Project Addison, SlipperySkip’s Compact Gaming PC feat. GIGABYTE mobo and VGA

In terms of retro and most unique looking case mod, it’s hard to find more skilled than Jeffrey Stephenson’s hands. Also known as SlipperySkip, Jeffrey started a new project this year which featured a GIGABYTE Z97N-WIFI Mini-ITX motherboard and a Mini-ITX sized GeForce GTX 970 graphics card. With this kind of hardware, it was easy for him to achieve his project goal which was “to design and build a powerful as possible gaming rig into a small as possible enclosure”. 
This project was inspired by the Canadian radio design from the 1940s, the Addison Model 2
Here are the full specs of this unique build:
Intel Core i7-4770K CPU
Gigabyte Z97N-WiFi Mini-ITX Motherboard
Gigabyte GTX970 Video Card
HyperX Fury 8GB System Memory
HyperX 480GB SSD
Silverstone 450W Modular SFX Power Supply
All-In-One Generic 120mm water cooling system
You can see the full work log on Slippery Skip’s forum here: http://slipperyskip.com/forum/index.php?topic=7.30
To skip to the final picture of the project, here is Jeffrey Stephenson’s website: http://slipperyskip.com/page41.html
Nice work Jeffrey!

GIGABYTE TARGET OC Winners

After reading all the comments on the HWBOT’s competition forum thread, it is easy to see that the GIGABYTE TARGET OC was a whole lot of fun! We have learned a great deal too from this challenge, this always help us organize better competitions in the future. BTW, we are brewing some ideas right now for our next challenge, so stay tune. But anyway, to close down the GIGABTYE Target OC, here is the list of winners. GIGABYTE would like to congratulate every winner and sends their special thanks to everyone who helped make this challenge a success!

Contest Stages Winners
Each of the following overclocker winners will be cashing in $400 USD!

Stage 1: XTU (Target score: 159 marks)
Winner: Christian Ney

Stage 2: HWBOT Prime (Target score: 2967.55 pps)
Winner: MarineOC

Stage 3: 3DMark05 (Target score: 30257 marks)
Winner: I.nfraR.ed

Stage 4: Super Pi 32M (Target score: 20min27sec570ms)
Winner: Gumanoid

Stage 5: Catzilla 720p (Target score: 1938 marks)
Winner: fgi

Lucky draw winners
Amongst all participants who participated in at least 4 of the 5 stages, HWBOT helped us to select five random lucky winners who will be walking away with some great GIGABYTE hardware!

- Lucky Draw #1: Moonman, wins a Z97N Gaming 5

- Lucky Draw #2: Fatboynotsoslim, wins a Z97N-WIFI

- Lucky Draw #3: Etoile, wins a Z97X-SOC FORCE LN2

- Lucky Draw #4: Fanta1ty, wins a X99-SOC FORCE

- Lucky Draw #5: Noliso, wins a X99-SOC FORCE

Winners will be contacted via e-mail.

New Pifast and 3DMARK01 World Records by TeamAU

TeamAU has broken another couple of world records on GIGABYTE Z97X SOC Force board, 3DMARK01 and Pifast. 3DMARK01 was recently broken by overclockers from Lab501 on the same board.

PIFAST WORLD RECORD
TeamAU Link: http://www.teamau.net/2014/11/new-pifast-world-record-by-pro.html

3DMARK01 WORLD RECORD
TeamAU Link: http://www.teamau.net/2014/11/hot-off-press-new-3dmark01-world-record.html

The record was achieved with a set of Patriot PSC cooled with Liquid Nitrogen and a 4770K CPU. We powered the rig with the latest Corsair AX 1500W power supply and of course used EK heat spreaders on the memory.

Congratulations and may the (SOC) FORCE be with you!

3D printing, interesting technology for those with some DIY inclination

TweakTown put up an interesting 3D printer review and it really captured my imagination. I must say, this is an area of computing I have been keenly following as I can see some great possibilities to give my kids an interesting project here or there as well as to occupy my DIY time with some crafty DIY jobs. Home PC is becoming a bit of a DIY machine as we start to enter the digital design age and start printing our 3D jobs/projects.

One thing that has always held me back was the fact they all need setting up and calibration, basically too much fiddling to make them work right. Let’s not forget they were always north of $1000 and that seemed a bit expensive. It seems this Da Vinci unit might be finally hitting all the right notes. I would probably still wait but it’s starting to get there. Have a read of this review guys, it’s interesting!

TeamAU Breaks Aquamark3 World Record: 593,932 marks with GIGABYTE Z97X-SOC Force

TeamAU guys regularly make appearance on our page with some of their awesome world record breaking overclocks and we’re pleased to inform you they’ve just reached another milestone in Aquamark3 with a new world record set at almost 594K, 8K higher than the previous score sofos1990 held.

Both overclockers and scores have one thing in common, they are using the GIGABYTE Z97X-SOC Force motherboards!

Congratulations and check out TeamAU FB page for more crazy overclocking adventures!

