OS Installation

I have built computers myself, and had other companies build computers for me … without a doubt, Puget Systems is the best. This is the best computer service money can buy. Puget Systems has raised the bar!

The machine booted right up and I was not bombarded with special offers and crap you get from the big makers.

I wanted to take this opportunity to thank, as well as praise, Puget Systems, their sales personnel, their technicians and their management team for their professionalism, communication skills, patience and expertise in the area of providing the electronics consumer – in particular those in need of quality and tailor made personal computers – a product that the procurer can use, feel confident in and know that they had a hand in its design.

I am a small business owner who requires computer electronics that are dedicated to the work that our company does, equipment that is powerful, reliable and consistent in how it helps us run our company. We are dependent on those systems working flawlessly, require little or no downtime and devoid of the need to maintain an on premise IT professional, let alone one that we must contract for. Those issues were in the forefront of our minds after years and years of purchasing Dell equipment, peripherals and support from a once great company that has been putting out inferior and boilerplate electronic systems at inflated prices for years. Being locked into a finite warranty, poor customer service, poor communications with support, plenty of misunderstandings during consultation and requests for assistance is no fun and ultimately quite expensive in the long run.
That is why we decided to try a company that custom builds – in consult with the customer – a personal computer or system that meets the needs of the customer, avoids the bloatware and unneeded add-ons, not to mention the technical problems and breakdowns that mark the experience we have had with Dell over a period exceeding 20 years. We needed a system that utilized a variety of components, all of which were tested to be capable and reliable, combined in a cabinet of choice, not a limited choice of parameters and hardware.

Puget systems, I’m happy to say, met our needs … and then some. Without going into detail, let me say that Puget systems – in particular Wilson Chau, my salesperson – was courteous, knowledgeable, patient and understanding. He maintained communication with me, mostly through over 40 emails, over a period of weeks – answering questions, addressing some of the most mundane issues and major concerns regarding the design, components, potential expansion of the system, cost and shipping of my order. And then when we (actually I) had settled on the final proposal and design, was preparing to complete the transaction, an unanticipated problem arose – on my end – forcing me to cancel the order even after things were finalized.

Mr. Chau and Puget systems understood the occasional glitch that does occur in business, allowed me to obtain a full refund, cancel the order, but still maintain the details of the order on their site so that I might purchase same once the “glitch” was addressed. I believe that the manner in which they dealt with me during that difficult time is indicative of their professionalism and understanding of their customer’s needs.

Needless to say that after a few weeks I renewed my order – with one major change suggested by Mr. Chau – completed the transaction without fanfare, and awaited delivery of my system.

I was impressed with the information – including photos of thermal imaging, testing results as well as step by step updates on the build process – provided to me about my system. There was clear and concise information provided about shipping, tracking and delivery which, by the way, was two to three days sooner than anticipated.
Upon arrival, I discovered that the system was well packaged to avoid damage during shipping. It was easy to unpack and there were easy to understand instructions provided, along with a detailed manual accompanying the system that lays out testing parameters/results at each level of production. All cables and related hardware, including a start-up/repair disc, were included in the package.

I was even more impressed to discover just how quiet my new system is. It sports a Solid State hard drive which is so quiet that I find myself looking to see if the system is actually on. This system is fast, does not get particularly warm, and responds like no other system I have owned in the past. Physically, the system is impressive and considerably larger in actual size than what I have owned in the past from the larger computer manufacturers. But given its ability to expand with additional drives, memory and internal hardware, it is worth it. What’s more, you can see obvious care and attention to detail in the cabling, the installation of hardware and the quality of the internal components. Its like comparing a BMW or Mercedes-Benz to an Oldsmobile or Pontiac (and, no, the fact that those latter companies are no longer in business is not lost on me).

I can’t recall a time in the past when I felt so involved in the choice of components and options when making a major product investment – including purchasing a factory ordered vehicle – than I have during this experience. I am totally satisfied with every aspect of the service and product provided by Puget Systems. I would recommend them to anyone who wanted control over the design and build of a quality computer system for their personal use or business.

And, truth be told, I am now preparing to place another order with Puget Systems since our business is in the process of expanding, something that would require a quality computer system or server.

I would never purchase another Dell or similar product off the assembly line for any of my future computing needs. Custom builds from Puget Systems is the way to go!

My old LGA 1156 motherboard died, and it was time to move to a modern system. I was able to configure a system through Puget Systems website that gave me exactly what I needed. The process was easy, and the fact that a real human being then reviewed my system was great. They made specific recommendations to fit my needs. I received the system today. It was really easy to set up and everything works great. It’s really well made, with great cable management.

