Puget Systems and iBUYPOWER: two sides of the system integrator coin
by Jarred Walton on February 15, 2007 10:25 AM EST- Posted in
- Systems
Puget Systems: Overview
In contrast to iBUYPOWER, Puget Systems is a relative newcomer to the online build-to-order computer scene. They've been around since late 2000, starting out as a company running in the basement of the owner's house but moving quickly to occupy larger facilities. In terms of volume, it's safe to say that Puget Systems doesn't sell nearly as many computers as a company like iBUYPOWER. Instead, they are a bit closer to companies like Falcon Northwest and VoodooPC in that they attempt to build higher quality systems for which people will be willing to pay a bit extra. They do offer more budget oriented computers as well, however, and prices and designs take the middle ground between what you might see at major OEMs (inexpensive cookie-cutter systems) and what you would find at the boutique system builders (exotic but expensive computers).
Navigating the Puget Systems website is far more straightforward than iBUYPOWER's site. At the top of the page are clear links for notebooks, desktops, servers, or individual components. There are also links for technical support and the customer forums that are readily visible. Where iBUYPOWER has a bunch of different models that have somewhat confusing names, Puget Systems sticks with straightforward descriptions: you can get home, gaming, or professional desktop PCs; thin and light or high-performance laptops; and rack mount or tower servers. Following any of the links for these various sections provides you with a few more options. For example, the desktop offerings all have configurations that target quiet computing, and you can look at micro ATX designs. In the middle of the main page is also a link for Puget Certified Systems. These are sold at a discount because they are intended as volume designs; you don't get as many configuration options, it doesn't take as long for the system to be built, and Puget Systems feels that the components are "more reliable".
Starting with the Puget Certified Systems, there are quite a few options available. You can select among a basic office setup, a home theater PC, workstations designed for video editing, or a couple of gaming configurations. One of the major differences between the certified systems and the other configuration options is that your choice of motherboard and case are set according to which base configuration you choose, and there are fewer options available in the other component categories. The core components available are still very good choices, so most people will be quite pleased with any of the certified systems -- and a 10% price discount certainly won't hurt.
Switching over to their classic system configurator, you get a lot more customizability. We focused on the gaming and quiet configurations, so there may be a few extra options available elsewhere. Regardless, there are definitely some patterns that become apparent. Starting with the motherboard, there are several options available, all of them from ASUS. Anyone who knows computer components should be pretty happy with an ASUS brand motherboard; you can generally expect to pay a bit more than what other brands might cost, but the quality of ASUS boards is among the best. In most cases there are five Core 2 Duo compatible motherboards and two AM2 motherboards available, and your choice of motherboard will automatically show the appropriate CPU options. A pop-up appears every time you change CPU sockets on the motherboard, but at least people won't accidentally change socket types and forget to select an appropriate CPU. The heatsinks and a few other items will also change depending on what motherboard you select.
The usual candidates are available on the CPU section: all of Intel's Core 2 lineup is present, other than the newly released E4300, or you can choose to save money and get an old Pentium D 820. On the AMD side, all of the socket AM2 Athlon X2 processors are listed, as well as the FX-62. Single core 3500+ and 3800+ are also available, or at the bottom of the pricing scale is a Sempron 3000+. It should also be noted that clicking on any of the components will open up a new window providing additional details on the component in question. Clock speeds of the processors aren't listed on the main page, but they are present on the component details page. You can also click on the component categories (i.e. motherboards) to get a bit more information about the various options as well as some advice.
In most cases, there are only two or three heatsink options available: you can go with the stock retail heatsink (not available on "quiet" configurations), a Cooler Master Hyper L3 (socket 775) or the Arctic Cooling Freezer 64 Pro (socket AM2), or else you can choose to upgrade to a Thermalright SI-128 for a bit more money. The stock heatsinks should get the job done, while the Thermalright heatsink will cool a bit better and not create as much noise. Puget Systems appears to prefer Kingston memory, as all of the memory options come from that company. Kingston is a reputable brand, so that's not a problem, and you can choose between standard memory modules or pay extra for the HyperX models. All of the HyperX models are DDR2-800 and the standard models are DDR2-667, and you can choose to have either 512MB, 1GB, 2GB, or 4GB of memory installed. Somewhat interesting to note is that 4GB of HyperX memory (two 2GB DIMMs) actually costs less than 4GB of standard memory (four 1GB DIMMs). If you're thinking about getting 4GB of memory anyway, we can't see any reason to get slower DDR2-667 memory with smaller DIMMs sizes while spending more money. 2GB DIMMs also give you the option to move up to 8 GB of RAM in the future should you so desire, although that would only really be useful if you run a 64-bit operating system.
