Puget Systems and iBUYPOWER: two sides of the system integrator coin
by Jarred Walton on February 15, 2007 10:25 AM EST- Posted in
- Systems
Closing Thoughts
As we mentioned already, all of the systems we are discussing today have at least a few components that are no longer available -- or at least components that are not generally considered the best choices for the particular price range, and the manufacturers recognize that. Given that all of the components are off-the-shelf parts, the performance is basically in line with what we've seen from similar systems. The midrange iBUYPOWER comes with a slower processor and graphics card and therefore doesn't do as well in gaming benchmarks or CPU intensive tasks, but at less than half the price of the other two systems it still has plenty to offer. Rather than spend a lot of time and effort putting together graphs that are basically meaningless, we felt a look at these two system integrators focusing on the experience rather than looking at which one scores a few percent higher would be more beneficial. After all, there are many different ways to put together a system, and individual needs will determine which components are the most important. Feel free to let us know what you think about this approach, although we should also note that we are going to be focusing more on laptops in the future and that we may not be doing any prebuilt system reviews for a while.
For those of you wondering about performance, there was nothing particularly unexpected from any of the systems. The iBUYPOWER quad core configuration was very fast in benchmarks that could utilize multiple cores, but the CrossFire graphics were not able to match the performance offered by 8800 GTX SLI. The system overall was slower than the Gateway FX530 that we recently reviewed, but that's not too surprising considering the Gateway processor was overclocked 20%. For the price, anyone looking at QX6700 with X1950 CrossFire would be much better off purchasing the overclocked Gateway setup; on the other hand, those interested in maximum gaming performance would want to upgrade to a 680i motherboard and 8800 GTX SLI GPUs. Performance of the Puget Systems computer was similar to what you would expect from 7900 GTX SLI, only slightly slower, with the graphics cards still being the bottleneck at higher resolutions. The E6700 processor is more than fast enough for all but the most demanding tasks, and until we see games that can utilize more than two processor cores the CPU isn't going to hold you back. It's really a shame that you can't get the GTO cards anymore, as the price and performance offered was quite attractive -- better in most games than GeForce 7950 GT. Finally, the midrange iBUYPOWER was obviously slower than most of the other systems we've looked at lately, but the 7900 GS graphics card is clearly the limiting factor. It's still a good midrange offering and a reasonable match for the E6400 processor. What it comes down to is that gaming benchmarks end up being comparisons of the graphics cards used, while the other benchmarks are constrained by the CPU. Spending a lot of time analyzing benchmarks that don't tell us anything new just doesn't seem to be necessary for this particular type of article.
When looking at these two companies, both are among the smaller players in the computer market -- quite a few people have probably never heard of Puget Systems -- but smaller doesn't always mean worse. iBUYPOWER is relatively well-known among enthusiasts, and with good reason. They offer very competitive prices and an excellent selection of components. If your primary concern is saving money, and perhaps if you aren't interested in putting a lot of effort into building your own system, paying them what amounts to a couple hundred dollars to save yourself time is definitely a reasonable choice. Several iBUYPOWER systems are also offered at Newegg now, so you can often find them for even lower prices but without the ability to customize any of the components. The warranty that comes with any iBUYPOWER system should probably be looked at more as a guarantee that the hardware will continue to work for three years rather than as providing an excellent level of technical support, though that's not to say that they weren't able to answer our questions. It's a step up from building your own computer and doing all of the technical support yourself, but we would be hesitant to recommend iBUYPOWER as a solution for people that aren't at least comfortable doing some of their own troubleshooting.
