OCCT Stability Test Celebrates 20 Years: Celebrates with Thanks to the Community and a Giveaway

OCCT is celebrating its 20 years in the IT toolkit and enthusiast game and the creator wants to extend his thanks with a special message and giveaway.

I’m happy to have been able to be in touch with Adrien, the maker of OCCT, and I wish him all the best.

The full text from OCCT is below:

2003 : WHEN IT ALL STARTED

OCCT started as a project when I was an exchange student in Oklahoma, USA, back in 2003. Everything began following a conversation on ICQ about verifying overclocking builds sent to a database. This led me to implement the first CPU test of OCCT, and building a GUI around it. Despite being only launched on forums, OCCT was quickly spread through the overclocking community, and climbed in popularity very quickly.

2004 – 2009 : YOU PLAY FOR FUN, I DEV FOR FUN

I returned back to France, living in Lille, then Douai, and I started working as a System administrator. OCCT became a hobby – something I would work on during evenings. Some people were doing raids on World of Warcraft – I was coding and releasing OCCT in my free time. I started pumping more features in OCCT : Linpack, test reports, the 3D standard test… the latter got me into the headlines when it revealed a design flaw in AMD’s flagship GPU at the time : Radeon HD4870. This led AMD to issue a response: they called OCCT a “Power virus,” as if it was a malicious program. I still hear that today.

2009 – 2020 : PERSONAL LIFE KICKING IN, BUT STILL THERE FOR THE APP

I met my wife, bought a house, got my first daughter, then the twins, all while maintaining the app in my free time. I worked in the ECM / Document management industry as a consultant then. Looking at the release cycles, the biggest pauses in OCCT’s development was when my kids were born. Especially with twins! Trying to balance work, personal life, and OCCT was tough. I was usually developing when in public transports or during evenings.

2021 – OCCT AS A FULL TIME JOB

In my last, non-OCCT related job as a lead dev, my colleagues were stunned to learn I was the guy behind OCCT. I didn’t make a fuss about it. They led me to rewrite the tool from the ground up. I did so, releasing OCCT v5, and gained an even larger audience. Then Covid hit, and I ultimately got the opportunity of leaving my job – I started OCCT as a full-time job. I went from v5 to v11, and I had a total BLAST working on my own project, being able to promote my own values of listening to user feedback and trying stuff that may not lead anywhere, but potentially can.

2023 – 20 YEARS OF OCCT

And here we are, with OCCT reaching 5.5 million downloads per year in 2022, with a real community behind it. I’m the first one amazed at the current situation I’m in. I’m so lucky to have the support of so many people, ideas flowing in, and being able to make a living for my family on what has been my passion for 23 years!