I recently bought a computer from Puget Systems, and wanted to let other people know about it.

Puget has inherited Monarch Computer’s mantle, since Monarch closed its doors.  Unlike NewEgg (also an excellent computer parts retailer), Puget has an extensive online custom configuration utility.  You can heavily customize a gaming rig, graphics workstation, laptop, or even a water-cooled system.  Their list of parts for each slot is lengthy, and many of the parts are favorites recommended by the likes of SharkyExtreme.  Puget supplies their own suggested choices, and discussions of many parts’ performance and noise levels.  If you want a fast and silent rig, this is a great place to go.  Play around with their configuration utlity– it’s addictive.

Puget fills the needs of people like me, who are sick (or paranoid) of hand-assembling custom rigs, but still want to be able to pick the best parts.  Their prices are good, and they provide a 1 year warranty on the parts.  They even provide the warranty if you use some of your own hardware (I used my own hard drive and video card).

For a business rig, Puget has a few issues.  I recently ordered a system which worked on arrival, but died after a couple weeks.  I think it was a motherboard failure, and it’s perfectly understandable: sometimes hardware fails, and it’s outside Puget’s control.  I called them up, and they had me re-seat every part, including the CPU and heat sink, to make sure it wasn’t failing to boot just because something got jostled.  Reasonable, but it definitely took me some time.  Once that was verified, they told me they’d pay for return shipping, since the failure was within 30 days.

It actually took a couple of days between when I first called tech support, and when they got me the return shipping authorization.  Then I had to schedule a UPS pickup (which I had to pay extra for, and of course UPS is happy to come any time between 8 am and 6 pm– don’t leave the house!).  Finally, the computer was packed up and on its merry way.

Puget fixed the computer quickly, sent it on back, and now it’s working great.  It’s a super fast system that’s finally giving us good Adobe Illustrator performance (that program is a bear).  Unfortunately, our primary working rig was basically out of commission for two weeks, and I lost quite a bit of my own time messing around with it.  Every step Puget took was totally reasonable, but two weeks is just far too long for a business rig: in a previous experience with Dell, they overnighted a replacement part on the first phone call.  (On the other hand, Dell still forces Vista with their high-end rigs, so they’re out of the question.)

Do I have a reasonable alternative?  Actually, I’d stick with Puget Systems for any non-critical rig, such as a gaming machine.  The chance of failure is low, and Puget’s customization options are the best I’ve seen.  Their prices are reasonable, and well worth it.  I don’t think they have a real competitor, to be honest.  For a critical business rig that absolutely needs to be up, though, you might want to look around for some place with a more business-centric support plan.  You’ll probably have to put up with some hardware you wouldn’t normally choose, and you’ll pay more, but sometimes it’s worth the price.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 18th, 2007 at 7:28 pm and is filed under Miscellany. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.