Next up are the case selections, and similar to the motherboards only higher end offerings are available. You can choose from among a couple of Antec offerings, a Silverstone TJ07, the Cooler Master Stacker, or several Lian Li cases. The Antec cases are the cheapest option and they are still very high quality cases, while the Lian Li cases cost a bit more. Meanwhile, Cooler Master and Silverstone compete for the largest case award, with the Silverstone Temjin topping the price charts. Several of the cases are also available in a couple different color options, generally silver or black, and sometimes with a window. Only the less expensive Antec cases include a default power supply, so that's the most economical option, but if you're like us you probably already have the impression that you don't go to Puget Systems in order to get an inexpensive, average computer.
Power supply offerings match the cases, in that you only get high-end options (outside of the included 420W power supply on the Antec cases). There are only three power supplies listed for quiet gaming computers, although some of the other systems include a fourth option. All of the add-on power supplies come from SeaSonic, and they include the S12 380W, S12 EE 550W, S12 EE 650W, or the modular 700W. SeaSonic is regarded as one of the best power supply brands on the market, but even the 380W S12 will add over $100 to the price of your system. The other three high-end power supplies cost between $200 and $280 as an upgrade. Once again, these are very high-quality components, with a price to match.
Hard drive choices are limited to SATA models ranging from 80 GB up through 750GB. All of the hard drives are from Seagate, with the exception of the two 10,000 RPM Western Digital Raptor offerings: you can choose the 74GB or the 150GB Raptor. The only hard drive that doesn't come with a 16MB cache is the 80GB Seagate. You get the ability to select two different types of hard drives, and each hard drive section has the ability to enter custom configuration instructions. For example, you could choose to install two Raptor drives as a single RAID 0 partition, with a third larger hard drive used for mass storage. Given the ability to enter instructions on partitioning, the sky is basically the limit when it comes to setting up your hard drives. Provided of course that you don't mind using Seagate or Western Digital drives. (We certainly have no qualms with that choice.)
Choosing a graphics card comes next, and your options will again vary depending on which motherboard you select. If you select an SLI capable motherboard, you will get both single card and SLI configurations. Unfortunately, at least for now, CrossFire is not a supported option, even though CrossFire compatible motherboards can be selected. For gaming enthusiasts, that's probably not a concern yet, as NVIDIA SLI is the top-performing solution right now. We're glad to see that Puget Systems is on top of the configuration options, regardless, as people won't be able to accidentally select SLI graphics cards if the motherboard doesn't support it, unlike the iBUYPOWER configurator. Choices in the graphics department range from entry level GeForce 6200TC cards up through the GeForce 8800 GTS and GTX. The sole AMD/ATI representative right now is the X1950 XTX, which depending on your viewpoint might be a problem. There's no doubt that NVIDIA rules the high-end market, but AMD is very competitive in the midrange and budget sectors. It wouldn't be bad to see a few options like the X1950 Pro as well, in our opinion. Once AMD launches their next-generation GPU, Puget Systems will certainly reevaluate the market and decide what other cards they might want to carry.
As with iBUYPOWER, the remaining component choices are less critical, but there are still quite a few things to look at. You can install up to two optical drives (six different options to choose from -- 3 each from Plextor and LiteOn -- as well as the ability to select appropriate faceplate colors). Discrete audio cards are all from Creative Labs -- four X-Fi offerings and one Audigy4 SE. For the floppy, you can choose either a standard floppy drive or a combination floppy/flash memory reader; for now, Puget Systems requires floppy drives on many of their computers, just to be safe. Besides selecting an appropriate operating system, everything else is an optional extra. You can add TV tuner cards, a PhysX card, a Killer NIC, various case mods including lights, round cables, extra case fans, and so on.
