Galax GeForce RTX 3090 HOF Cranks 3GHz+ Overclocked In Record-Breaking Benchmark Runs
NVIDIA's flagship Ampere GPU for consumers is already a beastly card, as we detailed in our GeForce RTX 3090 review. Overclocking can squeeze out even more performance, and taking that notion to the extreme, enthusiasts have been setting frequency and benchmark records by stripping the Galax GeForce RTX 3090 HOF (Hall of Fame) edition and bathing it in liquid nitrogen.
Galax's recently released three HOF versions of the GeForce RTX 3090, including the 'regular' HOF edition, an HOF Premium variant, and the top dog, the HOF Limited Edition. All three sport a custom cooler with three cooling fans (102mm on the sides and 92mm in the middle), while the Premium and Limited Edition models up the ante with a bundled 4.3-inch display (480x272). The design is similar overall to its previous generation GeForce RTX 2080 Ti HOF cards.
The Limited Edition variant is intended for a select few—it comes with a support stick and gloves to handle the kind of extreme cooling that is necessary to break world records. And that is what overclockers are doing right now. Two overclockers have already managed to hit the 3GHz mark, and these HOF cards have set more than a dozen world records so far, as outlined above.
Obviously these are not metrics that the typical user will ever see, because liquid nitrogen is a rather high maintenance cooling solution. Nevertheless, it is interesting to see what kind of performance can be obtained from NVIDIA's flagship GPU when stretching beyond the bounds of air and liquid cooling solutions that accompany consumer models.
So far overclocker "OGS" from team Elite League owns bragging rights with regards to clockspeed, having pushed a GeForce RTX 3090 HOF to 3,015MHz. Other parts that comprised the testbed included an ASUS ROG Maximus XII Apex motherboard (Z490), Intel Core i9-10900K processor, and 2GB of DDR4 RAM.
"First 3+ GHz 3090 done by Galax. The way its meant to be overclocked. :) HOF is back. Thanks to Galax, ASUS, Crucial and Thermal Grizzly for the support," OGS said.
Another member of Elite League, "RAUF," joined the 3GHz club as well by hitting 3,000MHz on the nose. Also somewhat impressive, RAUF claims this was done on an "unbinned, random card." That really amounts to luck of the draw—Galax only selects the best of the best for its HOF series, and probably further binned the ones it sent out to overclockers, but RAUF had success with the first one he selected rather than doing his own binning.
