Interview: OC legend Vince "Kingpin" Lucido

Team PURE

BSN*:  You bench for Team PURE. What is the idea or inspiration behind Team PURE?
k|ngp|n:  It's been an idea I've been kicking around for a long time and I've been talking about it with some close friends for a long time. I almost did it a year ago but I decided not to. I didn't think it was the right time. I basically wanted to get together a group of people and basically show them how powerful a group of likeminded, determined individuals could be. It's sort of working out that way. It's pretty cool to see the guys helping each other out in our team forum and helping each other get the last point. Everybody's really dedicated. You know I'm from Xtreme Systems, I love Xtreme Systems, and I have absolutely nothing against that site. It's the best tech site ever. It is the best extreme tech site on the net, bar none. But their 3D Mark team was, it's like a huge 3D Mark team and there's a lot of people and not many people seem to contribute a lot. Or maybe there just not as into it [benchmarking] as I am, but I know I'm over the top. Most guys aren't like me. I basically wanted to form a team of guys that were like me and as passionate about benching as I am. It's not about selling containers; it's not about promoting my company, nothing like that. Definitely it's a representation of my company because it's a sponsored team. I help the guys out with stuff, if they need it. It's more their team than it is my team. Instead of benching for myself I want to help these guys out and show everybody else how badass of a team these guys can be.  

BSN*:  Is Team PURE an open team? Are there any prerequisites for membership?
k|ngp|n:  The team is closed. I closed it at twenty-three, twenty-four members. I closed because a lot of guys on other teams were pitching a fit about guys coming over to Team PURE. But these guys [Team PURE members] were e-mailing me saying their teams weren't passionate enough.  This is something that they've been waiting for.  I mean, how can you turn down somebody like that?  It wasn't about me stealing other team's members. I never did that. I never really approached anybody and anybody I did I said, look if it's an issue don't do it. I don't want to cause problems, for sure, I don't want guys hating on me just because I wanted to form my own bench team.  This is something I wanted to do, I even wanted to call it PURE.  I wanted to do this for at least a year and a half before some of these other teams were even formed. So I don't really feel that bad.  That's it you know? It's just a group of guys or girls…overclocking is changing there might be some girls who overclock believe it or not.

BSN*:  Would you say that overclocking/benchmarking is male dominated, at least for now?
k|ngp|n:  100%, for sure, it's definitely male dominated.

BSN*:  What are the biggest changes in overclocking over the past decade?
k|ngp|n:  I would say in extreme over clocking the BIOSes [basic input/output system] and motherboards and hardware in general actually have become more overclocking friendly. Some of these motherboards have a million features on them that are all about extreme overclocking. A year or two ago nobody supported it. And now, it's like there's all these overclocking options you don't have to do the old school crystal overclocking, you don't have to mess with the PLLs [phase lock loop]. It's cool, it makes it more palatable for the masses and I think it's good. It's cool to go to Microcenter and see an overclocking section.

BSN*:  There's been some controversy over using Engineering Sample [ES] or non-retail CPUs in overclocking competitions and on Hardware Bot [HWbot] submission. Can I get a comment from you on that?
k|ngp|n:  I don't think it's an issue in competitions because competitions are usually nothing more than marketing events for "x" company. They supply all the overclockers with their CPUs, whether they're ES or retail it doesn't matter. In that situation it's really irrelevant because they're getting [CPUs] samples from the same batch or group of CPUs. I think the issue is guys coming online and bragging about their results using ES CPUs and maybe some guys just are taking it the wrong way. Thinking, you know maybe you shouldn't brag or boast about having something that technically, far exceeds everything that's out there available out there in retail. That's not anything to brag about. That's really the problem is how some guys chose to handle their results. Some guys got pissed and I knew it was going to happen. But I don't have a problem using ES, I overclock everything. I don't really look at it as that [ES or retail CPU]. I just try to do the best with whatever is given to me, whatever I buy. I do buy hardware. Some people everything is given to me but it isn't. There are some things I have to buy. There's a limit; there's just not an endless supply of hardware.

BSN*:  Especially if you're going to break it, potentially anyway.
k|ngp|n:  I mean for as much as I bench, there's definitely not an endless supply of hardware. I mean, I kill stuff. When I'm benching really, really hard for weeks and weeks sometimes I kill a lot of stuff. It happens. On HWbot it's kind of silly to have ESs unless they're marked ES and there's some kind of disclaimer. There's really not a fair comparison to some guy who goes out to the store and buys hardware. Or maybe it's good; maybe he's handpicked a couple CPUs. That's part of it, finding the right hardware, the best hardware that runs great together. It's all part of it and you know? As far as HWbot is concerned, I don't think they should be allowed. I like what they're doing with the checkbox idea to tell if it's an ES CPU and it doesn't count for points. If you're not using to gain points or gain an advantage over somebody else, then there's really nothing to bitch about.