I recently (Dec ’15) purchased a customized Deluge system from Puget: Win7-64; i7 6400K 4GB; Intel 750 400 GB pci-e ssd; 8GB ram; GTX 980 Ti 6GB GPU. I’ve been using computer systems since 1985, and since 1990 I’ve had 7 custom systems built by various builders — the first was an 80366 33MHz based system with “Turbo”! Prior to buying from Puget, I’ve had 3 gaming systems built, each from a different builder – an XP, a Vista, and a Win7. While each of those systems was OK, for its generation and my gaming preferences (primarily flight simulation), I can say without qualification that my experience with Puget has been (and continues to be) head-and-shoulders above all the rest: outstanding pre-order build advice (thank you Jeff Stubbers); superb build quality (thank you Oscar Tirado – this is the cleanest, most professional case build I’ve seen – simply elegant and tight); thorough software/hardware set-up and testing (thank you Kyle Polen and Josh Raye) and superior packaging for shipping (thank you Jessica Denhoff). With all of my other builds, the pre-and-post-build support was either grudging and unprofessional or non-existent. With Puget, it has been reliable, professional, and extremely fast. And with what I’ve seen so far I’m sure this excellent customer service relationship with the folks at Puget will continue.
Why I chose Puget: I’m by no means a PC power-user, but I keep fairly current with hardware and software developments and am knowledgeable enough to work comfortably with basic bios and software settings, adding drives, add-on cards , memory, etc. While I could probably build my own system, I don’t have the day-to-day experience and certainly not the expertise to trust myself to do it well. In choosing a builder for this new system I did quite a bit of research, including 2nd-party reviews of various boutique and larger builders. I noted three consistent themes, especially with 2nd-party reviews (Maximum PC, for example): Puget provides superior customer service, consistently uses high quality (and thus more expensive) and stable components (they do not generally offer components that they have not thoroughly tested, especially for reliability), and the cost of a Puget system tends to be higher than many other builders (especially the “big-box” gaming builders). In my experiences with custom builders over 15 years and 7 systems, as I noted before, and now with Puget, the first two themes have held true – exceptionally so. Also based on my experiences, I’ll offer a few thoughts on the last: cost. First, for me, the support Puget provides, before, during, and after a sale, combined with seamless, transparent access to every stage of the build process, makes any small extra expense well worth the money. Second, the cost differential may actually turn out to be a bit of a red herring, for any but the more knowledgeable and experienced power-users. When you compare the basic costs of pre-configured systems between, say, Puget and places like IBuyPower, Cyberpower, etc., a similarly pre-configured system can be more expensive at Puget, by a couple of hundred dollars. But if you go into the configurator menus and begin to build “your” system, you begin to notice that almost any components – memory, storage, GPU’s, etc., from the other builders are generally only available as “name brand” sources for a component at an increased cost. Puget typically only offers those “name brand” components to begin with, and then only the components they’ve tested for reliability and stability. With the menus it’s very easy (I believe intentionally so) to quickly add or upgrade components, on the “more-is-better” principle, or to add eye-candy to your system, so that you end up with a much more expensive and bloated system – one which may not actually perform better with your intended applications, and may even end up degrading performance. This, I confess, happened to me with my last “advice-free” build: I added an unnecessary liquid cooling system (the name-brand rather than the standard generic no-name), dual GPU’s in SLI (when my primary gaming apps cannot use SLI, something I didn’t know at the time), leaving virtually no space for add-ons, since the gpu’s occupied two slots and blocked two more on the mobo; dual drives in a RAID array (difficult to ever modify, and nearly impossible to back out of without major data loss); an unnecessarily overpowered P/S; unnecessary and noisy extra case fans, and so on. The system worked well enough for seven years, but the final cost, in 2009, was actually more than what I paid for this new Puget system. With Puget, in consultation before I committed to buy, Jeff Stubbers worked with my preferences for using the system and recommended alterations to the configuration that actually reduced on some unneeded components and made room – given my budget -for better components for my uses: the super-fast Intel pci-e ssd, the i7K CPU, and the Titan GPU. In the end I got an extremely fast, stable, and quiet high-end system that came in, including shipping, some $200 under my budget and some $500 less than my 2009 system. And a bonus I truly appreciate: zero bloatware, zero unwanted manufacturer apps, “trial” software, anti-virus programs that themselves act like viruses seeded throughout my registry. And the bios and all firmware, drivers and software, the ssd – everything updated to the latest stable releases. These thorough updates and tweaks have never happened with any previous build. As an example, on my 2009 build the Gigabyte mobo arrived with the first, factory release bios version, 11 versions out of date, and caused memory conflicts with Windows from the get-go, until I flashed it myself.
In sum, Puget has been an excellent, cost-effective experience all around, one I highly recommend.

This is the first time I’ve ever bought a custom PC, and while looking at reviews for custom built PC companies online, I was intrigued by the fact that Puget Systems offers quiet PC builds. The one I was using almost had the drone of an airplane! I was very surprised by the number of options available to me, and was very impressed by the efficiency of the ordering process. I looked at some other sites and for me, the detailed explanations for the different components was much easier to find and understand than on other websites.

Living in Hawaii, I was skeptical that the PC would arrive in one piece and in working order, but the packing was more than adequate and my PC arrived just fine.

As for the “quiet” part, I can’t believe the difference in the noise level! If it weren’t for the blinking LED on the case, I wouldn’t even know the PC was on! Would definitely buy another PC from Puget Systems in the future. You guys are awesome!

This is a terrific company. They put together excellent products, their service is fantastic. The detail, follow through and communication are all very good. There is not one thing they have not done well, and Puget has exceeded my expectations at every step. A pleasure doing business with this company.

I love this company they have great service and I haven’t even ordered one and can what these PC’s can do. I have seen the computers in action before because of friend who showed me one and what it can do. If I order one I’m without a doubt going to submit another review.

Very fast and reliable. They helped me configure my PC and I am very pleased with the entire process. I highly recommend them as they exceeded all my expectations!

I am so happy with my new computer and the excellent service from Puget Systems that I felt I should stop by here and write about my experience.

These folks are fantastic, highly competent, attentive to detail and provide customer satisfaction I can’t remember experiencing prior to this. Absolutely top notch carefully selected components, carefully put together, well tested. The website is phenomenal, has all the details about my order and the components, all the drivers ready for download, thermal images of PC running at full speed and idle, checklist of work performed and what needs to be done, personal information about technicians performing the work, etc. etc.

Very impressed with what I received, packaging, instructions, even a bag of goodies that I might need during setup (cables, etc).

Seriously exceeded my expectations and wowed by the experience. This purchase was well worth it!