A couple of weeks ago, we posted Tom's Hardware's Haswell-Based System Builder Sweepstakes, featuring a number of systems designed for gaming, professional use, the home theater, and even storage, all based on Intel’s newest architecture. We asked the Tom’s Hardware audience to vote for three favorites. The top vote-getters would be recognized with an Approved award for garnering our readers’ affections. In exchange for registering your vote, we’d enter you into a sweepstakes to win a processor, motherboard, and SSD prize package.
Well, the polls are closed and we have our winners. First, the systems. You selected Origin PC’s Desktop Genesis, Digital Storm’s Aventum II, and Falcon Northwest’s Tiki. Those three machines receive the Tom’s Hardware Approved award, and deservedly so, in our opinion.
We’re just speculating here, but Origin PC’s Genesis was likely chosen largely for its “wow factor”. The company submitted a water-cooled Core i7-4770K-based build with four GeForce GTX Titan cards in a Corsair Obsidian 900D chassis. Expect to pay $10,000 for the privilege of owning one.
Even pricier (exceeding $12,000), Digital Storm’s Aventum II similarly sports a Core i7-4770K and four Titan cards. But the Aventum is housed in a massive, custom chassis. Custom copper piping looks phenomenal, but is actually quite functional, helping facilitate overclocks as high as 4.8 GHz via water cooling.
Perhaps the most practical of the winners, you can buy Falcon Northwest’s Tiki, outfit with an overclocked Core i7-4770K, a GeForce GTX Titan, and 2 TB of solid-state storage (plus a 3 TB hard drive) for just over $4500. That’s a lot of performance in a very compact space.
Congratulations to all three system builders for earning the admiration of thousands of Tom’s Hardware readers. Thanks to the other vendors who participated as well—the final vote count was very close, and a number of systems came within striking distance of this trio.
Of course, a special thank-you goes out to everyone who voted, and to Intel, Asus, and Gigabyte for sponsoring the sweepstakes. We are in the process of contacting the 20 participants who were randomly selected to win a new CPU, motherboard, and SSD, and will update this story with their names once all of the paperwork is in place.
