Giveaways

AnandTech Community Giveaway: Patriot V-Series RGB Gaming Peripherals
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AnandTech Community Giveaway: Patriot V-Series RGB Gaming Peripherals

One of the biggest drivers in the PC market in recent years is gaming. After we scout out the parts, spend the money, build the PC, and fire it up to crank out the FPS, the next elements on any list are peripherals. There is no headshot if the mouse has a treacle-like, unpredictable response. If upgrading the peripheral experience sounds like something you are looking into, then our awesome community team have something for you: in conjunction with Patriot, our team is holding a giveaway for Patriot’s high-profile V-series RGB gaming equipment.

 

One grand price winner from the draw will win the set: a Patriot V370 RGB Gaming Headset, a V570 Blackout RGB Gaming Mouse, and a V770 Mechanical RGB Keyboard.

To put your entry in, follow this link to our sweepstakes landing page.

The giveaway is running through to March 2nd, and is open to all US and UK residents. You can find the full discussion about the giveaway over on the forums.

The HTC U11 Giveaway: Win a Launch-Day Smartphone
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The HTC U11 Giveaway: Win a Launch-Day Smartphone

A couple of weeks back, HTC announced their new flagship smartphone, the HTC U11. The latest in HTC’s now considerable history of flagship phones, the U11 bumps HTC up to Qualcomm’s latest Snapdragon 835 SoC while also going in a new direction for the company in terms of aesthetics, and even squeezing in a new input feature.

The HTC U11 is launching here in the United States on June 9th, so to celebrate it’s launch and HTC’s final two Meet U demo events, HTC is giving us a phone to give away to our US readers.

HTC U11 Overview

Quickly recapping the new phone, the headline feature for the HTC U11 is its new method of interaction: Squeezing. If you’ve encountered any of the marketing material on the device, it’s all about the squeeze. HTC’s new philosophy is that smartphones are stagnating: every generation is just a spec update to the previous model, and the only thing that drives the industry is related to new interaction methods and ways of streamlining the use of a device. Hence the squeeze: by holding the U11 naturally and squeezing between the thumb and the other side of the hand, the squeeze action will do a number of things.

HTC U11
  HTC U11
SoC Qualcomm Snapdragon 835

4x Kryo 280 Perf @ 2.45 GHz
4x Kryo 280 Eff @ 1.90 GHz

Adreno 540 @ 653 MHz 
Display 5.5-inch 2560×1440 SLCD5
Dimensions 153.9 x 75.9 x 7.9 mm
169 grams
Waterproof Yes (IP67)
RAM 4 GB
NAND 64 GB UFS
MicroSD Yes
Rear Camera 12MP “UltraPixel 3” w/ OIS, f/1.7, 1.4µm pixels
Front Camera 16MP
Battery 3000 mAh
non-replaceable
Modem Qualcomm X16 (Integrated)
2G / 3G / 4G LTE
LTE Bands 1, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 12, 17, 20, 32
38, 39, 40, 41
SIM Size NanoSIM
Wireless 802.11ac,
BT 4.2, NFC, GPS/GLONASS/BDS
Connectivity USB 3.0 (5 Gbps), Type-C, Quick Charge 3.0
Launch OS Android 7.1 with HTC Sense

Under the hood, the U11 is backed by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 SoC and paired with 4GB of LPDDR4 RAM and 64GB of storage. HTC says it’s using UFS NAND, although the company isn’t stating if it’s UFS 2.0 or UFS 2.1. The phone comes with a 5.5-inch QHD (2560×1440) SLCD5 IPS display, and HTC is color calibrating each phone at the factory. Meanwhile the rear camera is a 12MP UltraPixel 3, which offers OIS, an f/1.7 lens assembly, and 1.4 micron pixels.

The big aesthetic change for the U11 is its “liquid surface design,” which mimics the visual properties of a liquid, by covering both the front and back with Gorilla Glass 5. The manufacturing process that adds color into the 3D glass is called “Spectrum Hybrid Deposition,” and in the devices we saw it gave them a very shiny and metallic look (it also attracts fingerprints very easily). Presumably for that reason, a clear case is provided in the box.

 

The Giveaway

As HTC isn’t able to offer an unlocked phone that works with all 4 major US carriers, instead we’ll be giving the winner the model and color of their choosing. That’s either the unlocked version, which works on AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, or the Sprint locked version. The unlocked version is available in blue, black, or silver, while the Sprint version is only available in blue or black.

Finally, please note that like our other giveaways, this giveaway is only open to US residents. The giveaway will run from now to 2pm ET on June 9th, the day of the HTC U11 launch. For the full details, please see the terms & conditions on the Gleam widget.

Good luck to everyone!

The HTC U11 Smartphone Giveaway

AT20 Giveaway Day 20: Toshiba OCZ Remembers Why MLC SSDs Rock
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AT20 Giveaway Day 20: Toshiba OCZ Remembers Why MLC SSDs Rock

After 19 days and 30 giveaways, the end is finally upon us. That’s right, today’s the 20th and final day of our 20 day giveaway celebration of AnandTech’s 20th anniversary. So if you haven’t already won something, today is your last chance to get a prize.

