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Product Review: Fractal Design Define R4

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Fractal Design’s exclusivity agreement with Newegg has recently ended, so over the past month we have been looking at a number of their chassis to determine if there were any that we would be interested in offering to our customers.

After looking at a number of different models, we found the Define R4. The Define R4 has an emphasis on quiet operation (as evidenced by the front door and built-in acoustic dampening) which fits well in our product line; but the size, number and location of the fan mounts means that it can very easily be converted into a chassis with very powerful cooling. In this article, we will be looking at the features of this chassis and examining it’s cooling potential to see if it is a chassis that could find a place in our product line.

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.

Core i3 vs. i5 vs. i7 – Which one is right for you?

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With each new generation of Intel processors, the answer to this question gets more complex. There are currently three distinct product lines including processors named ‘Core i5’, three product lines including processors named ‘Core i3’, and a whopping five distinct lines including processors with the ‘Core i7’ name.

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.

Two computers, one mouse, no KVM required.

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It’s relatively common for power users and those in the IT industry to have two PCs at their desk. One may be a laptop or maybe just an older machine that runs some necessary legacy software or has a lot of data on it that may be difficult and/or time-consuming to migrate to the newer system. Some use a hardware KVM (Keyboard, Video, Mouse) switch to change their screen and input device connection from system to system, while others just have a seperate set of peripherals for each machine. Each of those methods has it’s own set of advantages and drawbacks, but both methods are conducive to a cluttered desktop and a nonsensically-segregated style of work.

Our “Favorite” Games: Farmville

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One of my favorite scenes from the film, The Shawshank Redemption, is when Andy and Red share stories of the places each would visit if set free. The scene ends with Andy stating, mostly to himself, “Get busy living or get busy clicking”.

So I might be off by a word, but I have no doubt that’s what Andy would have said if he had spent the last three weeks playing Farmville. If you enjoy clicking around the screen to do everything from plowing a field to milking a cow to harvesting eggs from a chicken this is your game.

Continuing with our series of “favorite” games here at Puget Systems, I decided to jot down a few of the experiences I’ve had while perfecting my farming skills.

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.

Our Favorite Games: Heroes of Newerth

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Heroes of Newerth (HoN) is a free-to-play Action Real-Time Strategy (ARTS)-style game loosely modeled after the classic Defense of the Ancients mod for Warcraft III, and it’s currently one of my favorite games. ARTS games have a top-down view similar to an RTS (eg. Age of Empires, Warcraft, Starcraft) but emphasize single-unit development and de-emphasize base building. Each person starts with control of a single unit or ‘hero’, and often controls only that unit for the entirety of the game. Teams compete in 3v3 or 5v5 games usually lasting 30-60 minutes depending on game mode.