The Obsidian is designed for business people who don't want a generic looking Dell or HP or something that is tiny and hidden. Perhaps something they can see in their office.
The parts makes it easy to work with and replace in the future. I had some older Dells that have to be sold for cheap or whatever because while the case/PSU are fine - the non-standard parts makes the computer fit for the city dump.
I've changed out full offices out of DELLs into hand-built computers I made myself. Usually with Antec cases - high end when possible. I am usually able to do a complete rebuild on the inside while keeping the PSU / optical drive.
Things like filters and high end anti-noise features are not part of Dell and HP, etc. Those are mass produce standard generic computers.
I've built a computer for a client 8 years ago - because of the RAID and extra features - it was about $800 in labor. I don't do work like that anymore... at most a rare gaming machine would require a bit of work.
As the article stated: The parts are nothing special. But its the testing and making sure they use some of the best parts that they sell to their customers.
IMHO: WD drives are louder than Seagates thou... ;)
Most of the big businesses I know just junk (well, wipe and then recycle) old PCs after four or five years. That's what a corporation I worked at for four years did anyway. Some of the conclusion was added by me based off of my experience supporting Dell and HP desktops and laptops over the years, and I can guarantee that neither company that I worked for would have even considered a smaller computer shop.
At one company, we also had the option for mini towers or desktops, and about 80% of the people preferred desktops. I like my towers, though, and would have loved an Antec P180 chassis. Not for $450 extra, though.
Obviously, different companies will have different priorities, but considering the cost and the size of Puget Systems (e.g. quite small), I'm betting mostly they get smaller local companies as opposed to any "enterprise" customers.
Plus if businesses wants workstations they do have the much better option of buying professional properly built workstations from the OEMs such as HP and Dell that is designed to be workstations and have support. DIY builders cases such as this Antec is bad in comparison any way. So is the high-end gaming cases too. If they just want cheap clients then the cheap OEM machines is better any way. You cant add 70 - 110 dollar cases and 100 dollars PSUs onto 400 dollar clients. With 3 years warranty from the supplier. They simply get better desktopsdeals from others then you (OP). Small businesses can add other services though. You can even add 80+ PSUs as an option to those cheap 400 dollar clients by the way. I doubt anybody wants to support those 4+ years PSUs on the rebuilt clients any way Jarred. Computers can generally be used until they and their components is mostly useless a 3-4 year old PSU and optical drive isn't worth the time / labor to save / reuse. They are at home if there hasn't been shift in standards like moving to new connectors but thats another deal.
I used this case on a custom build. It is full of win and awesome and quiet, etc.
But wtf is up with the reset and power switches being hidden? You have to open the case to turn it on or off or reset it. Or if you do not have sausage fingers you can kind of hit the power button through one of the slots but its damn awkward.
No, trust me, it would help. Right now, he's staring at my big blue glowing button on the front of my case and it's only a matter of time before he pushes it. Luckily it will just hibernate the PC and this particular system doesn't have a reset button. My wife's PC, though.... :)
Nice system, but I think a business would be looking to minimize costs as much as possible. I configured the below from HP.com
HP Pavilion Elite HPE-570t customizable Desktop PC LC120AV#ABA
Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-2600 quad-core processor with Turbo-Boost [up to 3.8GHz, 8MB cache] 8GB DDR3-1333MHz SDRAM [4 DIMMs] FREE UPGRADE! 1.5TB 7200 rpm SATA 3Gb/s hard drive from 750GB No additional office software Norton Internet Security(TM) 2011 - 15 month 1GB DDR3 ATI Radeon HD 5570 [DVI, HDMI, DP, VGA adapter] FREE UPGRADE! Blu-ray player & Lightscribe SuperMulti DVD burner Integrated Ethernet port, No wireless LAN 15-in-1 memory card reader, 1 USB, audio No TV Tuner Beats Audio (tm) -- integrated studio quality sound HP USB keyboard and optical mouse
TOTAL: $909.99 + Free Shipping.
This system has the advantage of a faster CPU with Hyperthreading, larger hard drive, Blu-Ray player, and discrete graphics and still costs $400.00 less than the Puget system.
Except a business is typically not going to buy a machine aimed at a consumer. Atleast, not a business larger than say 10 or so machines. The business line comes with better support, generally better design and is easier to work on. You also typically get better warranties and options for onsite, 24hr support let alone uplift capabilities. That makes a huge difference in the bottom line especially if you're leasing the machines or writing them off for tax purposes.
