Puget Systems Most Reliable Hardware of 2024

Introduction

Over the years, we have posted a range of articles covering the reliability of the hardware we use in our workstations. The exact topic has changed from article to article, but with 2024 at a close, we wanted to take the opportunity to call out specific brands and models of hardware that had exceptional reliability over the last year. Since the technology news tends to focus on brands and models that are having issues, we feel that it is important also to take the time to recognize exceptional products.

At Puget Systems, we pride ourselves on our in-depth hardware qualification process, which ensures that all of the hardware in our systems has excellent reliability. Although the industry is occasionally affected by a larger product line issue, we do our best to mitigate those ahead of time and otherwise work to take care of our customers with a defective component in their system. Due to this, it is very rare for us to see even industry-average failure rates which means that the products we are highlighting today are truly the cream of the crop.

About our Data

Before we get into the meat of this article, we want to clarify that this represents our experience here at Puget Systems and does not cover the entire computer hardware industry.

We prefer to keep a relatively tight product line, only utilizing alternatives when supply is a concern. That means that instead of offering every model of motherboard, GPU, or other hardware available on the market, we tend to stick with specific brands with which we have established relationships to foster a healthy support and feedback loop. Because of this, we can only recognize the brands and models we carry and have sold enough units for us to draw meaningful conclusions. There are certainly other brands and models available that can be just as—or more—reliable, but since we have not used them, we can not give them the credit they deserve.

We will focus on the hardware used in our desktop workstation and rack station sales, not our mobile workstation (laptop) or server lines. Both have very different hardware compared to our more typical workstations and are generally not as interesting because the hardware we use is very targeted (laptops) or extremely workflow-specific (servers).

The sample size of our data varies based on the category, as some, like CPUs, we have a very limited number of models we sell and thus have very high sales numbers per product. For others, like motherboards, we carry multiple models and brands, so sales numbers per model are quite a bit lower. In both cases, we will limit the hardware we call out to those that have had enough sales for us to be confident in their superb reliability, typically those with at least 200 sales.

With these points in mind, let’s give some kudos!

CPU (Processor)

Starting with CPUs, 2024 was a fairly rocky year in terms of reliability. Our overall failure rate for all the processors we sold was about 5% (with about half failing during our testing process and half failing in the field), which has been the norm for the last few years but much higher than CPUs were in the past. With the number of features that have moved from the motherboard to the CPU (including PCIe and memory controllers) and how far processors are pushed with the various boosting technologies, gone are the days when a CPU failure was largely unheard of.

Client CPUs like AMD Ryzen™ desktop and Intel Core™ had various problems this year, with the most known being the Intel Core 13/14th gen stability issues. AMD Ryzen desktop also had some issues for us at points, though not to the extent of Intel, and the majority of those problems were caught in our testing and burn-in process.

When it comes to the most reliable processor we sold in our workstations in 2024, we are actually going to give that recognition not to a single model or even a single product family. Instead, we want to give the honors to both the AMD Ryzen™ Threadripper™ 7000 and AMD Ryzen™ Threadripper™ PRO 7000WX-Series product lines.

Most Reliable Processors of 2024

The AMD Theadripper and Threadripper PRO families combined had less than a 2% failure rate overall and less than a 1% failure rate in the field (after the customer received the system). That is less than half the average for 2024, living up to the “reliability” portion of what is supposed to make up a workstation-class processor.

GPU (Video Card)

2024 was a very good year for GPUs in terms of reliability, averaging just a 0.68% failure rate overall. Unfortunately, most of those occurred in the field, but even with that considered, this is still an improvement over previous years. As you might expect from the relatively high overall reliability of GPUs this past year, there are a good number of specific models that qualified as “very reliable” in 2024, and they all fall within three different product families. So, much like with processors, we want to give kudos to three different product lines rather than individual specific models: NVIDIA RTX™ Ada Generation, ASUS GeForce RTX™ 40-Series ProArt, and ASUS GeForce RTX™ 40-Series TUF.

Most Reliable GPUs of 2024

Across each of these three product lines, the failure rate was exceptional. The NVIDIA RTX Ada Generation and ASUS GeForce RTX 40-Series ProArt lines had only a single shop and field failure each, for well under a failure rate of less than 0.5%. Even better was the ASUS GeForce RTX 40-Series TUF, with a perfect track record (a 0% failure rate) after hundreds of GPUs sold.

Motherboard

Motherboards have hovered around 5% in terms of overall failure rate for quite a while, and 2024 was no different, closing the year at 4.9% overall. The good news is that most of those failures occurred while we were assembling and testing the system, and only 1% of customers had to deal with a failed motherboard out in the field.

There is much less of a pattern than there was for processors or GPUS, but we want to recognize one specific motherboard model: the Asus TUF B760M-PLUS WIFI II.