Closing out our epic giveaway is the crew over at Toshiba OCZ. The prolific SSD vendor has had their ups and downs, and with recent products they’re definitely on an upswing. Meanwhile all the better for today’s lucky winners, thanks to the NAND flash shortage, good SSDs are now a hot commodity. To that end, for today’s giveaway we have OCZ’s top SATA and M.2 SSDs: a 1TB RD400, and a 512GB VX500.

  • Toshiba OCZ RD400 1TB SSD
  • Toshiba OCZ VX500 512GB SSD

The AnandTech 20th Anniversary Celebration – OCZ Giveaway

Toshiba OCZ SSD Specifications
Capacity RD400
1 TB		 VX500
512 GB
Controller Toshiba TC58NCP070GSB Toshiba TC358790
NAND Toshiba 15nm MLC
Sequential Read 2600 MB/s 550 MB/s
Sequential Write 1550 MB/s 515 MB/s
Random Read IOPS 210k 92k
Random Write IOPS 130k 64k
Form Factor M.2 2280 double-sided 2.5″ SATA
Protocol NVMe 1.1b over PCIe 3.1 x4 AHCI
Write Endurance 592 TB 296 TB

Toshiba OCZ RD400 1TB SSD

Toshiba OCZ’s flagship SSD is the RD400. Based around their own custom controller, the RD400 offers full PCIe 3.0 x4 connectivity and NVMe protocol support in an M.2 SSD, putting this at the cutting edge of SSDs. Under the hood the drive uses Toshiba’s 15nm planar MLC NAND. The 1TB version we’re giving away is a fully populated double-sided 2280 drive that’s rated for up to 210K random read IOPS and 130K random write IOPS. Or to put it in terms of bandwidth, 2.6GB/sec sequential reads and 1.55GB/sec sequential writes.

Toshiba OCZ VX500 512GB SSD

Meanwhile if you’re in need of a more common standard 2.5” SATA form factor drive, then our second prize of the day should be just what you need: Toshiba’s OCZ VX500. This drive uses the same NAND as in the RD400, but swaps out the form factor for the 2.5” SATA that so many machines still expect. The drive’s performance is tuned for client workloads, and for smaller operations the SLC cache makes it a very fast contender. However what may be the most interesting aspect is the drive’s very low power usage, which makes it a good candidate for use in a laptop.

As with our 30 previous giveaways, today’s giveaway is only open for 48 hours, so be sure to enter soon. However please note that for legal reasons, we’re only able to open these giveaways to residents of the United States.

Final Words

Finally, as we close out the AT20 giveaway series, I’d like to again thank all 31 of our vendors for chipping in with prizes for what is by far our biggest prize giveaway ever. In the big picture AnandTech is just a middle-man; it’s the vendors who are making all of this possible so that you guys can have free hardware.

And an absolutely huge thank you goes to Purch’s community team, who has been working behind the scenes to actually run the giveaways, including the drawings themselves and prize fulfillment. With nearly 100 prizes to distribute in just over 4 weeks, doing a giveaway of this scale would not have been possible without all of their hard work.

AT20 Giveaway Day 20: Toshiba OCZ Remembers Why MLC SSDs Rock
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AT20 Giveaway Day 20: Toshiba OCZ Remembers Why MLC SSDs Rock

After 19 days and 30 giveaways, the end is finally upon us. That’s right, today’s the 20th and final day of our 20 day giveaway celebration of AnandTech’s 20th anniversary. So if you haven’t already won something, today is your last chance to get a prize.

Closing out our epic giveaway is the crew over at Toshiba OCZ. The prolific SSD vendor has had their ups and downs, and with recent products they’re definitely on an upswing. Meanwhile all the better for today’s lucky winners, thanks to the NAND flash shortage, good SSDs are now a hot commodity. To that end, for today’s giveaway we have OCZ’s top SATA and M.2 SSDs: a 1TB RD400, and a 512GB VX500.

  • Toshiba OCZ RD400 1TB SSD
  • Toshiba OCZ VX500 512GB SSD

The AnandTech 20th Anniversary Celebration – OCZ Giveaway

Toshiba OCZ SSD Specifications
Capacity RD400
1 TB		 VX500
512 GB
Controller Toshiba TC58NCP070GSB Toshiba TC358790
NAND Toshiba 15nm MLC
Sequential Read 2600 MB/s 550 MB/s
Sequential Write 1550 MB/s 515 MB/s
Random Read IOPS 210k 92k
Random Write IOPS 130k 64k
Form Factor M.2 2280 double-sided 2.5″ SATA
Protocol NVMe 1.1b over PCIe 3.1 x4 AHCI
Write Endurance 592 TB 296 TB

Toshiba OCZ RD400 1TB SSD

Toshiba OCZ’s flagship SSD is the RD400. Based around their own custom controller, the RD400 offers full PCIe 3.0 x4 connectivity and NVMe protocol support in an M.2 SSD, putting this at the cutting edge of SSDs. Under the hood the drive uses Toshiba’s 15nm planar MLC NAND. The 1TB version we’re giving away is a fully populated double-sided 2280 drive that’s rated for up to 210K random read IOPS and 130K random write IOPS. Or to put it in terms of bandwidth, 2.6GB/sec sequential reads and 1.55GB/sec sequential writes.

