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The Top Video Cards (as determined by our customers)

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When it comes to building a custom PC, one of the most important selections is the graphics card. What used to be viewed as a distinction, often limited to gaming systems is now a vital part of many computers ranging from post-production workstations to trading PCs requiring support for 8+ monitors.

Since the number of choices for graphics cards can be overwhelming, we cull through many brands and models until we find those which meet our performance and reliability standards. Only then do we offer specific brands and models for placement in a computer crafted by Puget Systems.

Solid State Drives Soar in Popularity

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It wasn’t long ago that Solid State Drives (SSD) were considered a luxury item, reserved for those who demanded drive speeds only SSDs can deliver. The first generation of SSDs were not only limited in capacity (40 and 60 GB models were popular) but were very expensive, often costing more than $500. That makes for a difficult sell when a mechanical drive could be had for about half the the price and nearly 10x the capacity.

Starting in the first quarter of 2011, companies such as Intel, Corsair, Samsung and other began dropping prices on their SSDs. At Puget Systems we’ve found Intel to build a reliable and fast SSD at a reasonable price and have consolidated our offerings around their main lines.

#Fail

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If you want to work at Puget Systems you have to be ready for things to work a bit differently than your last job. You see, here, we are obsessed about a few things and one of them is failure. Everything and everyone has every failure, ever, tracked in our database. Want to know what the failure rate is for a particular stick of RAM? We know it. Want to know how many times your favorite employee has forgotten to add the required build notes to an order? We document their every transgression. We fail things for even the most seemingly inconsequential reason, right down to the smallest scratch you might not have even noticed. Perfection matters. Every week, during our staff meetings, all of the logged failures from the previous week are listed for everyone to see and you get to share with everyone your epic fail.

Tough stuff for the Puget staff, huh?

Not really. Nobody is running around, ducking for cover, while avoiding the axe from Jon. Although that might make for an interesting game it’s not what we do all of this for…it’s for you.

“For what? My entertainment?” you might ask. Nope, for your future sanity.

SSDs: Advertised vs. Actual Performance

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Solid state discs are amazingly fast compared to their more traditional platter counterparts, but we keep hearing over and over on the web that people are getting lower performance than they expected based on the manufacturer’s advertised performance numbers. In this article, we will be looking at why this is and whether it is normal or or not.

Review: Corsair Hydro H60 CPU Cooler (Rev.2)

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Closed-loop liquid cooling units are a great way to get exceptional cooling without the hassle and risk of a traditional liquid cooling systems. The Corsair Hydro H60 CPU Cooler is one such cooler that has recently had some improvements made. In this article, we will be taking a look at the changes to determine the effect on both the overall cooling performance and noise levels.

The Digital Ecosystem

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For many years my computing universe orbited around my Windows PC. For instance, the first time I searched Google, updated my status on Facebook or replied to an email I was using a PC.

But that’s not the case for many kids today where their first interaction with a computer is an iPod Touch, tablet or smartphone. Their computing universe resides on a small touch screen, and is dominated by apps. My world recently clashed with that of my 11-year old daughter when I asked for her email address and she replied that nobody emails anymore.

Most Reliable PC Hardware of 2012

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At Puget Systems, we track a lot of data but one of the most important things we track is the failure rates of individual components. Reliability is of our primary values, so this data is invaluable for tracking both individual component, product line, and overall brand failure rates. With 2012 coming to a close, we thought we make public a bit of this data to let you know what hardware we found to be the most reliable in 2012.

The Craft of PC Building

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Some recent news from Apple is creating a lot of talk about manufacturing technology products right here in the US. This is reflecting a move many manufacturers are making by insourcing many aspects of their production.

These companies are learning what we have known here for a long time: we are better off building and supporting the things we sell.

Most of these companies are making the decision to bring manufacturing lines back to the USA for financial reasons. Although every company has to make a profit to plow ahead I think there are some other reasons, besides the financial, that drive our decision to keep virtually all of our operations in-house. Here at Puget Systems those other reasons are also the two big drivers in our decision making process: customer experience and quality of product. No place in our business do those two values show more than in the production department. Here, the craftsmanship of PC building is taken on by a dedicated staff of technicians that leave their personal touch on every system they build.

Far Cry 3 Certified on Puget Systems Deluge

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Far Cry 3 uses Dunia Engine 2 as its graphics engine, which is the updated version of the Dunia Engine found in Far Cry 2. In this article, we will be benchmarking Far Cry 3 on our Deluge A2 and Deluge L2 systems to both certify that the game runs without any problems and to find what video card you should use to be able to play the game at multiple different video settings.

Optimizing AMD Trinity for Budget Gaming

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AMD’s Trinity APU – essentially a CPU and GPU combined into one unit-
is a great way to create a budget gaming system when using a discrete video card is not an option. However, due to the limited performance available with any onboard graphics, it is important to thoroughly optimize it to get the best possible performance. In this article, we will be looking at the components that have an influence on the performance of the integrated graphics in AMD’s Trinity APUs.