Modding Mod Of The Year 2013 - The Winners

Guess I originally posted it in the wrong one to where I meant to...

Are the results from facebook voting going to be revealed? I'm curious now, since GwassGween didn't make it to the final judging, but had 2nd most votes here...

 

You know what they were all awesome cases. Well done guys

 

Let's see... 3x Cosmos II in the top 5 and two other full-blown watercooled oversized rigs...

Just what you'd expect I guess, especiially when you use fakebook to draw attention. I wonder how many people advertised for this contest and made the people vote there.

Hopefully there'll be some changes to the MOTM and MOTY contests in 2014.

Last but not least, congratulations to the winners.

 

I allready raised my concerns in the thread for the MOTY-votings and there were alot of people having troubles with this so called "contest" for various reasons, not just me.

My biggest concern is that there's absolutely no rules whatsoever, and nobody enters on their own, but you need to get suggested by others. That doesn't qualify as a contest, but as an award.

And then, most of the builds in the top there are sponsored to begin with and I don't see a reason, why these builds should get awarded with additional prices to the sponsorings.

bit-tech should totally revamp the MOTM/MOTY and get rid of all the prices to start with and only make it an award people can be proud of.
Instead of giving out prices for MOTM/MOTY bit-tech should have more real contests with design, size or hardware-rules, etc.

Last but not least, I absolutely hate the inclusion of fakebook, as alot of nominees advertise for their builds in alot of forums and try to get people to vote on fakebook for their builds. And as it's easy enough to create a dozen fakebook-accounts, it's not a fair voting-process imho and heavily skewed.
I'd say that only bit-tech-members should be able to vote, who have been members for atleast a month and have a post-count of atleast 50. MOTM or MOTY are bit-tech community-awards afterall.

Everyone knows, that I personally dislike big watercooled rigs, but that has nothing to do with my above stated concerns about MOTM/MOTY.
However, the results show, especially the Dark Shining Star Cosmos II-mod, that big watercooled rigs with tons of money thrown at it attract alot of people, the wrong people if you ask me, especially if you include fakebook.
Dark Shining Star is a fully sponsored mod with only some 4 sheets of laser-cut aluminum and some pipebending. There's not even a real worklog, but only some 2 pages of final results shown. How this mod was even considered as a nominee is nowhere to understand, given that the amount of work gone in to this mod, including assembly is somewhere around as little as 20 hours. And ontop of the fully sponsored hardware the guy was using to build his mod he now get's additional prices for free with these few hours of work. BTW... he only got 10 votes in these forums, which would've put him in 5th place.... from the back that is!

Seeing that only some 200 people voted within these forums should be proof enough, that there's something seriously wrong with MOTM and MOTY these days.
So get rid of it and start doing more real contests, which would be a better platform for sponsors anyways.

 

Congratulations to the winners, and a special nod to Nate/Editor22, who cut parts for two of these rigs.

 

And designed the one that made second place

Happy to be in the top five. As always there is some amazing competition which makes mod of the year what it is.

 

I agree with a lot of what jrs77 had to say there, not everything but a lot. To put it quite simply I am a long time member and follower of Bit-Tech and CPC and I have totally lost interest in the modding articles and features. I have tried to explain the reasons for this and usually face stiff opposition which tries to justify the choices made in putting these articles together. But I repeat, I have lost interest... and I am not alone. It has been made quite clear in various ways that the modding community and interaction is getting smaller and more insular, that should be seen as an issue and not a reason to perpetuate the current direction.
The fact that the issue of highly financed and sponsored builds becoming the norm and ever present isn't being seen as a future problem is shocking to me as there is only one result from this, the elite few who can, will and everyone else won't stand a chance. Take that as you will and you are welcome to disagree but readers and potential future modders are being lost, there is no doubt about that.

 

(first of all, this post is not personally aimed at you)

You all seem to focus on one thing, without actually having anything to back it up with.