Toshiba OCZ VX500 512GB SSD

Meanwhile if you’re in need of a more common standard 2.5” SATA form factor drive, then our second prize of the day should be just what you need: Toshiba’s OCZ VX500. This drive uses the same NAND as in the RD400, but swaps out the form factor for the 2.5” SATA that so many machines still expect. The drive’s performance is tuned for client workloads, and for smaller operations the SLC cache makes it a very fast contender. However what may be the most interesting aspect is the drive’s very low power usage, which makes it a good candidate for use in a laptop.

As with our 30 previous giveaways, today’s giveaway is only open for 48 hours, so be sure to enter soon. However please note that for legal reasons, we’re only able to open these giveaways to residents of the United States.

Final Words

Finally, as we close out the AT20 giveaway series, I’d like to again thank all 31 of our vendors for chipping in with prizes for what is by far our biggest prize giveaway ever. In the big picture AnandTech is just a middle-man; it’s the vendors who are making all of this possible so that you guys can have free hardware.

And an absolutely huge thank you goes to Purch’s community team, who has been working behind the scenes to actually run the giveaways, including the drawings themselves and prize fulfillment. With nearly 100 prizes to distribute in just over 4 weeks, doing a giveaway of this scale would not have been possible without all of their hard work.

AT20 Giveaway Day 20: Toshiba OCZ Remembers Why MLC SSDs Rock
  • Comments are Closed

AT20 Giveaway Day 20: Toshiba OCZ Remembers Why MLC SSDs Rock

After 19 days and 30 giveaways, the end is finally upon us. That’s right, today’s the 20th and final day of our 20 day giveaway celebration of AnandTech’s 20th anniversary. So if you haven’t already won something, today is your last chance to get a prize.

Closing out our epic giveaway is the crew over at Toshiba OCZ. The prolific SSD vendor has had their ups and downs, and with recent products they’re definitely on an upswing. Meanwhile all the better for today’s lucky winners, thanks to the NAND flash shortage, good SSDs are now a hot commodity. To that end, for today’s giveaway we have OCZ’s top SATA and M.2 SSDs: a 1TB RD400, and a 512GB VX500.

  • Toshiba OCZ RD400 1TB SSD
  • Toshiba OCZ VX500 512GB SSD

The AnandTech 20th Anniversary Celebration – OCZ Giveaway

Toshiba OCZ SSD Specifications
Capacity RD400
1 TB		 VX500
512 GB
Controller Toshiba TC58NCP070GSB Toshiba TC358790
NAND Toshiba 15nm MLC
Sequential Read 2600 MB/s 550 MB/s
Sequential Write 1550 MB/s 515 MB/s
Random Read IOPS 210k 92k
Random Write IOPS 130k 64k
Form Factor M.2 2280 double-sided 2.5″ SATA
Protocol NVMe 1.1b over PCIe 3.1 x4 AHCI
Write Endurance 592 TB 296 TB

Toshiba OCZ RD400 1TB SSD

Toshiba OCZ’s flagship SSD is the RD400. Based around their own custom controller, the RD400 offers full PCIe 3.0 x4 connectivity and NVMe protocol support in an M.2 SSD, putting this at the cutting edge of SSDs. Under the hood the drive uses Toshiba’s 15nm planar MLC NAND. The 1TB version we’re giving away is a fully populated double-sided 2280 drive that’s rated for up to 210K random read IOPS and 130K random write IOPS. Or to put it in terms of bandwidth, 2.6GB/sec sequential reads and 1.55GB/sec sequential writes.

Toshiba OCZ VX500 512GB SSD

Meanwhile if you’re in need of a more common standard 2.5” SATA form factor drive, then our second prize of the day should be just what you need: Toshiba’s OCZ VX500. This drive uses the same NAND as in the RD400, but swaps out the form factor for the 2.5” SATA that so many machines still expect. The drive’s performance is tuned for client workloads, and for smaller operations the SLC cache makes it a very fast contender. However what may be the most interesting aspect is the drive’s very low power usage, which makes it a good candidate for use in a laptop.

As with our 30 previous giveaways, today’s giveaway is only open for 48 hours, so be sure to enter soon. However please note that for legal reasons, we’re only able to open these giveaways to residents of the United States.

Final Words

Finally, as we close out the AT20 giveaway series, I’d like to again thank all 31 of our vendors for chipping in with prizes for what is by far our biggest prize giveaway ever. In the big picture AnandTech is just a middle-man; it’s the vendors who are making all of this possible so that you guys can have free hardware.

And an absolutely huge thank you goes to Purch’s community team, who has been working behind the scenes to actually run the giveaways, including the drawings themselves and prize fulfillment. With nearly 100 prizes to distribute in just over 4 weeks, doing a giveaway of this scale would not have been possible without all of their hard work.