Gigabyte, Patriot, Zalman, Holiday Contests!
Happy holidays from Zalman, Gigabyte and Patriot!
Update: We have our winners!
Thank you all for sharing your wonderful memories with us, it was very difficult to choose winners! If you submitted a story, please be sure to check your Tomshardware Forum PM inbox to see if you won! Happy New Year and thank you for all of your continuing support!
In light of the holidays to come, we teamed up with our friends at Zalman, Gigabyte and Patriot to bring a big giveaway contest to our loyal fans. Many of you have complained about our contests being strictly US based and believe me we have been listening. This contest is open worldwide so join in on the festivities and enter for a chance at some awesome prizes!
Since we would love to get to know our fans a little better, we'd like for you to share with us one of your favorite personal memories of the holidays whether it is a comical, heartwarming, embarrassing... anything works! Be creative!
Our favorite 3 stories will be receiving one of these three amazing gifts for the holidays:
1. Gigabyte GA-890FXA-UD5 AM3 Motherboard
2. Patriot Memory Viper Xtreme Series DDR3 4GB 2000MHz Enhanced Latency Kit
3. Zalman CNPS9900MAX Red CPU Cooler
In addition, we will be giving out 11 more prizes to random contestants!
1x Zalman NC2000 Notebook Cooler (Black)
1x Zalman ZM-NSP100 USB Clip-on Notebook Speakers (Black)
3x Zalman ZM-RS6F USB Headphones
3x Zalman FG1000 Gun Mouse
3x Patriot Memory 16GB Rage USB Drive
The rules of the contest are simple, all you have to do is "like" our pages on facebook and tell us your story in the comments of this article.
Tom's Hardware Facebook Page
Tom's Guide Facebook Page
Zalman Facebook Page
Gigabyte Facebook Page
Patriot Facebook Page
We will be announcing the winner in two weeks on New Years Eve so don't wait too long to submit your story!

But I can tell you a story...
Tis was xmas morning of 2008. We had cusons and other family memebers presents as we started unwrapping. While most of my gifts are what I am used to getting every year *sweaters, food, socks, ect* this small one from my brother was just a red wrapped box. No bigger then my hand. I opened it up and it had a neweggg gift card. I hugged him and he suggested to come to tomshardware for help choosing a graphics card with it. And have been here ever since.
It was Christmas 2002 and i woke up at about 6AM, i then woke up the rest of my family because i was young!
"Santa" had left us some rather big presents and i was especially excited!
I opened up the biggest one i could find, and i was so excited because the box had a silver shine and white border which looked a LOT like something i had wanted in a long time!
I continued to unwrap the parcel (My mum does a hell of a job wrapping) and was about to finish saying "YAY IT'S A PLAYSTATION 2!" but when i got to saying "PLAYST..", i froze and realized it was a paper shredder... I was still very excited because..
The funny thing is i always wanted a paper shredder, and i broke it in 6 weeks because i kept trying to shred my toys
That was a Very merry Christmas!
But, you know what, I'll humor you. The following is my strongest memory of what you call "the holidays". Mind you, I was 15 years old at the time.
Being the native of a very hot country, you can imagine my expectations when spending the so called "holiday season" in Europe (Holland) on Dec 1991. Sadly Christmas morning came and went with no snow seen or expected. Imagine my feelings, when, opening CNN I watched pictures of my native city all covered with a once in 50 years December snow...
Our daughter
5:42 Added about a month ago
Kayin C. Sarmiento. Born November 20, 2010. Age, 3 days. She was born premature, only 25 weeks in the womb. We are requesting for your prayers for her survival. She is currently in a tertiary hospital east of Manila.
To our family and friends, any financial help will also be greatly appreciated. Yesterday, Daddy Ben and I rushed to St Luke's to get an 8 ml vial of a medicine for her lungs. It cost Php 26,000++ (US$590). I didn't think twice. She responded positively and is still alive. The Neonatologist said we may have cut down her time with the respirator by about a week.
For those who plan to give me birthday presents this weekend, I ask that you not buy anything for me but help us out with the hospital bills instead.
But more importantly, please pray for Kayin.
Lord, I know she is yours and is only with us by your grace. I ask that you grant me the delight of living the rest of my life knowing I have her for this short human lifespan, alive and healthy. I'll try not to spoil her. Promise.
last Christmas i built my first computer, for my little brother. up till this point i never build a full computer, but i have swapped everything else in the computer except the cpu.
so here i am putting the cpu in, not wanting to break it, because my little brother wouldn't have a computer, and id me out 600$ but ii wasn't even thinking the money at that point. so i learned a new thing that day, the athlon II x4 620 heatsync takes a hell of allot more force than you think it would to put it on.
it took me almost an hour to figure that out, thankfully i did.
now his motherboard, i cant think of it off the top of my head, has a different problem.
so everything it all hooked up, teh cpu ram psu motherboard and everything else it hooked up right. so i turn it on, F@%^in red lights. i quickly turn it off thinking "OH S!@#, WHATS WRONG did ANYTHING break" so im reading the manual in a panic, thinking i just broke his computer, more sad that he wont get it than im out 600$ at this point, i think "f@#$, if i fried something theres nothing i can do about it now, lets turn it on and figure out what the lights on for"
i turn it on again, and it boots into knopix, and i cant find a single thing wrong with it... it took me half an hour to figure out that the motherboard has red leds, red didn't mean anything was broken. it scared the s@#$ out of me for no reason at all, and all that was running in the back of my mind was "F@#% YOU (cant remember brand, i think it was biostar or gigabyte)"
Why does everything revolve around facebook!? It's just a site, like any other...
Nowadays you can't participate in any contests because you have to like something on facebook, twitter or some other snob-ridden sites.
So, after getting his fan, I started my computer up and it worked great. Knowing that my cousin would be gone for a while, I figured it would be good. Well, of my own stupidity, his mother decided to go on his computer and no one knew. His computer kinda died, so we went to get a replacement CPU and everything where he bought it. Since it was Christmas, they gave us a brand new computer and transfered his information over for no charge. And I got off the hook of screwing his computer up. Dumb me.
That year at Christmas, I thought I'd be a good friend, and buy a new copy for my best friends mom, after all, it was our favorite movie. Little did I know that she had told her entire family about losing her copy of the Princess Bride, also her favorite movie. That Christmas, she received 7copies of the movie. Literally everyone in her family bought her one.
She kept the one from me, and regifted the rest to everyone in the family, so that we would all have a copy of The Princess Bride. I have very few memories of Christmas' past, but this one I think will stay with me forever.
Merry Christmas had a Happy New Year to all of you.
And so it became a tradition to take a fir in and decorate it for Christmas.