Puget Systems takes the opposite approach, focusing on exceptional customer service and providing only the highest quality components. The selection isn't as large, but they cover all of the important choices very well. (You can also have Puget Systems custom order parts they don't normally stock if you want, but if you know and care enough to have differing opinions from what they normally stock then you should probably just build your own system.) Puget Systems' prices are going to be higher than many other companies -- think Alienware and Falcon Northwest without customized paint jobs and you're not too far off -- but the cost also gets you a better build quality and customer support compared to most system integrators. If you want a high-performance computer and you need advice on the subject, Puget Systems looks like a very good choice, and they are more than willing to discuss your particular needs with you at length to make sure that you get the exact system you want/need. Would we personally shop at Puget Systems? Probably not, given the prices, but we certainly have friends and relatives that would be interested.
Basically, Puget Systems was almost the exact opposite of iBUYPOWER: better support quality for more money. Neither solution is going to be optimal for everyone, and some people are still going to want some of the options not offered by either company. There are definitely other system vendors out there worth a look, and we have reviewed computers from some of them. The simple fact of the matter is that the system integrator market tends to be pretty cutthroat, so businesses have to try and differentiate themselves. In general, the quality of service and support is one of those areas that can vary greatly from company to company. Other than that, the biggest factor for most people is going to be price, so if you're in the market for a new computer you should add Puget Systems and iBUYPOWER to the list of businesses you want to check out. You may end up going with someone else, but unless price is no concern it doesn't hurt to shop around.
As we mentioned already, all of the systems we are discussing today have at least a few components that are no longer available -- or at least components that are not generally considered the best choices for the particular price range, and the manufacturers recognize that. Given that all of the components are off-the-shelf parts, the performance is basically in line with what we've seen from similar systems. The midrange iBUYPOWER comes with a slower processor and graphics card and therefore doesn't do as well in gaming benchmarks or CPU intensive tasks, but at less than half the price of the other two systems it still has plenty to offer. Rather than spend a lot of time and effort putting together graphs that are basically meaningless, we felt a look at these two system integrators focusing on the experience rather than looking at which one scores a few percent higher would be more beneficial. After all, there are many different ways to put together a system, and individual needs will determine which components are the most important. Feel free to let us know what you think about this approach, although we should also note that we are going to be focusing more on laptops in the future and that we may not be doing any prebuilt system reviews for a while.
For those of you wondering about performance, there was nothing particularly unexpected from any of the systems. The iBUYPOWER quad core configuration was very fast in benchmarks that could utilize multiple cores, but the CrossFire graphics were not able to match the performance offered by 8800 GTX SLI. The system overall was slower than the Gateway FX530 that we recently reviewed, but that's not too surprising considering the Gateway processor was overclocked 20%. For the price, anyone looking at QX6700 with X1950 CrossFire would be much better off purchasing the overclocked Gateway setup; on the other hand, those interested in maximum gaming performance would want to upgrade to a 680i motherboard and 8800 GTX SLI GPUs. Performance of the Puget Systems computer was similar to what you would expect from 7900 GTX SLI, only slightly slower, with the graphics cards still being the bottleneck at higher resolutions. The E6700 processor is more than fast enough for all but the most demanding tasks, and until we see games that can utilize more than two processor cores the CPU isn't going to hold you back. It's really a shame that you can't get the GTO cards anymore, as the price and performance offered was quite attractive -- better in most games than GeForce 7950 GT. Finally, the midrange iBUYPOWER was obviously slower than most of the other systems we've looked at lately, but the 7900 GS graphics card is clearly the limiting factor. It's still a good midrange offering and a reasonable match for the E6400 processor. What it comes down to is that gaming benchmarks end up being comparisons of the graphics cards used, while the other benchmarks are constrained by the CPU. Spending a lot of time analyzing benchmarks that don't tell us anything new just doesn't seem to be necessary for this particular type of article.
