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While on vacation over the last two weeks I had the chance to experience a rare event. Gigabyte, the computer component manufacturer I have been working with closely, invited me along with 15 other overclockers to test their upcoming P45 motherboards in Taiwan. I flew out of Atlanta on April 26th and landed at Taipei, Taiwan on the morning of April the 28th. Here’s what went down.

Asian Airlines > *

That’s a bold statement to make but I feel confident in making it. I flew Delta from Atlanta to Los Angeles and then Eva Airways from Los Angeles to Taiwan and I enjoyed the LA->Taiwan flight many times more than the ATL->LA flight. Never mind the fact that the flight was nearly 4 times longer, the service and accommodation’s on Eva Airways far surpassed the Delta flight. Even on the flight back where I slept for 8 of the 11 hours, I at least had the ability to lay down a decent amount and eat some delicious food all while aboard a plane.

The Lake Hotel

Gigabyte housed all the benchers in the same hotel near Lake Bitan. The hotel, named the Lake Hotel, sits near the banks of the Sindian River where it widens to become the Green Lake or Lake Bitan. Located on what I’d consider to be the outskirts of Taipei, the hotel offered a luxurious room to sleep in for the scant few hours of sleep I managed to grab. I believe of the three nights I was there I slept for roughly 12 hours as I was suffering from a 12 hour jet lag between Atlanta and Taipei.

Work

The main purpose of my stay in Taipei was testing upcoming P45 based motherboards. Gigabyte had their P45-DS3R, P45-DS4, and P45-DS5 available for us to test. We performed all our testing in a large conference room at the Gigabyte headquarters in Taipei. In addition to simply testing the boards, Gigabyte board and BIOS engineers were on call to answer our questions and ask questions themselves. While benching we discovered a couple of issues with the BIOS and stability but we swiftly located the problems and helped the engineers pinpoint solutions. I think while we were there we went through nearly a dozen BIOS revisions and I imagine before launch the BIOS will receive even more revisions to perfect it.

I call it work above but honestly this was more like play. We had 300 liters of liquid nitrogen and nearly 20kg of dry ice available to us. On reflection this was way too much cooling, perhaps if I had been benching GPUs and CPUs I would have been able to chew through 60 liters myself but with just my CPU I only used maybe 20 liters. This was my first time benching with liquid nitrogen so I was very careful until I spilled a cup all over my board and realized it wasn’t super lethal. I had a lot of fun benching with liquid nitrogen but all through the day I missed my cascade. With a cascade I simply hit a switch and it gets cold. With LN2 I had to constantly monitor the pot temperatures and feed it little splashes of nitrogen. I’ll take my humming compressors any day!

Fun!

Besides having 8 hours a day to bench, each night Gigabyte took us out to a unique restaurant around Taipei. The first night was traditional Taiwanese food coupled with lots of Taiwanese beer. Afterwards we went out to a bar very close to the hotel for drinks and introductions. This was a great way to introduce everyone as we all had a chance to talk about what we do while enjoying healthy amounts of beer. The second night was a “barbecue” restaurant that featured a hot coal grill built into the actual table. The food was delicious and it was a great way to converse while cooking your own food. This was followed by riding the subway into Taipei and hitting up a little bar with a pool table. The third night was spent near Taipei 101 in a posh restaurant followed immediately by a bar very close by at which we had the chance to act a fool. Each night was fantastic unfortunately I was so jet lagged that half the time I looked like a zombie.

Saying Goodbye

Sadly all good things have to come to an end. On the last day those of us with later flights toured downtown Taipei and visited Taipei 101. We had a great time enjoying the city but sadly at the end of the day I had to fly to California. I was honored to be able to travel to Taiwan and I hope that what I learned there will continue to be helpful to Gigabyte down the road. I can only hope to visit Taiwan again in the future, after having a taste I want more. The next time an opportunity like this presents itself you can bet I will fight tooth and nail for that spot. Once again thank you Gigabyte and I hope to see all those that I met in Taiwan again. Heck, I have to go back just to enjoy the bubble tea!