Hardware Articles

Ivy Bridge CPU TIM Paste Replacement

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Even before launch of the Intel Ivy Bridge CPUs in April 2012, it was discovered that the CPUs were running a bit hotter than expected. The TIM paste was proven to be the culprit by the Japanese site PC Watch when they reported that by replacing the TIM paste they saw a load temperature drop of 8-11 *C at stock clock speeds, and an amazing 15-20*C drop in load temperatures when overclocked to 4.6 GHz.

We decided that it was time to do our own testing to see if anything has changed in recent months. The result was some very interesting data that caught us a bit by surprise.

Product Review: Asus P8C WS

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The Asus P8C WS is a workstation class motherboard that includes many features sought after by businesses and home users alike. Most notably, it supports Intel E3 Xeon processors and ECC memory, making it a very stable platform. The varied types of ports and headers also makes it great for machines where backwards compatibility with older devices is critical.

How Ambient Temperatures Affect Your PC

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It stands to reason that the hotter the ambient air, the hotter a computer will run and the faster the system fans will spin to try to keep the individual components running cool. While this in itself is common sense, exactly how much hotter components run as the ambient temperature increases is not common knowledge. This information is very useful for us at Puget Systems to use when configuring a customer’s computer, but is also useful to determine if reporting thermal testing results as “degrees above ambient” (as many hardware reviewers do) is actually accurate. To find out the exact ratio, we took a common system configuration and tested it across a range of ambient temperature levels.

Navigating Windows 8 on a PC

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The new Windows interface 8 is a major point of controversy at the moment, but whether you love it or hate it, there is certainly a learning curve. Since it was largely designed with touch interfaces in mind, there are a few navigation obstacles that come up when using a keyboard and mouse. In this guide, we will go over basic keyboard/mouse navigation as well as some of the more advanced features of the Metro interface.

Product Review: BitFenix Prodigy

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The BitFenix Prodigy has received quite a bit of attention on the web recently, but the PC community is divided over whether or not it is actually good chassis. While it is bigger than a normal mini-ITX chassis, it offers a very wide range of cooling and hard drive customization options. In this article we will be looking at these customization options and many other features to determine if this chassis would be a good addition to our current chassis product line.

Video Card Performance: 2GB vs 4GB Memory

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Similar video cards are often available in versions with more than one memory size. The GeForce GTX 680 is an example, and comes in both 2GB and 4GB variants. With computer components more is often better, but does doubling the memory on a video card like this actually help with game performance – and if so under what circumstances? Although single monitor resolutions only go so high, multi-monitor configurations via NVIDIA Surround or AMD Eyefinity allow for much higher resolutions where larger amounts of video memory may improve performance.

Introduction to PC Wireless Networking

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Wireless networking (also known as WiFi) has greatly evolved over the last few years and as a result has become increasing complex. This article is intended to give the reader the information necessary to make informed decisions when purchasing and configuring a wireless network in order to maximize the performance, speed, and reliability of the network.

Technology Primer: Low Voltage RAM

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Voltage is not typically thought of as a key specification for RAM, but can have a significant impact on system stability as it runs much cooler than standard RAM. In this article, we will be looking at Kingston Lovo and G.Skill Sniper RAM to see how well low voltage RAM performs compared to standard RAM and if it has a measurable impact on power draw and system temperatures.

How it Works: Intel SSD Caching

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SSD caching is not new, but is something we have not inspected closely since its introduction with the Z68 chipset. In this article, we will be answering the questions: What is SSD caching? How do you set up and configure SSD caching? And what kind of performance improvements you should expect by using it.

Introducing the New Puget Traverse Laptops

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With the recent launch of Intel’s new Ivy Bridge line of CPUs, Puget Systems has completely revamped our laptop product line to take advantage of the new improvements in technology. In this article, we will be going over the features found on this units as well as battery life estimates and thermal performance measurements.