HotHardware Summer Gaming System Giveaway PC Build Video

by Marco Chiappetta — Wednesday, October 08, 2014, 01:39 PM EDT

It took a lot longer than I had originally planned, but I was finally able to assemble and ship off the rig we gave away during our Summer Gaming System Giveaway. If you recall, we teamed up with the good folks at EVGA, Kingston, Thermaltake, and Intel to build a powerful gaming PC featuring an Intel Core i7-4960X processor, an EVGA X79 Dark motherboard, 16GB of RAM, a GeForce GTX 770, fast SSD, a 1000 watt PSU, and much more. The complete parts list and breakdown for the rig was as follows:

CPU: Intel Core i7-4960X
GPU: EVGA GeForce GTX 770
Motherboard: EVGA X79 Dark
PSU: EVGA 1000W

Case: Thermaltake Core V71
Cooler: Thermaltake Water 3.0
Memory: 16GB Kingston HyperX Fury
Storage: 240GB Kingston HyperX 3K SSD

There was some killer hardware in this one, that’s for sure! And since we love to show off killer hardware around here, we thought we’d capture the parts on video and document the assembly process.

Overall, I’m pretty pleased with the results. The Thermaltake Core V71 is really roomy, and a pleasure to work with. There were plenty of nooks and crannies to snake and hide wires. And there was a ton of space (relatively speaking) behind the motherboard tray too. The Core V71 also complemented the Water 3.0 cooling system very well. The top-mounted case fan was positioned directly over the Water 3.0’s cooler, and as a result, when fully assembled the radiator’s fans and the top case fan worked in a push-pull configuration, so CPU temps were nice and low at all times. The EVGA and Kingston parts looked great together as well. I dig the black the red on the EVGA X79 Dark and think EVGA’s ACX cooler looks (and works) great too.

You don’t have to take my word for it, though. Check out the video above and see for yourself. This machine turned out really well—big, beautiful, and beastly.

Tags: deals, giveaway, Intel, Kingston, evga, contest, PC, thermaltake, Gaming System, Free, winner

Marco Chiappetta

Marco's interest in computing and technology dates all the way back to his early childhood. Even before being exposed to the Commodore P.E.T. and later the Commodore 64 in the early ‘80s, he was interested in electricity and electronics, and he still has the modded AFX cars and shop-worn soldering irons to prove it. Once he got his hands on his own Commodore 64, however, computing became Marco's passion. Throughout his academic and professional lives, Marco has worked with virtually every major platform from the TRS-80 and Amiga, to today's high end, multi-core servers. Over the years, he has worked in many fields related to technology and computing, including system design, assembly and sales, professional quality assurance testing, and technical writing. In addition to being the Managing Editor here at HotHardware for close to 15 years, Marco is also a freelance writer whose work has been published in a number of PC and technology related print publications and he is a regular fixture on HotHardware’s own Two and a Half Geeks webcast. - Contact: marco(at)hothardware(dot)com