When looking at these two companies, both are among the smaller players in the computer market -- quite a few people have probably never heard of Puget Systems -- but smaller doesn't always mean worse. iBUYPOWER is relatively well-known among enthusiasts, and with good reason. They offer very competitive prices and an excellent selection of components. If your primary concern is saving money, and perhaps if you aren't interested in putting a lot of effort into building your own system, paying them what amounts to a couple hundred dollars to save yourself time is definitely a reasonable choice. Several iBUYPOWER systems are also offered at Newegg now, so you can often find them for even lower prices but without the ability to customize any of the components. The warranty that comes with any iBUYPOWER system should probably be looked at more as a guarantee that the hardware will continue to work for three years rather than as providing an excellent level of technical support, though that's not to say that they weren't able to answer our questions. It's a step up from building your own computer and doing all of the technical support yourself, but we would be hesitant to recommend iBUYPOWER as a solution for people that aren't at least comfortable doing some of their own troubleshooting.
Puget Systems takes the opposite approach, focusing on exceptional customer service and providing only the highest quality components. The selection isn't as large, but they cover all of the important choices very well. (You can also have Puget Systems custom order parts they don't normally stock if you want, but if you know and care enough to have differing opinions from what they normally stock then you should probably just build your own system.) Puget Systems' prices are going to be higher than many other companies -- think Alienware and Falcon Northwest without customized paint jobs and you're not too far off -- but the cost also gets you a better build quality and customer support compared to most system integrators. If you want a high-performance computer and you need advice on the subject, Puget Systems looks like a very good choice, and they are more than willing to discuss your particular needs with you at length to make sure that you get the exact system you want/need. Would we personally shop at Puget Systems? Probably not, given the prices, but we certainly have friends and relatives that would be interested.
Basically, Puget Systems was almost the exact opposite of iBUYPOWER: better support quality for more money. Neither solution is going to be optimal for everyone, and some people are still going to want some of the options not offered by either company. There are definitely other system vendors out there worth a look, and we have reviewed computers from some of them. The simple fact of the matter is that the system integrator market tends to be pretty cutthroat, so businesses have to try and differentiate themselves. In general, the quality of service and support is one of those areas that can vary greatly from company to company. Other than that, the biggest factor for most people is going to be price, so if you're in the market for a new computer you should add Puget Systems and iBUYPOWER to the list of businesses you want to check out. You may end up going with someone else, but unless price is no concern it doesn't hurt to shop around.
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EvErywhErE - Saturday, October 25, 2008 - link
Great Article on Pudget! I stumbled accross them quite by accident last month after my work machine melted down... I was tight for time, didn't want to think about anything, and was planning on doing just a litle internet research to see if anyone could beat Dell for general price, performance, warrenty, and ease of assembly.I was instantly impressed with the pudget website, and the fact that a real person picked up the phone and seemed to know exactly what I needed. I explained that I was an mechanical engineer and that the machine would be used for CAD work about 90% of the time. 10 minutes later I recieved an e-mail link to a custom computer that served as a great starting point. I did just a little customizing and really felt quite happy knowing that I didn't have to spend the rest of my day weighing performance, stability, and an unknown amount of time troubleshooting that one unexpected thing.
I ended up going with an Intel Core 2 Quad Q9400 Quad-Core 2.66GHz, an Asus P5Q-E mother board, Quadro FX 1700, and 4Gig of ram. Not the most amazing machine out there, but more than enough to keep me working for another year or two.
As luck would have it my modest workstation proved to be a nightmare to get up and running... In the end it took a full 4 weeks to get everything up and running. This included some hardware shipping delays, swapping of memory, OS choices (xp64, then Vista 64) swapping the motherboard, and eventually solving the problem with a Bios update.
Needless to say I've gone through many levels of frustration during the whole process, but at the same time I really have felt supported by pudget the whole time. My contact person has been quick with updates most of the time, and has always been good at not making promises that he couldn't keep.
In the last week I've spent so much time researching computer components that I decided to just build my own one more time, and when I realized how huge my mark up was it really did make even more sense. But there really is a bit of irony though because my last machine was painstakingly built up with the help of a knowledgeable friend for the exact same purpose and I had a bios gremlin the haunted me for the past 3 years...
