Overclockers’ Choice Awards – Winners for First Half 2011!

You nominated….you voted…and now we have the winners of the Overclockers’ Choice Awards! These are the best products of the first half of 2011 as nominated by forum members and voted on by our readers.

It should definitely be said that this is not a scientific study. There are no standard deviation formulas (or any other mathematics) involved. The products were nominated and set up in a poll to be voted on by our readers; nothing more complicated than that.

Now we’ll get straight to it. Here are the winners, with components listed in order of appearance in the original poll.

Best Processor: Intel Core i7 2600k

The venerable Intel Core i7 2600k won best CPU by a landslide. The next-closest CPU (the 2500K) was quite a bit behind.

Best Motherboard: ASUS P8P67 Pro

This one was close for individual boards, with only five votes separating first place and third place – but one thing is clear: ASUS is an Overclockers reader favorite. All of the top three boards were ASUS boards.

There can, however, be only one winner. Sticking with the sandy Bridge theme, the winner for best motherboard is the ASUS P8P67 Pro.

Best Graphics Card: AMD HD 6990

AMD seems to be popular among our readers in the graphics department. In a close second place with is the AMD HD 6950, likely because of its budget-friendly ability to flash to a 6970. Coming a somewhat distant third was the EVGA GTX 580 FTW Hydro Copper 2.

What do Overclockers readers like even more than budget-minded cards that can be flashed to be a higher model? Power – absolute power. That’s why the undisputed winner is AMD’s graphics king, the HD 6990.

Best Cooling: Noctua NH-D14

By the thinnest of margins, the Corsair H70 just lost to current air-cooling top dog: the Noctua NH-D14.

Best Memory: G.Skill RipjawsX Series DDR3

I had checked this one mid-way through the contest and it was a heated battle between the Corsair Dominator GT series and the G.Skill RipjawsX series of DDR3 memory.

However, in the ending days of the competition one manufacturer pulled away. By a healthy margin, the G.Skill RipjawsX series of DDR3 memory came out on top.

Best Power Supply: Corsair HX Series

Corsair PSUs have always been popular on our forums and that was definitely borne out in this vote. The top three spots all went to Corsair, but the top PSU goes to the Corsair HX series.

Best Disk Drive: OCZ Vertex 3

There was a good mix of SSDs and HDDs in the nomination mix for the best disk drive. Like the GPU award, this one went to the most powerful beast among them. Best disk drive goes to the OCZ Vertex 3 SSD.

Best Case: Corsair 800D

Cooler Master deserves a mention here and had a strong showing, with cases coming in second and third. The top of the heap according to our readers though is the Corsair 800D.

Best Accessory: Logitech MX518

There were several types of accessories nominated – fan controllers, mice, speakers, etc; but in the end it came down to mice. All of the top three were mice, with first and second going to Logitech (Razer came in 3rd). The best accessory award goes to the Logitech MX518.

Best Manufacturer: ASUS

Manufacturer is certainly a broad category and in this case it was a manufacturer that makes a broad array of products that took first place. It’s not too much of a surprise considering their domination in the best motherboard category. The best manufacturer in our poll was ASUS.

Best Vendor: Newegg

Best vendor wasn’t even a competition. There were some great small vendors nominated and unfortunately they didn’t stand much of a chance because of their niche focus. The best vendor by an astounding margin was Newegg.

All winners will receive an Overclockers Community Choice winner badge for their superior products as voted by our readers.

Big thanks to all our editors who played much larger parts than me in putting this together. Even BIGGER thanks to all of the forum members and readers that nominated and voted to make the first Overclockers Community Choice awards a success!

– Jeremy Vaughan (hokiealumnus)