GIGABYTE Motherboards have Lowest RMA Rate at LDLC, France

Every 6 months, the French website www.hardware.fr publishes a report on RMA rates for computer components from one of the main French online e-seller LDLC. The report includes statistics on motherboards, PSU, memory, graphics card, HDDs and SSDs. Looking at the RMA rate is a clear indicator of the hardware quality from one manufacturer.

Well, their latest report is out and we are very proud to announce that GIGABYTE Motherboards are once again performing the best!! Not only has the GIGABYTE Motherboards shown to have the lowest RMA rate amongst others, they have actually done so for the second consecutive year!

06/11/2014	30/04/2014	30/10/2013	10/05/2013
- Gigabyte 2,51%	- Gigabyte 2,02%	- Gigabyte 1,43%	- Gigabyte 1,19%
- MSI 2,65%	- ASROCK 2,27%	- MSI 1,83%	- ASUS 1,79%
- ASUS 2,86%	- ASUS 2,31%	- ASUS 1,86%	- ASRock 2,09%
- ASRock 2,99%	- MSI 2,60%	- ASRock 2,09%	- MSI 3,05%

We’ve put it into charts to make it easier to read…
 


In order to provide the highest quality hardware, GIGABTYE incorporate the Ultra Durable design and mentality into their motherboards. If you see the following logo on your GIGABYTE motherboard box, this means that GIGABYTE spent extra care designing and making this motherboard  with long lasting and high quality components. Reliable hardware such as 10K Durable Black™ Solid Caps, 2 oz Copper PCB or DualBIOS™ to mention only a few. This efforts, as shown by HARDWARE.FR numbers, directly results in lower RMA rates and a better experience for you, the user.

You can find the full report (In French) here: http://www.hardware.fr/articles/927-2/cartes-meres.html

PCGamers.net.au with a must read review on Z97N-Gaming5!

GIGABYTE boards get reviewed by a lot of website and most of them are pretty unique in their quest to find the right balance of testing the product and perhaps looking to assess how good the value and even functionality are. I found a review from PCGAMERS.NET.AU really interesting as they go into detail on the builds that they do with their PCs and talk about some of the interesting challenges and discoveries they find on the way and how that might help anyone else out there building their own machines. Not only that but this setup gets tested for a few months to really get the best overall experience. This review should be a must read for anyone looking for a nice and challenging miniITX gaming PC build with a beast Noctua NH-U14S 140mm air cooler and space to spare.

 

Here are a couple of quotes from the review, click on the link to read the entire article (well worth it).

 

Socket placement is great. I managed to fit the 140mm wide Noctua NH-U14S on this board in the Node 304 case without blocking the PCIE slot.

……

Unlike the MSI Z97I Gaming board, the WIFI module was already installed and ready to go. The module works well and we saw performance that was on par if not better than other boards that we've tested in the same physical location. For gaming, the WIFI was fine and my ping stayed within a few ms of the LAN experience. I tested this by playing Battlefield 4, DayZ and Titanfall online with nothing else using our internet connection.

……

The onboard gigabit LAN was solid, the Killer software seemed to prioritise correctly and performed as expected when it came to transfer speed (write) tests hitting 735Mbps writing/874Mbps reading to another PC's SSD share. The 5GHZ WIFI gave us almost 100Mbps with 88Mbps writing and 82Mbps reading.

……

Working with the Gigabyte Z97N-Gaming 5 has been a lot of fun and it is great value. After 2 months, I haven't found myself wanting any feature that isn't included nor have I identified any shortcuts taken to keep the price down. This is a great LAN gaming board without any compromises.

MWave Australia shows off awesome custom PC builds…

We came across a range of videos from MWave Australia with some killer custom PCs every geek and nerd dreams about at night (errr I do OK!!!)

I’ll just post the videos, check out these babies!

This is my favourite custom build, check out the rust paint, wow!

GIGABYTE Z97X-SOC FORCE LN2 Keeps on Collecting Records!

Thanks to Team Lab501, the GIGABYTE Z97X-SOC FORCE LN2 collects even more records!
During the DreamHack Masters 2014 held in Bucharest last week-end, Team Lab501 (Monstru and Matose) showed off their skills at the HyperX booth. During their overclocking demonstration at the gaming event, not only did they managed to get a lot of attention on overclcoking with LN2, but also broke a few records!!
Using the GIGABYTE Z97X-SOC FORCE LN2 motherboard, overclocker Matose did indeed impress everyone with his skills by collecting to top score on PiFast with 9sec and 770ms, thus taking on the WORLD RECORD!! http://hwbot.org/submission/2667738

But that was not all, Matose had one more trick under his sleeve that he kept to keep the crowd on their toes. On the same motherboard, he collected the Hardware Top Score on SuperPi – 1M !! http://hwbot.org/submission/2667731

One other Z97X-SOC FORCE LN2 achievement made by the Lab501 Matose is this CPU Frequency of 7101.67 MHZ using a 4770K. Although it is not a world record, it is the highest frequency ever achieved on the Z97X-SOC FORCE LN2!  http://hwbot.org/submission/2667737_

You can find more pictures of the event on Facebook here:
https://www.facebook.com/monstru.lab/media_set?set=a.866332913400144.1073741902.100000703307781&type=1

Nice work Lab501!