Most Reliable Motherboard of 2024

The Asus TUF B760M-PLUS WIFI II had far fewer issues than any other motherboard we used, with only a single failure in the shop and one in the field. That is well under a 1% failure rate overall, which is exceptional for modern motherboards.

RAM (Memory)

RAM has become fairly reliable in recent years, at least when following JDEC specifications as we do in our systems. Overall, we saw just shy of a .5% failure rate in 2024, with two-thirds of those caught in the shop during our assembly and testing process. Only a small 0.16% (or 1 in 625) out of the tens of thousands of sticks we sold failed while out in the field.

Like many of our product lines, we tend to focus on a limited number of brands based on the quality, features, and engineering relationships we have developed with them. In 2024, the two brands we used in most cases were Micron and Kingston. Between these two brands, quite a few RAM models were terrific in 2024, but we specifically want to call out the Kingston DDR5-5600 32GB (KVR56U46BD8-32).

Most Reliable RAM of 2024

The Kingston DDR5-5600 32GB RAM was not only the most common model in our workstations in 2024 by a wide margin but also by far the best in terms of overall reliability, with an overall failure rate of just 0.15%!

We also want to give an honorable mention to all the Kingston and Micron ECC Registered RAM we used in 2024. What makes this type of RAM special is the extremely low field failure rate (failures that happened after we shipped the system) of just 0.07%. The total failure rate of these sticks was about on par with the more standard non-ECC RAM, which means we had to deal with bad sticks just as often during assembly and testing, but the end user ended up with far fewer problems.

Storage

The storage drives we use are currently fairly reliable, and 2024 only saw a 1.6% failure rate on average. Unfortunately, two-thirds of these failures occurred in the field, which is not ideal. We do everything we can to cause “weak” components to fail before we ship the system, but still, 1% of the drives we sold failed in the field. This is a good reminder to keep on top of backing up your data!

Between NVMe, SATA SSD, and platter drives, we primarily carry three brands: Kingson, Samsung, and Seagate. Across all the drives we sold in 2024, one band and product line stood apart: the Kingston KC3000 series of NVMe drives in 1TB, 2TB, and 4TB capacities.

Most Reliable Storage of 2024

Not only are the Kingston KC3000 line of drives the most common ones used in our workstations in 2024, with many thousands sold, but their reliability was also exceptional. Their overall failure rate was just a tiny 0.08% (or 1 in 1,250), and only a single drive had issues in the field!

PSU (Power Supply)

While not as talked about as key components like CPU, GPU, RAM, and storage, having a highly reliable power supply is critical since a failure here can cause other components to fail as well. Since Puget Systems started back in 2000, we have used several different brands of power supplies, changing due to either reliability concerns or supply constraints. For the last few years, however, we have largely stuck with Super Flower‘s LEADEX power supplies.

The failure rates we have seen are a terrific proof-point for why we have standardized on Super Flower. We use various models depending on the capacity required in our systems, with the top three in terms of both units sold and reliability being the Super Flower LEADEX VII Gold ATX 3.0 1000W, Super Flower LEADEX VII Gold ATX 3.0 1300W, and Super Flower LEADEX Titanium ATX 3.0 1600W.

Most Reliable Power Supplies of 2024

These three power supply models combine for an extremely low 0.26% failure rate, with two-thirds of those issues found during our assembly and testing process. That means that less than 0.1% (or less than 1 in 1,000!) of these power supplies we shipped had any issues for our customers in the field.

Conclusion

Given the amount of time and effort we dedicate to ensuring that the hardware used in our workstations is the highest quality possible, it can sometimes be hard to give individual brands and product models the recognition they rightfully deserve. Anything you see used in our Puget Workstations you can know you can depend on, so if you are looking for a broader list of terrific hardware brands and models, just check out any of our configure pages!

Even with our incredibly high standards for quality and reliability, some products always rise above and manage to stand out among the greats. To summarize this article, we want to recognize the following brands, product lines, and individual models:

• AMD – Threadripper and Threadripper PRO CPUs
• NVIDIA – RTX Ada Generation GPUs
• ASUS – GeForce RTX 40-Series ProArt and TUF GPU lines, and the TUF B760M-PLUS WIFI II motherboard
• Kingston – DDR5-5600 32GB RAM, and KC3000 Gen4 NVMe storage drives
• Super Flower – LEADEX VII Gold ATX 3.0 1000W/1300W and LEADEX Titanium ATX 3.0 1600W power supplies.

All of the above were exceptional in 2024, and we see no indication that 2025 will be any different. At Puget Systems, reliability is a cornerstone of everything we do; it doesn’t matter how fast a computer is if it constantly crashes! If you prefer to go the DIY route and build your own systems, we hope this list gave you some guidance for what brands and models to use in your next system. And if you are looking for a partner to work with to get you a custom-tailored workstation for your workflow, give us a call!