BSN*:  How do you feel about the potential of extreme overclocking to become a professional competition? Would this be a good thing?
k|ngp|n:  I don't think so. Overclocking is about sitting in your cave and working with the setup over a long time. Sometimes you have to go through multiple pieces of hardware, whether you like or not. Stuff burns up or it's not the right part. So you have to bench a lot. It's not a matter of just setting up the hardware in front of a camera and a bunch of people wearing shirts for the company that's marketing the event. So it's a nice photo op; that's not what overclocking is about. Overclocking is about working on a score for a long, long time until you've achieved your goal. To me that's what it's about. I wouldn't be opposed to some super long event. But it's not really possible to do it that way. They try and jam it all in one day.

BSN*:  What about the Formula One Overclocking Competition?
k|ngp|n:  As far as format goes, I love it. To have a whole month on a benchmark is absolutely perfect, because that's what you need. That's how you get the best scores. If a world record gets broken, that's how it's going to happen. Guys are going to work really, really hard and it's cool to see higher and higher scores every day, you know, with the leader boards. All the guys in this contest, I think have proven themselves, one way or another, that they're capable overclockers. This isn't just an overclocker's competition it's also a manufacturer's competition. I think that's what The Overclocker is trying to do, get manufacturers involved and to compete against each other. That's how we're going to grow this thing. That's what this is all about, which team, which manufacturer, which overclockers come through at the end. Each manufacturer excels in one or two of the benchmarks. I think they have it balanced properly. EVGA is really strong in Vantage but I'm not sure about some of the other ones. It's a pretty fair fight. ASUS has a really strong, powerful card for Vantage so I'm not sure why they're not officially in it. They definitely seem like they have what it takes hardware wise but they're not officially supporting it. They're the only manufacturer that isn't. This [competition] is what we need. This kind of thing is going to be huge because this might spur the manufacturers into trying to beat each other with better products. We all win in the end with something like that.

BSN*:  How do you feel about the future of extreme PC cooling? Has the market for your products been affected by the economy?
k|ngp|n:  My business is growing, it certainly seems to be growing but I think it would be a lot better if the economy wasn't so bad. It depends on what happens with cooling technology. There could be other forms of cooling in the future that aren't anything like this and I guess I'll have to adapt when that happens. But for now, it seems like it's good and it's growing. I'm looking forward to the future, the near future for sure. Right now overclocking seems to be coming out of its infancy stage. You've got everybody doing LN2, it's crazy. Before, nobody did LN2. When I first started doing it, it was a handful of guys. Now, it's like totally commonplace. You see pictures of guys with their wives and family members. It's going more mainstream. So it's cool.

BSN*: This is the most important question: AMD or Intel? I'm just joking, I won't make you answer that.
k|ngp|n: I'd answer it.

BSN*: Alright, AMD or Intel?
k|ngp|n: I'd probably say right now…awhile ago I would say Intel…but right now I'd say AMD.

BSN*: What is your impressionof AMD's comeback in terms of extreme overclocking. What has AMD doneright with Phenom II that didn't happen with Phenom I?
k|ngp|n: I'm so impressed with what they've done. It's amazing on what they've done with their processors can go that far [in terms of clockspeed] especially given the history of their processors. The Athlon 64 was one of my inspirations for my early buffered designs. They were AMD chips. All the AMD chips were coldbugged and you had to run them at these ridiculously warm temps and I needed a pot that could do that. But it's so awesome with these non coldbugged CPUs. That's what overclocking is all about. Well, it is about efficiency, how tight everything is running and your scores are good for the clocks. It's more about pushing it than anything else. It's about getting more clocks, which you can't deny these processors are nuts. To run them [the CPUs] at full LN2 temps and to have the privilege to run liquid helium, I can't thank AMD enough. It is insane; it was a dream of mine to do that. Just to see the temps go that low, to see the thing actually scaling, it's just nuts - the best feeling in the world. That is what overclocking is all about and it doesn't matter what the scores are. It's just really, really cool to be a part of that. I really like what AMD is doing. Now if Intel could somehow engineer the coldbug out of their processors. Maybe figure out what causes it, reverse engineer it to get it out of there. Then I would say the same thing [about Intel]. Right now, some of their top CPUs coldbug pretty bad so it can be very frustrating compared to Phenom II benching. 

BSN*: What are you benching currently?
k|ngp|n:  Right now, we're benching the F1 Vantage rig. So there's a Classified motherboard [BSN* review of EVGA X58 Classified 760], a Xeon 3540 processor, 2 GTX 295's, Corsair Dominator 2000's c7's, Silverstone 1500 watt PSU. Just one PSU for the whole rig man, it powers it. Quad SLI rig means just one thing - it's a badass rig.

BSN*:  Thank you for the interview, it was great talking with you. Best of luck to you and Kingpin Cooling. Talk to you later.
k|ngp|n:  No problem, talk to you later.