There are currently six LCDs listed, from either CTL or Samsung, ranging in size from 17" to 24". The LCD prices are pretty expensive, relative to what you might find elsewhere, so it might not be a bad idea to skip the LCD and purchase one separately. If you're interested in dual displays, the configurator also restricts you to selecting two of the same display, so you can't choose one 24" display and one 20" display for example. We would have liked to see a 22" widescreen LCD as a choice as well, as those tend to strike a good balance between price and size, although as we've already said you will probably get a much better deal by purchasing your display somewhere else anyway. Speakers, mice, keyboards, and warranty options round out the online configurator, with most of the usual suspects present. Like most of the other categories, Puget Systems focuses on higher quality components, so all of the speaker selections come from Logitech.
All Puget Systems come with a standard 1-year warranty, or you can choose to upgrade to a 2-year ($160) or a 3-year ($260) warranty at an additional cost. Also note that any accessories -- displays and speakers for example -- only carry the manufacturer's warranty. However, regardless of which warranty you select, all Puget Systems come with lifetime labor and technical support. Should you ever want to take your system in to have some upgrades performed, you only need to pay for the new hardware, and the same applies if you should ever have hardware that fails once you're out of the warranty coverage. The total price of a Puget Systems computer is definitely going to be more than what you would pay at some of their competitors, but the lifetime labor and technical support does help to compensate for the price discrepancy. Whether or not that's important enough to consider purchasing one of their computers is up to you.
The Puget Systems online configurator is very well done, offering good information if you select any of the component choices. The selection is nowhere near as extensive as iBUYPOWER (or a variety of other system vendors for that matter), but Puget Systems is clearly focusing on quality rather than quantity. It is virtually impossible to build a system that would in any way qualify as a low-end computer. That's not to say that you can't build computers that are slower and computers that are faster -- choose the slowest graphics card and the slowest CPU and pair that with 512 MB of memory and you're certainly not going to have anything that sets speed records -- but the component quality is still going to be very good. What's more, once you've finished configuring your system, you can email it to Puget Systems to get feedback. They will respond and provide additional advice based on your questions to them, or they can also point you in the right direction if they see anything that looks questionable.
We focused on the individual component choices, but if that's too much work you can also select from among several preconfigured options at the top of each category. Choose quiet computers for example and the preconfigured choices are: Quiet Desktop Computer, Quiet Gaming Computer, Quiet Performance Computer, Quiet Ultimate Computer, and Ultra Quiet Computer. Click on any of those options and the vast majority of the component selections will be done for you. Whether or not we agree with all of the choices is up for debate, but they are good baseline recommendations that you can further customize as you see fit.
Overall, the component selection at Puget Systems is very limited, but the quality of the components is excellent. We would rate the quality of the configurator as being one of the best that we have seen. Images of virtually every component are available, often with multiple angles, and all of the necessary compatibility checks are in place so that you can't select parts that won't work together. Unfortunately, the price is definitely going to be a major deterrent to a lot of people. Even though they use high-end components, the markup is pretty substantial. A system that we configured for $2500 would cost around $1800 if purchased from Newegg.com and assembled on your own. Even if you choose one of the Puget Certified Systems that come with a 10% discount, you would still be looking at a roughly 25% markup. If you want to get a very nice computer built for you, however, Puget Systems looks like they can compete with other boutique system builders like Falcon Northwest, Alienware, and VoodooPC. They might not be as big or as well known right now, but price comparisons with those companies will be far more favorable than comparing them with companies like Newegg or iBUYPOWER.
In contrast to iBUYPOWER, Puget Systems is a relative newcomer to the online build-to-order computer scene. They've been around since late 2000, starting out as a company running in the basement of the owner's house but moving quickly to occupy larger facilities. In terms of volume, it's safe to say that Puget Systems doesn't sell nearly as many computers as a company like iBUYPOWER. Instead, they are a bit closer to companies like Falcon Northwest and VoodooPC in that they attempt to build higher quality systems for which people will be willing to pay a bit extra. They do offer more budget oriented computers as well, however, and prices and designs take the middle ground between what you might see at major OEMs (inexpensive cookie-cutter systems) and what you would find at the boutique system builders (exotic but expensive computers).
