Puget Systems and iBUYPOWER: two sides of the system integrator coin

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.