Posted 11/19/09 at 09:30:37 AM by Paul Lilly

To kick off it's tenth anniversary, boutique system build iBuyPower has launched its second-gen Chimera 2 gaming system. Like the original, the follow-up act sizzles on stage with a fiery exterior, but with a "completely redesigned signature Chimera Inferno II Chassis."

The color scheme now wraps around the entire chassis, with the chimera flame design covering 4 exterior surfaces (front, right, left, and top panels). Underneath it all sits either a Phenom II X3/X4 or Core i5/i7 foundation, depending on which base configuration you start out with. The Core i5 base comes standard with a Core i5 750 processor, Asus P7P55D LE motherboard, 4GB of DDR3-1333 memory, an ATI HD 5750 videocard, 750GB hard drive, 700W PSU, 22X DVD burner, and Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit. Surprising affordable, pricing starts at $1,100 (or $999 if building around AMD).

Don't feel like buying one? To celebrate its 10th birthday, iBuyPower said it's giving away a Chimera 2 system with a Killer Xeno Pro Gaming card.

"We are excited to be celebrating our tenth anniversary and wanted to thank all our customers that helped make it happen with a giveaway and hot new system," said Darren Su, VP of iBuyPower. "The Chimera 2 gaming systems are fully loaded and feature a new aggressive design sure to impress."

To enter, follow iBuyPower on Twitter and/or Facebook became a Fan of iBuyPower on Facebook or follow them on Twitter, and then fill out the contest entry form here. Good luck!

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Posted 11/17/09 at 07:30:34 AM by Paul Lilly

Bill "Overkill Bill" Owen from Mnpctech walked away a winner in Nvidia's Ion case mod contest announced a few months back. The contest tasked 5 professional case modders with building a "revolutionary Ion-based PC" out of an Zotac Ion ITX 330 motherboard containing an Nvidia Ion GPU and an Intel Atom dual-core CPU, along with $500 for any additional PC parts.

Owen's winning entry came in the form of a wild looking green cube consisting of hundreds of hours of labor and a whole lot of CNC milled sheets of aluminum and laser-cut acrylic.

Full system specs can be found here, but it's the worklog and plethora of pictures that are the real treat, and you can view it all right here.

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Posted 09/23/09 at 04:15:50 PM by The Maximum PC Staff

To celebrate the launch of the new Lynnfield Core i5 and Core i7 CPUs, we've partnered with Intel to give away a CyberPower gaming PC. Between 12:01AM PST on Friday, September 11th and 11:59PM on Friday, September 25th, you can enter the raffle for the prize by joining our Facebook group (http://www.facebook.com/maximumpc). It's really that simple -- no essays, photos, or craft projects required. We'll draw a random entry after the contest deadline and one lucky winner will walk away with a new Lynnfield-powered PC!

Prize system specficiations and official rules after the jump! [Rules updated to include Canadians]

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Posted 08/06/09 at 01:30:59 PM by Paul Lilly

Two weeks ago to the day, Microsoft kicked off a contest inviting participants to sing a jingle about Bing with the stipulation that videos could be no longer than 5 minutes long. It did not stipulate that videos couldn't suck, which doesn't matter anyway, unless the winning entry truly was the best submission Microsoft received.

Jonathan Mann, known on YouTube as "The Rock Cookie Bottom," will receive $500 for winning the Bing Jingle contest, and everyone who watches it gets to die a little inside.

"His concept from the beginning was to have fun and make it a bit silly," Microsoft wrote on its Bing Community blog. "He thought the idea of searching for "Learn how to dance like Jonathan" while dancing in the foreground would be pretty hilarious. And lucky for us it was both catchy and funny! Jonathan's Bing jingle was his 202nd song."

View the winning submission here, and if you like it, we suggest also watching this and this.

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Posted 04/06/09 at 05:03:20 PM by Norman Chan

Three years ago the MaximumPC Folding Team challenged the team ranked above us in the global folding ladder to a race. Each team picked a folding name and tried to get as many folders as possible to fold for it. The race was to a set amount of total folding points, and team Maximum PC won that first contest. In the contest’s second year, the number of points required to win went up and we lost to the third place team. But as winning points went up again last year, we rose to the challenge and won the Chimp race, as it is called today.

This year, 8 or 9 teams may enter, so the Maximum PC team faces some stiff competition. Each year the race stimulates new interest in teams across the world (Russia, Australia and England joined recently, for example). Two top teams from EVGA and overclock.net are loaded with new members and challenging our daily production total. In addition, the top ranked team right now, Horde, produces a million more points a day than any other team.

But we still have plenty of time to build our troops before the race begins in early May.

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Posted 03/17/09 at 02:42:26 PM by The Maximum PC Staff

UPDATE: There will be another chance to win at 4PM PST today! We’ve given out t-shirts, small toys, and even a personal beverage cooler in our weekly Twitter trivia contest (hosted by @willsmith), but this month, we’re raising the stakes by giving away one HP Mini 1001 netbook! Starting next week, our Illustrious Editor-in-Chief will challenge his Twitter followers with a series of three technology trivia questions. Correct answers will score you one entry in our random drawing, which we’ll conduct on Tuesday, March 24th. One lucky grand prize winner will score the netbook (Approximate value, $490 USD) and five first place winners will get a Left 4 Dead t-shirt, courtesy of Valve Software. We won’t be announcing the times of the trivia questions on the website, so subscribe to Will’s Twitter feed to make sure you don’t miss out!

Read on for the official rules and more photos of the prize!

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Posted 02/12/09 at 11:01:21 AM by Paul Lilly

Microsoft received considerable buzz over its Silverlight web browser plugin during the Beijing Olympics, in which NBC opted to use Silverlight rather than Adobe's Flash to stream its Olympics coverage. But it didn't take long for NBC to run back to Flash once the Olympics were over, taking the spotlight off of the Silverlight platform.

Silverlight is back in the news, this time for a new contest Microsoft has launched at serverquestcontest.com. The contest is being aimed at Silverlight game developers age 16 or older and living in the U.S. To enter, eligible developers must create a user profile on the site, download the Software Development Kit, and then use it to create an online game.

Participants can submit up to three entries, each of which must follow a set of strict guidelines. These include a file download size not larger than 4MB and total file size of less than 10MB, resolution of 800x430 or less, the game cannot include any upload file aspects nor can it require or allow any external communication, it must be developed in Silverlight 2.0 and submitted in object/binary code format, and finally the game must clearly indicate to others that it is governed by the Creative Commons license. Phew!

The contest runs through April 30, 2009 (11:59 PM PST), with a voting period to take place between May 1 and May 14. Winners will be announced May 25, 2009.

Any budding developers planning to enter?

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Posted 01/06/09 at 02:45:18 PM by The Maximum PC Staff

Have you spent countless hours shedding blood, sweat, and tears into your Kick Ass mod? Does your mod have your friends and family drenching you in compliments? If so, have your rig shine alongside the elite crew of modders by submitting your rig to MaximumPC’s Rig of the Month contest! Every month, one talented modder and his rig will be featured in the magazine before the entire world to see, as well as rewarded with a $250 gift certificate! We know you’re interested, so read on for contest rules and details.

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