I learned to overclock in the 2000's because I wasn't into PC's enough to drop a lot money into a rig so just used old cheap ones instead. In 2010 when I finally decided to build one from scratch overclocking performance was paramount importance because I was skint due to the recession. I built an Athlon II x2 on a mid range mobo with a poverty spec HD 4550 GPU and upgraded from there to the i7 8700K setup I've owned for 18 months+.
I discovered HwBot while reading online magazine The Overclocker in 2013 when I was recovering from a hernia operation and thinking about upgrading my AMD FX system. It gave life to my old parts for benching but I didn't buy anything purely for that purpose. Then in the winter of 15 - 16 I bought a big noctua air cooler and started benching my older parts outside in my transit, I also bought a few CPU's for my AMD boards too and started to have more fun. I rarely bench in summer but when Ryzen came out in 17 I was desperate to upgrade my Haswell setup. It was such a disappointment and the 8 core actually performed worst in gaming scenarios on a ROG board than my i5 so I got Kaby Lake with unlocked i7 & i3's instead and began buying old GPU's to get more serious.
Around this time I went to my first bench meet and was helped out a lot by Jumper & Gavbon, I also met a good lad called Lee who lent me his LN2 pot (which I bought) and George Storm & Dragon Soup where there too. Going for a world record speed on my old Sabertooth board with my trusty old FX 6300 was the high point of my benching career.
I made my own chiller's but have not really benched properly on LN2 since and don't really see enough pleasure in doing it on my own. I've been out of overclocking for 18 months but am interested in doing a bit again. I think when the league suddenly changed and I lost loads of points and position it killed it for me. However the rank for the year as well as overall career rank peaks my interest as I think I can do ok with what I have. There are no overclockers that I know of down here near Cambridge but if there were meets going on I would get a buzz out of trying to hit record benches on LN2 again. I love the FX platform for OC and have the ROG formula and an 8370 to play with. I'd also love watching other people going for the top with their kit and helping them if possible.
I don't think it matters what platform you are using if you are having fun and in a group together you can get some knowledge and experience of all of them. A lot is to do with setting up and tweaking the OS as well as the hardware so there's lots to teach each other.
I think the benchmarks used are part of what puts gamer's off. They want to know how many FPS they will get in a certain game with certain hardware OC'd. I have spent time setting hardware up to run specific games well all the time rather than just pure flat out OC's. I can get machines to play games well that are known for performing poorly and on the occasions I could be bothered to video it got loads of views and questions. I'd also set the OC parameters that are attainable for a user with cheaper hardware & cooling so that it was useful for everyone. Just an idea but maybe show casing popular games like PUBG (might not be popular now) that require a lot of juice with lower end hardware might get people involved. I can actually game for quite a while with no problems overclocked using my ghetto chiller setup. I can get my GPU to run fairly cool and quiet by optimising the fans etc. Non overclockers are as I once was after maximum performance for minimum spend and hassle. If we can't find a way to integrate that into HwBot then like Mr Scott says it will end up on the forums and YouTube with wannabe overclockers giving bad advice causing people to over overvolt and burn out their hardware. Which is a shame when there is so much knowledge & talent right here.
It certainly looks like there is a lot less going on than there was 18 months ago before I went away.