement from Pepinor@ng/ViVI to avoid the blackscreen benching under extreme cold.

There is a total of 15 seats to be awarded for Class A with a limit of one overclocker per country, so play wisely and compete as much as you can !

 Class B :

The class B let the chance to three (3) overclockers worldwide to still qualify for what is the longest running overclocking competition. The general rule of one overclocker per country still apply within this qualifier round.

• Start: July 1st, 00:00 GMT+0
• End: August 31th, 20:00 GMT+0
• Stages SuperPI 32M and Cinebench close August 15th, 20:00 GMT+0
• Stages XTU and 3DMark03 close August 23rd, 20:00 GMT+0
• Stage 3DMark Fire Strike closes August 31st, 20:00 GMT+0

Instead of focusing on the high-end hardware MSI made a clever choice in running this “Show your potential” kind of qualification process on more accessible hardware. To compete in Class B you will need an Intel G3258 (Intel Pentium anniversary Edition) on any MSI z87 or z97 Motherboard paired with a GTX 750. What is actually great is the external power circuit are allowed so we will probably see a few GTX750 modified with external VRM to boost the performances to the max.

As all the online contest you must use the official background with the screenshot being complete with all details and of course a picture of your rig. You can check out the Official MSI MOA 2014 Competition page on HWBOT for the complete updated rules.

Good luck for the qualifier and Keep Pushing It !