Navigating the Puget Systems website is far more straightforward than iBUYPOWER's site. At the top of the page are clear links for notebooks, desktops, servers, or individual components. There are also links for technical support and the customer forums that are readily visible. Where iBUYPOWER has a bunch of different models that have somewhat confusing names, Puget Systems sticks with straightforward descriptions: you can get home, gaming, or professional desktop PCs; thin and light or high-performance laptops; and rack mount or tower servers. Following any of the links for these various sections provides you with a few more options. For example, the desktop offerings all have configurations that target quiet computing, and you can look at micro ATX designs. In the middle of the main page is also a link for Puget Certified Systems. These are sold at a discount because they are intended as volume designs; you don't get as many configuration options, it doesn't take as long for the system to be built, and Puget Systems feels that the components are "more reliable".
Starting with the Puget Certified Systems, there are quite a few options available. You can select among a basic office setup, a home theater PC, workstations designed for video editing, or a couple of gaming configurations. One of the major differences between the certified systems and the other configuration options is that your choice of motherboard and case are set according to which base configuration you choose, and there are fewer options available in the other component categories. The core components available are still very good choices, so most people will be quite pleased with any of the certified systems -- and a 10% price discount certainly won't hurt.
Switching over to their classic system configurator, you get a lot more customizability. We focused on the gaming and quiet configurations, so there may be a few extra options available elsewhere. Regardless, there are definitely some patterns that become apparent. Starting with the motherboard, there are several options available, all of them from ASUS. Anyone who knows computer components should be pretty happy with an ASUS brand motherboard; you can generally expect to pay a bit more than what other brands might cost, but the quality of ASUS boards is among the best. In most cases there are five Core 2 Duo compatible motherboards and two AM2 motherboards available, and your choice of motherboard will automatically show the appropriate CPU options. A pop-up appears every time you change CPU sockets on the motherboard, but at least people won't accidentally change socket types and forget to select an appropriate CPU. The heatsinks and a few other items will also change depending on what motherboard you select.
The usual candidates are available on the CPU section: all of Intel's Core 2 lineup is present, other than the newly released E4300, or you can choose to save money and get an old Pentium D 820. On the AMD side, all of the socket AM2 Athlon X2 processors are listed, as well as the FX-62. Single core 3500+ and 3800+ are also available, or at the bottom of the pricing scale is a Sempron 3000+. It should also be noted that clicking on any of the components will open up a new window providing additional details on the component in question. Clock speeds of the processors aren't listed on the main page, but they are present on the component details page. You can also click on the component categories (i.e. motherboards) to get a bit more information about the various options as well as some advice.
In most cases, there are only two or three heatsink options available: you can go with the stock retail heatsink (not available on "quiet" configurations), a Cooler Master Hyper L3 (socket 775) or the Arctic Cooling Freezer 64 Pro (socket AM2), or else you can choose to upgrade to a Thermalright SI-128 for a bit more money. The stock heatsinks should get the job done, while the Thermalright heatsink will cool a bit better and not create as much noise. Puget Systems appears to prefer Kingston memory, as all of the memory options come from that company. Kingston is a reputable brand, so that's not a problem, and you can choose between standard memory modules or pay extra for the HyperX models. All of the HyperX models are DDR2-800 and the standard models are DDR2-667, and you can choose to have either 512MB, 1GB, 2GB, or 4GB of memory installed. Somewhat interesting to note is that 4GB of HyperX memory (two 2GB DIMMs) actually costs less than 4GB of standard memory (four 1GB DIMMs). If you're thinking about getting 4GB of memory anyway, we can't see any reason to get slower DDR2-667 memory with smaller DIMMs sizes while spending more money. 2GB DIMMs also give you the option to move up to 8 GB of RAM in the future should you so desire, although that would only really be useful if you run a 64-bit operating system.