So to bring this long story to a finish, I sent an e-mail to Pudget today saying that after a lot of thought, too much computer research, and of course way too much waiting, I'd decided to cancle the order. This had already been discussed previously and the plan was to make a final decision today. I recieved a very nice call from a manager just an hour or so later who was very sympathetic to the whole situation.
As it turned out my computer had finally made ith though the last phase of QA and was ready to ship. Considering all I'd been through he offered to ship it next day for free and let me demo the machine with an unconditional 30 return and no restocking fee. At the moment I'm still pretty set on the idea of building an SLI machine myself- but at the same time I realized that even in this worst of all imaginable scenerios, I as a customer never felt negleted. That's a really had thing to find these days even in the best of situations, so to find a company that really did manage to fall flat on their face in terms of expectations, but still maintain customer support and confidence is really something that stands out.
About 10 minutes after I got off the phone I recieved an email summary of my newly completed system complete with thermal images in both an idle and loaded configuration. It's just a little touch, but really that is what makes the difference between high quality and useless junk. My new test drive toy should arrive monday morning; I can't decide if I want to to be amazing, or if I want to need a little more. I guess too much geeking out on specs the last week has really started to sink in. Either way it's nice to know that there's a whole crew of people to support me regardless of my decision.
Pudget definately isn't the cheapest, and they don't offer every component known to man, but if you're in the market for a team of people that will take the time to do the job right, and provide quality human interaction the whole way through the process they may be a very good choice.
Metal Face - Monday, February 26, 2007 - link
It looks like Puget may have scrapped their Certified Systems programicthy - Friday, February 16, 2007 - link
I've been considering buying a computer from Puget Systems for some time now, so I was quite glad to see the article. I especially appreciate that you calculated the markup for a computer, although it would have been nice to see some details. Also, I want to mention the reason I've considered Puget Systems is they'll build a top of the line linux computer, which is nice because then you don't have to worry about issues with compatability and cutting-edge hardware. I'd like to offer the friendly suggestion that this would have been a useful piece of information for the article, as it's rather difficult to find a computer vendor that will build something that will be guaranteed for linux.Finally, I'd suggest checking out Envision Computer Solutions for a future article along these lines. I bought a PC from them and was very impressed. (Note: I have absolutely no personal or business relationship with them).
Imnotrichey - Friday, February 16, 2007 - link
yikes, i didnt see that part. 25% markup seems a bit extreme.JarredWalton - Friday, February 16, 2007 - link
Check out VoodooPC, Falcon Northwest, Alienware, and anyone else like that. Some of them seem to be about a 50% markup - and yes, I'm accounting for the cost of their custom paint jobs (where applicable).Imnotrichey - Friday, February 16, 2007 - link
Yes, I'm sure you are correct that this is better than those others. Just surprising to me, since I never looked into it. 5-10% I could understand, but making a 2000 buck system cost 2500 just doesn't seem worth it. Seems like someone would slip under that 25% mark up and force them to compete at that level.JeffDM - Sunday, February 18, 2007 - link
Given the costs of doing business, I really don't think it's extreme.In your example, the $2000 "system" isn't really a system, it is really just a pile of parts. It's part of the $500 extra that makes it into a system, the rest have to go to business expenses. The labor, procurement, warranty and support aren't free. There are a host of other business expenses in there too, running a business is not cheap.
runestone - Saturday, February 17, 2007 - link
I live in the nearby area of Puget Systems, here's my .02: when the A8nE-sli boards came out, they were hard to get. I noticed they had some; called them and got a quote of 275$, well past my threshold of gouging. I found one a day later for 100 less.I guess if you have the money to blow they have some nice systems.
anandtech02148 - Friday, February 16, 2007 - link
good taste, always begins with a computer case. Puget got it.Imnotrichey - Friday, February 16, 2007 - link
I agree, Puget system seems to give you so many top notch choices