Happy New Year!

As 2011 draws to a close, all of the Editors of Overclockers.com (Brett (splat), Jeremy (hokiealumnus), Joe (Earthdog), Matt B (I.M.O.G.), Matt G (MatNo5ss), Matt R (mdcomp) and I (David)) would like to wish all of our readers, writers and friends a very happy new year! Overclockers.com is almost exclusively staffed by volunteers (with one exception) and we rely on volunteer writers to keep the stream of original reviews and articles flowing.

Looking Back

The past year has been interesting for overclockers. Intel released their Sandy Bridge platform, with impressive benchmarks but slightly formulaic overclocking, followed by a motherboard recall due to faulty SATA ports. Sandy Bridge was followed by the six-core monster that is Sandy Bridge-E. AMD  had mixed fortunes; they released their new Bulldozer architecture, which broke clockspeed records, exceeding clockspeeds of 8.4 GHz, but still failing to impress performance-wise. Our own Matt B managed to hit 8 GHz. The release of the Llano series of APUs was far more successful (while remaining overclockable), representing the first serious on-chip graphics solution to hit the market. Futuremark released PC Mark 7 and Overclockix was revived. Core Temp (written by forum member ‘The Coolest’ finally hit version 1.0).

It was also a busy year for the site, as we launched the first Overclockers Choice awards, resulting in awards for some of the best hardware manufacturers out there, and ran events at Microcenter stores for the first time. The second benchmarking party took place this June, in Philadelphia, and plans are being made to keep this event a regular occurrence. Our guides to benchmarking and our buyers guide continued to be updated, guiding new (and old!) members through the processes of benchmarking and PC buying. Matt B. represented Overclockers.com at CES in 2011. We were pleased to welcome Joe (Earthdog) and Matt G. (MatNo5ss) onto the editorial team, in recognition of their hard work and dedication.

The year 2011 saw us publish a large number of reviews including:

• 7 CPU reviews (AMD Phenom II X4 840, AMD Phenom II X4 975, AMD Phenom II X4 980, AMD A8-3850 APU, AMD FX-8150, Intel i7-2600K, Intel i7-3960X)
• 18 graphics card reviews (AMD 5830, AMD HD 6570, AMD HD 6750, AMD HD 6870 PCS+, AMD HD 6790, AMD HD 6870 IceQ, AMD HD 6950, AMD HD 6950 PCS++, AMD HD 6950 in crossfire, AMD HD 6950 and 6970 IceQ, AMD HD 6950 1 GB, AMD HD 6970 with MIX, AMD HD 6990, NVIDIA GT240, NVIDIA 560Ti, NVIDIA X580, NVIDIA GTX580 DirectCu, NVIDIA GTX580 Matrix)
• 15 motherboard reviews (ASRock P67 Extreme 6, Mvix Minix 6150SE-UC3, Asus P8P67 WS, Asus P8P67 Pro, Gigabyte P67A-UD7, Biostar TP67XE, ASRock Z68 Extreme 4, Gigabyte Z68X-UD3H-B3, Asus Crosshair V Formula, Gigabyte G1.Sniper2, Gigabyte GA-Z68A-D3-B3, MSI Z68A GD65, ASRock 990FX Extreme 4, Gigabyte 990FXA-UD7,  Asus Rampage IV Extreme)
• 16 case reviews (nMediaPC 1080P, Fractal Design Define R3, Supermicro SC846A-R-1200B, Lian Li PC-V1020, In Win Dragon Rider, Silverstone GD05B, NZXT H2, Lian Li PC-A04, Lian Li PC-Z060, BitFenix Shinobi, NZXT Tempest 410, Fractal Design Arc,  Lancool PC-K9, Lian Li PC-Q25, Antec Eleven Hundred, BitFenix Merc Alpha)
• 3 RAM reviews (GSkill RipjawsX, VisionTek DDR3-1600, GSkill Ripjaws Z)
• 15 cooler reviews (Promilatech Samual 17, Cooler Master Hyper 212 Plus, Evercool Transformer 3, Evercool Transformer 4, NZXT HAVIK 140, Zalman CNPS9900, Swiftech MCP35X, Arctic Freezer 13, Spire TherMax Eclipse II, Spire Gemini Rev. 2, Corsair Hydro H80, Thermalright MUX-120, Thermalright HR-02 Macho, Arctic Accelero Xtreme Plus, Promilatech Genesis); and
• 3 SSD reviews (OCZ Revodrive X2, OCZ Vertex 3, Crucial M4).
• Thanks to Bobnova, we also started publishing PSU reviews (Antec HCP-850W, NZXT HALE82 850W).

There were also big changes for some of our Overclockers forum members: Matt B, one of the lead editors, secured a job working for INet Interactive, who own the site. Trents, DaveHCYJ, nzaneb, ghost_recon88, SpeeDj, Navig, rge, RGone, Stratus_ss and Janus67 were promoted to Senior Member, while RollingThunder was promoted to Super Moderator. It was a busy year for mbentley (yet another Matt!) who was promoted to moderator then Administrator in quick succession.

Looking Forward

While it’s been a busy year in 2011, the year 2012 holds a lot for Overclockers.com. In January we will send several of our staff to CES in Las Vegas, which should allow us to further establish our position as one of the best computing hobbyist and overclocking sites on the internet. Our contacts with manufacturers grow firmer each year so that we can cover the latest and most important hardware releases on the date of release.

However, none of this would be possible without you, the reader. We’d like to thank you again for supporting the site, and for giving us a reason to do what we do. We all hope you had a very pleasant Christmas (feel free to brag in the comments about what exciting hardware you managed to get your hands on) and have a happy and successful 2012.

As the Scottish saying goes: “lang may yer lum reek”.

–David