Next up are the case selections, and similar to the motherboards only higher end offerings are available. You can choose from among a couple of Antec offerings, a Silverstone TJ07, the Cooler Master Stacker, or several Lian Li cases. The Antec cases are the cheapest option and they are still very high quality cases, while the Lian Li cases cost a bit more. Meanwhile, Cooler Master and Silverstone compete for the largest case award, with the Silverstone Temjin topping the price charts. Several of the cases are also available in a couple different color options, generally silver or black, and sometimes with a window. Only the less expensive Antec cases include a default power supply, so that's the most economical option, but if you're like us you probably already have the impression that you don't go to Puget Systems in order to get an inexpensive, average computer.
Power supply offerings match the cases, in that you only get high-end options (outside of the included 420W power supply on the Antec cases). There are only three power supplies listed for quiet gaming computers, although some of the other systems include a fourth option. All of the add-on power supplies come from SeaSonic, and they include the S12 380W, S12 EE 550W, S12 EE 650W, or the modular 700W. SeaSonic is regarded as one of the best power supply brands on the market, but even the 380W S12 will add over $100 to the price of your system. The other three high-end power supplies cost between $200 and $280 as an upgrade. Once again, these are very high-quality components, with a price to match.
Hard drive choices are limited to SATA models ranging from 80 GB up through 750GB. All of the hard drives are from Seagate, with the exception of the two 10,000 RPM Western Digital Raptor offerings: you can choose the 74GB or the 150GB Raptor. The only hard drive that doesn't come with a 16MB cache is the 80GB Seagate. You get the ability to select two different types of hard drives, and each hard drive section has the ability to enter custom configuration instructions. For example, you could choose to install two Raptor drives as a single RAID 0 partition, with a third larger hard drive used for mass storage. Given the ability to enter instructions on partitioning, the sky is basically the limit when it comes to setting up your hard drives. Provided of course that you don't mind using Seagate or Western Digital drives. (We certainly have no qualms with that choice.)
Choosing a graphics card comes next, and your options will again vary depending on which motherboard you select. If you select an SLI capable motherboard, you will get both single card and SLI configurations. Unfortunately, at least for now, CrossFire is not a supported option, even though CrossFire compatible motherboards can be selected. For gaming enthusiasts, that's probably not a concern yet, as NVIDIA SLI is the top-performing solution right now. We're glad to see that Puget Systems is on top of the configuration options, regardless, as people won't be able to accidentally select SLI graphics cards if the motherboard doesn't support it, unlike the iBUYPOWER configurator. Choices in the graphics department range from entry level GeForce 6200TC cards up through the GeForce 8800 GTS and GTX. The sole AMD/ATI representative right now is the X1950 XTX, which depending on your viewpoint might be a problem. There's no doubt that NVIDIA rules the high-end market, but AMD is very competitive in the midrange and budget sectors. It wouldn't be bad to see a few options like the X1950 Pro as well, in our opinion. Once AMD launches their next-generation GPU, Puget Systems will certainly reevaluate the market and decide what other cards they might want to carry.
As with iBUYPOWER, the remaining component choices are less critical, but there are still quite a few things to look at. You can install up to two optical drives (six different options to choose from -- 3 each from Plextor and LiteOn -- as well as the ability to select appropriate faceplate colors). Discrete audio cards are all from Creative Labs -- four X-Fi offerings and one Audigy4 SE. For the floppy, you can choose either a standard floppy drive or a combination floppy/flash memory reader; for now, Puget Systems requires floppy drives on many of their computers, just to be safe. Besides selecting an appropriate operating system, everything else is an optional extra. You can add TV tuner cards, a PhysX card, a Killer NIC, various case mods including lights, round cables, extra case fans, and so on.
There are currently six LCDs listed, from either CTL or Samsung, ranging in size from 17" to 24". The LCD prices are pretty expensive, relative to what you might find elsewhere, so it might not be a bad idea to skip the LCD and purchase one separately. If you're interested in dual displays, the configurator also restricts you to selecting two of the same display, so you can't choose one 24" display and one 20" display for example. We would have liked to see a 22" widescreen LCD as a choice as well, as those tend to strike a good balance between price and size, although as we've already said you will probably get a much better deal by purchasing your display somewhere else anyway. Speakers, mice, keyboards, and warranty options round out the online configurator, with most of the usual suspects present. Like most of the other categories, Puget Systems focuses on higher quality components, so all of the speaker selections come from Logitech.
