Most Reliable PC Hardware of 2013
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 2013 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 2013.
NZXT Kraken G10 Review
The Kraken G10 from NZXT tackles GPU cooling in a way that we at Puget Systems have always wanted to see, but have not had the time or expertise to make happen ourselves. Instead of providing a whole cooling solution, the Kraken G10 is simply a metal bracket and fan that allows you to mount various different closed-loop coolers. These coolers are traditionally used for CPUs and allow you to custom tailor your video card cooling much like you can for your CPU.
Is CPU Base Frequency Still a Relevant Spec?
Using numerous technologies, CPUs are able to dynamically adjust their frequency based on how much load is being put on it. The end result is much greater efficiency, but it calls into question whether the base frequency of a CPU really means anything on modern processors since a CPU will rarely spend much of it’s time at that advertised frequency.
Using RHEL / CentOS 6.5 with the Intel Xeon Phi
Can you use the new RHEL/CentOS 6.5 release with the Xeon Phi … yes! But, there is a gotcha that we will need to work around. Read on.
Money Alone Can Not Buy You PC Happiness
At Puget Systems, we build extremely high end PCs each and every day. Some of our PCs are used as high powered workstations, where they are pushed to their limits every hour of every day. Others might be the expensive play-things for those of whom price is no object. Is there a such thing as a PC that is TOO high end?
How to Select a Traverse Laptop
Unlike desktop computers that sport large cases, ample power, and generally remain stationary, laptops can be confusing to contrast and compare. Desktop computers are typically much easier to upgrade than laptops so when you’re selecting a laptop, it’s a good idea to ensure it includes the level of performance you require from day one.
For example, the graphics card that’s used to power games or render complex 3D objects can be simple to upgrade in a desktop computer, whereas you may not have many, if any options to upgrade the graphical performance on your laptop. Swapping out CPUs and drives can be done, but again, you usually have fewer options than with a desktop PC.
Taking a computer (not laptop) on a plane
Can you fly with a computer (not laptop) in your carry-on bag. Sure! With some restrictions of course…
A Small Issue
Most of my career has been spent working for large companies where employee manuals fill a 3-ring binder, policies number into the hundreds and metrics are used to measure the worth and effectiveness of employees.
Puget Systems hasn’t been around long enough nor have we grown so large that every issue can be solved by creating a new policy. When employees don’t have dozens of policies and procedures governing how they get their work done, their actions might not always been predictable.
Radeon R9 290X Performance Analysis
AMD’s new Radeon R9 290X includes a hardware switch that changes the card between two fan profiles called “Quiet” and “Uber”. The Quiet profile makes the card run quieter at the cost of performance, but we have found that online reviews show much less of a performance drop than we tested ourselves. In this article, we decided to expand our normal testing to discover what might be causing this discrepancy.
Impact of PCI-E Speed on Gaming Performance
Many hardware sites have shown in the past that video cards do not show any performance decrease by running in x8 mode and cannot utilize the larger bandwidth provided by the latest Gen3 specification. However, video cards are getting faster and faster so we felt it this is still true. Also, with the gaining popularity of 4k displays, we also felt it was important to see if the PCI-E revision/speed would affect a video card’s performance at the much more demanding 4k resolution.