What i read in this thread, and many of the other competition threads is:

"sponsorships and hardcore modding is the reason you are loosing viewers and voters"

Have you even once considered that forums might just be loosing general popularity to social media? That younger generations just do not look at forums as much as other things?

What is easiest? To go trough a project log on bit-tech/overclock/extremesystems or to watch a video on youtube, or browse trough an album on your newsfeed on facebook or browsing reddit? Why should they when they can get the most awesome things in the world served to them on a silver platter in a manner of minutes just by scrolling?

Lets have a look at search tendense for bit-tech:



Now for casemodding:



And for fun, here is extremesystems:



Could it be that casemodding is just falling in popularity? If you look at the same trends for laptops versus desktops you will also see that desktops is loosing the battle against laptops for the average consumer. If you have thought to just look a tiny bit on what else is happening in the world, and how the general perception of what people want to do themselves, and what they want to buy, then you should be able to see a connection.

Is there any forums/communities that have found a good way to counter this with?

Well, give linustechtips a search, and you will see what a successful integration with social media can do:
http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=linustechtips

Now, I love bit-tech and the people behind, but I hate that people in the community try to put the reason that there is less voters and viewers onto the people who just follows current trends instead of getting stuck in the pasts glorious times.

The fact that people think that removing sponsors and CNC machines will bring back the glory days with thousands of replies to a worklog just shows the blindness and denial that is going on.

 

I think that you try to stretch too far there p0Pe.

Sure, interests do shift over time, but there's no denial that MOTM and MOTY are heavily flawed. Especially as there's prices tied to it and contestants are advertising for their mods in social media and forums all over the web to draw in votes over fakeboook, while MOTM and MOTY should be community-awards, awarded by the bit-tech community and noone else.

All I wan't is seeing the prices get cut out, so that people don't get freebies ontop of their fully sponsored rigs and voting has to be done by the bit-tech community only.

With that being adressed, get more real contests started, like the NUC-contest, the PI-contest, etc. Contests should've rules and MOTM and MOTY don't have them.
Turn MOTM/MOTY into what it should be, a community-award, and maybe get some trophies made out of acrylic etc, maybe with some illumination to make it something shiny or whatever...

 

Obviously, bit-tech is attempting to expand its brand on social media by offering extra prizes for voting via facebook, let alone by offering voting on facebook in the first place. You can't fault a business for that, especially if their revenue is declining for whatever the reason.

You can, however, find serious fault in the legitimacy of an award that allows facebook voting. There were always people who got their friends to register on the bit-tech forums just to vote for them in a given contest. But this occurrence increases exponentially via facebook, where only a few clicks are required to do so, as opposed to having to trudge through the lengthy forum registration process.

This integration of voting into social media, while financially desirable and perhaps even necessary for bit-tech, comes at the cost of award integrity. Personally, I do not--indeed, I can not-- consider the award to mean what it once did.

 

Congratulations to all the winners. Cracking builds that you can and should be extremely proud of. Have enjoyed following all your logs this year and look forward to seeing your future projects.

 

Congratulations to the winners. I'm surprised by the result and only voted for Keirs build out of the winners, but that's nothing new, I get surprised every year. This year I expected cheaps to have a good shot at winning.


@ jrs77 In regards to the prizes offered for the winners of MOTY. The prize list has been declining in quantity and value over the years, and this is unfortunate. Here's why......................

I'll give you an example of just how useful these prizes are for a dedicated modder/builder.
When I won the MOTY 2009 with CX1, the prize list was fairly large and came out to a value exceeding A$3000. More importantly though, among the prizes were high (ish) end processor, a high end motherboard, high end RAM, GFX card, PSU, SSD etc. All these went into my next build. In fact, without these prizes my next project would have taken a lot longer to get together. Also, some of the prizes were sold. Examples: The Corsair case was sold for over three hundred dollars, this money was immediately spent on buying a new, large drill press that has proved to be a very valuable and often used tool. The water cooler and keyboard were also sold and the funds used to buy alu and acrylic. The graphics card was replaced by bit-tech with a GTX 480 and this also was sold for over five hundred dollars. It was replaced by a much cheaper (but good) card and the balance spent on screws and fittings.
The next year I also won the comp and although the prize list was smaller, It still had all the parts to build a good PC. Most of the parts went into my next project.