All Puget Systems come with a standard 1-year warranty, or you can choose to upgrade to a 2-year ($160) or a 3-year ($260) warranty at an additional cost. Also note that any accessories -- displays and speakers for example -- only carry the manufacturer's warranty. However, regardless of which warranty you select, all Puget Systems come with lifetime labor and technical support. Should you ever want to take your system in to have some upgrades performed, you only need to pay for the new hardware, and the same applies if you should ever have hardware that fails once you're out of the warranty coverage. The total price of a Puget Systems computer is definitely going to be more than what you would pay at some of their competitors, but the lifetime labor and technical support does help to compensate for the price discrepancy. Whether or not that's important enough to consider purchasing one of their computers is up to you.
The Puget Systems online configurator is very well done, offering good information if you select any of the component choices. The selection is nowhere near as extensive as iBUYPOWER (or a variety of other system vendors for that matter), but Puget Systems is clearly focusing on quality rather than quantity. It is virtually impossible to build a system that would in any way qualify as a low-end computer. That's not to say that you can't build computers that are slower and computers that are faster -- choose the slowest graphics card and the slowest CPU and pair that with 512 MB of memory and you're certainly not going to have anything that sets speed records -- but the component quality is still going to be very good. What's more, once you've finished configuring your system, you can email it to Puget Systems to get feedback. They will respond and provide additional advice based on your questions to them, or they can also point you in the right direction if they see anything that looks questionable.
We focused on the individual component choices, but if that's too much work you can also select from among several preconfigured options at the top of each category. Choose quiet computers for example and the preconfigured choices are: Quiet Desktop Computer, Quiet Gaming Computer, Quiet Performance Computer, Quiet Ultimate Computer, and Ultra Quiet Computer. Click on any of those options and the vast majority of the component selections will be done for you. Whether or not we agree with all of the choices is up for debate, but they are good baseline recommendations that you can further customize as you see fit.
Overall, the component selection at Puget Systems is very limited, but the quality of the components is excellent. We would rate the quality of the configurator as being one of the best that we have seen. Images of virtually every component are available, often with multiple angles, and all of the necessary compatibility checks are in place so that you can't select parts that won't work together. Unfortunately, the price is definitely going to be a major deterrent to a lot of people. Even though they use high-end components, the markup is pretty substantial. A system that we configured for $2500 would cost around $1800 if purchased from Newegg.com and assembled on your own. Even if you choose one of the Puget Certified Systems that come with a 10% discount, you would still be looking at a roughly 25% markup. If you want to get a very nice computer built for you, however, Puget Systems looks like they can compete with other boutique system builders like Falcon Northwest, Alienware, and VoodooPC. They might not be as big or as well known right now, but price comparisons with those companies will be far more favorable than comparing them with companies like Newegg or iBUYPOWER.
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EvErywhErE - Saturday, October 25, 2008 - link
Great Article on Pudget! I stumbled accross them quite by accident last month after my work machine melted down... I was tight for time, didn't want to think about anything, and was planning on doing just a litle internet research to see if anyone could beat Dell for general price, performance, warrenty, and ease of assembly.I was instantly impressed with the pudget website, and the fact that a real person picked up the phone and seemed to know exactly what I needed. I explained that I was an mechanical engineer and that the machine would be used for CAD work about 90% of the time. 10 minutes later I recieved an e-mail link to a custom computer that served as a great starting point. I did just a little customizing and really felt quite happy knowing that I didn't have to spend the rest of my day weighing performance, stability, and an unknown amount of time troubleshooting that one unexpected thing.
I ended up going with an Intel Core 2 Quad Q9400 Quad-Core 2.66GHz, an Asus P5Q-E mother board, Quadro FX 1700, and 4Gig of ram. Not the most amazing machine out there, but more than enough to keep me working for another year or two.
As luck would have it my modest workstation proved to be a nightmare to get up and running... In the end it took a full 4 weeks to get everything up and running. This included some hardware shipping delays, swapping of memory, OS choices (xp64, then Vista 64) swapping the motherboard, and eventually solving the problem with a Bios update.
Needless to say I've gone through many levels of frustration during the whole process, but at the same time I really have felt supported by pudget the whole time. My contact person has been quick with updates most of the time, and has always been good at not making promises that he couldn't keep.
