*Trying not to get too aggressive here*
Ok, first off overclocking is pushing past the standard default speed of a piece of hardware. That much we should all know, here is the next part... How far can you push it? To some people enjoying competition entails playing computer games, racing cars, ping pong, curling, go fish, nuclear arms race, and competitive eating. So what if I were to tell you that there are people who like computer hardware and overclocking, you would agree I think. Next I would tell you that 2 people want to challenge each other to see who can get their computer hardware to run benchmarks the fastest - game, 3d, computational, system, cpu speed, ram speed, ram bandwith, network, and on and on... There are various types of these that with the internet people have become more competitive and want to compete globally ( go to HWBot.org and read, absorb knowledge, learn ). This is what has happened here, it is people trying to go the fastest in ____ with _____ . That simple, nothing more than that. Other than it takes time, effort, money, dead hardware, patience, time, time, and more patience to do ( not to mention skill). To dismiss that is commonplace but its hard to tell from a press release. If someone sets a record with some hardware that from your company it would be a wasted opportunity to get some press about that. Hence why you see this now and again.
For benchers the systems used are not in cases and used for daily tasks. Think of it like cars - you have your miata that you drive to the flower shop daily, then you have the SCCA miatas that kick ass on the weekends on race tracks... Two different uses yet it is the same car. or we could go with the school bus... You may drive the short bus like your driving Ms Daisy, but what about Billy Bob who bought himself a short bus and is dropping in a jet engine ( on the track day he sets a track record but he blew himself to $*%# when he couldn't stop). The parallels are made, you don't drive a jet engine school bus for the city.
The CPUz validation benchmark is one of many different benchmarks, it is to see how fast the processor can go (read: not stable, able to play games, teaching in geography, being the world's most interesting CPU). Commonly called suicide runs, this is what it is going all out to get that speed and set that mark.
You can definitely go to HWBot.org and learn more about the global scale of this, and maybe talk to benching members or TPU's HWBot team while you are at it.
People do it because they enjoy it, its as simple as that really.
With that said I will end this, even without correcting stuff I saw in posts (which I so want to do :/ ). Though I actually had fun writing this so take it or not I am just dropping this here, knowing that sometimes you can't get through to people. But I can try and here it is.