The prizes were a very welcome and useful resource for me. Without the prizes it would have been much more difficult to get projects started and some projects may not have even eventuated. As someone who has never had any sponsorship, I'm very fortunate to have been given the prizes and rather than getting rid of them I think bit-tech should try and go back to the old days and increase the number of components in the first prize at least.

Good quality parts to build a complete system should always be a part of the first place prize at the very least. If it is getting too difficult to get these parts together, then bit-tech should consider scrapping 2nd and 3rd places and concentrating on the first place prize. After all, the comp is Mod of the year.

 

Yes, this was the case back than. Nowadays however, with the fakebook-voting and all that it's just not the same anymore.
Sure, by getting rid of the prices for MOTM/MOTY people like you unfortunately get shafted, but we need to draw a bigger picture here, and there'll allways be some good guys like you who suffer because of the masses.

 

Thanks for the honest answer, though it seems a bit dubious that the voting is public here but you won't disclose the facebook part of it...

 

On the voting side, I'm also against the inclusion of Facebook for the final tally. My reasoning is that too many people on facebook won't be following the relevant logs and whatnot. For me, MotY is about more than just making a brilliant mod, it should also be about community recognition. This is handled in the Bit-Tech forum as people know the contestants, they know the logs and may have been following them for ages, after all, we're the ones who suggest the mods to enter the contest.

On Facebook, people don't have that same community interaction, it's more for the passerby who decided to pop in for a look. I feel like that presence is important, as it helps gather new users and talent, but it shouldn't be involved in the actual competition voting.

I still don't get the whole anti-sponsorship thing though. Sponsorship is open to everybody, if you want it, you have to go and grab it. Users like Attila prove how it's not needed, but he doesn't then parade on a high horse about not using it. If you choose not to try for sponsorship, that's fine, but you can't be angry with those who do, it was your choice and therefore you must live with the consequences. If you haven't achieved a sponsorship but want to, the simple matter is to keep trying until you do, even the best don't always get what they want.

Even if your rig is paid for by somebody else, you've still got to spend all the time and effort making something that's truly exceptional anyway. Money is just a point of attrition, it accelerates the process, it doesn't create it. If you can't afford to have a part milled, either go down a different route, or wait and save up. If you wait, you may miss the chance of having it done for this year, but hell, why not finish it next year? Cheaps showed this excellently, Glassgween was in progress since 2009, that's a bloody long time.

 

Ho hum storm in a tea cup.


Congratulations Ronnie, Kier, Sassanou, Corsaronero333, p0Pe, all runner uppers & all modders who completed nice projects through 2013.


My mind has finally caught up with the world, soooo muuuch LAG & midlag to a midlag midlag back to a midlag back to the LAG.


That's a whole lotta LAG so forgive my whining while lagging, wow & it still isn't completed.

 

@Sassanou, shipped your Prize Package out Thursday, after finishing the handles... Congrats and Thanks again to bit-tech for allowing Mnpctech to sponser

and heres the list again, of what was included

Mnpctech Machined Aluminum PC Case Handles, http://mnpctech.com/pc-case-lan-par...ver-tower-handles/billet-grooved-handles.html

Mnpctech Machined Aluminum Overkill "Arc Reactor" 120mm Fan Grill, http://mnpctech.com/pc-computer-coo...fan-flames-sniper-pc-gaming-honeycomb-grills/

Mnpctech Machined Aluminum PC Case Thumb Screws, http://mnpctech.com/screws-anodized...ed-red-blue-gold-green/pc-thumbscrews-en.html

Mnpctech Machined MINI ITX PC Case Feet, http://mnpctech.com/pc-computer-stereo-desktop-case-feet/mini-itx-pc-case-feet.html