In the last week I've spent so much time researching computer components that I decided to just build my own one more time, and when I realized how huge my mark up was it really did make even more sense. But there really is a bit of irony though because my last machine was painstakingly built up with the help of a knowledgeable friend for the exact same purpose and I had a bios gremlin the haunted me for the past 3 years...
So to bring this long story to a finish, I sent an e-mail to Pudget today saying that after a lot of thought, too much computer research, and of course way too much waiting, I'd decided to cancle the order. This had already been discussed previously and the plan was to make a final decision today. I recieved a very nice call from a manager just an hour or so later who was very sympathetic to the whole situation.
As it turned out my computer had finally made ith though the last phase of QA and was ready to ship. Considering all I'd been through he offered to ship it next day for free and let me demo the machine with an unconditional 30 return and no restocking fee. At the moment I'm still pretty set on the idea of building an SLI machine myself- but at the same time I realized that even in this worst of all imaginable scenerios, I as a customer never felt negleted. That's a really had thing to find these days even in the best of situations, so to find a company that really did manage to fall flat on their face in terms of expectations, but still maintain customer support and confidence is really something that stands out.
About 10 minutes after I got off the phone I recieved an email summary of my newly completed system complete with thermal images in both an idle and loaded configuration. It's just a little touch, but really that is what makes the difference between high quality and useless junk. My new test drive toy should arrive monday morning; I can't decide if I want to to be amazing, or if I want to need a little more. I guess too much geeking out on specs the last week has really started to sink in. Either way it's nice to know that there's a whole crew of people to support me regardless of my decision.
Pudget definately isn't the cheapest, and they don't offer every component known to man, but if you're in the market for a team of people that will take the time to do the job right, and provide quality human interaction the whole way through the process they may be a very good choice.
Metal Face - Monday, February 26, 2007 - link
It looks like Puget may have scrapped their Certified Systems programicthy - Friday, February 16, 2007 - link
I've been considering buying a computer from Puget Systems for some time now, so I was quite glad to see the article. I especially appreciate that you calculated the markup for a computer, although it would have been nice to see some details. Also, I want to mention the reason I've considered Puget Systems is they'll build a top of the line linux computer, which is nice because then you don't have to worry about issues with compatability and cutting-edge hardware. I'd like to offer the friendly suggestion that this would have been a useful piece of information for the article, as it's rather difficult to find a computer vendor that will build something that will be guaranteed for linux.Finally, I'd suggest checking out Envision Computer Solutions for a future article along these lines. I bought a PC from them and was very impressed. (Note: I have absolutely no personal or business relationship with them).
Imnotrichey - Friday, February 16, 2007 - link
yikes, i didnt see that part. 25% markup seems a bit extreme.JarredWalton - Friday, February 16, 2007 - link
Check out VoodooPC, Falcon Northwest, Alienware, and anyone else like that. Some of them seem to be about a 50% markup - and yes, I'm accounting for the cost of their custom paint jobs (where applicable).Imnotrichey - Friday, February 16, 2007 - link
Yes, I'm sure you are correct that this is better than those others. Just surprising to me, since I never looked into it. 5-10% I could understand, but making a 2000 buck system cost 2500 just doesn't seem worth it. Seems like someone would slip under that 25% mark up and force them to compete at that level.JeffDM - Sunday, February 18, 2007 - link
Given the costs of doing business, I really don't think it's extreme.In your example, the $2000 "system" isn't really a system, it is really just a pile of parts. It's part of the $500 extra that makes it into a system, the rest have to go to business expenses. The labor, procurement, warranty and support aren't free. There are a host of other business expenses in there too, running a business is not cheap.
runestone - Saturday, February 17, 2007 - link
I live in the nearby area of Puget Systems, here's my .02: when the A8nE-sli boards came out, they were hard to get. I noticed they had some; called them and got a quote of 275$, well past my threshold of gouging. I found one a day later for 100 less.I guess if you have the money to blow they have some nice systems.
anandtech02148 - Friday, February 16, 2007 - link
good taste, always begins with a computer case. Puget got it.Imnotrichey - Friday, February 16, 2007 - link
I agree, Puget system seems to give you so many top notch choices