I can't count the number of times we see business line machines from HP or dell (ok excluding the Dell GX2xx series...) that have been running for years without hardware problems. Consumer grade? Yea, good luck
I'm surprised that this system doesn't have RAID out of the box - it has only 1 hard drive. In a business environment where you keep it as a 24/7 running system (maybe as a in-office server) you don't want your hard drive failing - regardless of weather HP and Dell feature this as standard - they have very broad selection of workstations so that is your responsibility. Here you are advertised stability. Dell and HP don't feature 8GB at this price - don't look at desktops because you can get a desktop much cheaper than from those brands anyway, look at workstation section without Xeon cpus. What I'd like to see beside RAID is dual NIC MB. What I'd do is build a desktop and buy extended warranty.
in most business environments I've been in, all the business critical apps are run of the server and very little is kept on the local machines, mostly personal settings and files. a raid setup for that is 1 more step and/or headache the IT department would have to take.
The business community has a server to store critical information, and essentially "dumb terminals" (well, slightly smarter than a true thin client) that are essentially "commodity" hardware. For that user, where a re-build costs nearly nothing (image from a central server via network at the touch of a button), and, you're good to go. All "critical" files (business files - proposals, documents etc) are stored in a collaboration area anyway, and that's backed up with RAID 5 or better, plus off site storage, and you only need the apps on the local machine.
For that user, you don't need RAID on the local machines.
Why couldn't they use a power brick for a machine like this that uses such little power? They would get great efficiency and no noise from it? I don't understand why low power office machines and other computers with low power computers don't use power bricks?
Limited upgradability most likely. Remember while few there are custom options that would significantly increase the power draw of the system. I agree though that it should be an option if your build has <150w total system draw. For aesthetics they could still have the power brick inside of the case with just the cord coming out, but you'd get the benefits of the higher efficiency/no noise.
I'm not sure what type of office use requires a quad core. Seems like overkill. The five uses of more than two cores are rendering, encoding, web and database servers, some types of scientific calculation and gaming. Machines like the Obsidian are unlikely to ever be faced with one of those. Anything I've missed?
I haven't seen any system reviews on Anand or any of the enthusiast sites that I would consider an enterprise / corporate PC. Occasionally you'll get the corporate laptop - like a Dell E6410/20 or something along those lines, but never a corporate desktop.
Those, by and large, are the Optiplex series. If you want to see a real corporate desktop, look at the Optiplex 960, or HP Elite series desktops - or the HP thin clients.
By most enthusiast measures, there are simply well built underpowered PCs. Most of these are still selling with C2D E8400 or E8500 processors and integrated 4500 graphics.
That's all that's needed in 98% of the offices in corporate america.
Have had occasion to use Puget for a couple of custom builds over the years for video/animation work and CAD. Their focus on quite machines that are uber-reliable is the key, and puts them in a special niche' that is attractive to folks in large businesses who also need a custom rig. The two builds I got worked very well and lasted a long time, with the exception of the hard drives, which were subject to the same risk of failure as all mechanical drives.
Net, I agree that, if you're going to go with Puget for the quality and quite, then definitely equip the Obsidian with a SSD boot and larger RAID for data (using RAID-specific drives), to which you can backup the main drive as well. This is also how I build 'em for home, works great!
So basically I can build this same exact system for much less and have Puget to thank for the R&D that went into the component selection. :) sounds like a win.
Seriously though, they need some form of custom design in order to justify the price hike. I don't think you can compare this build to a Dell or HP as some of those vital components are total junk, the Puget uses quality gear. But without making a real need from a custom angle (sound dampening, ducting, etc.) and the pathetic warranty I just couldn't recommend this system to someone.
With reliability being the primary selling point I'm surprised they did not use a server board and ECC memory. Do they not mind the risk of using consumer RAM in a business critical machine? Or maybe there's no practical risk? I'm genuinely curious.
No, not since the 975X I'm afraid. None of the enthusiast or mainstream platforms that followed supported it, and I really don't know how we should approach the subject nowadays, because personally I've always worried that a system without ECC memory is inherently unstable.
Seeing as this build lauds reliability so much and yet Puget found it appropriate to ship 8 gigs of non-ECC memory to a very demanding sector, I'll be happy if they could share their reasoning.
So, Puget slaps together enthusiast parts and suddenly they are an HP / Dell contender? Yeah...OK. When you sell a million towers then you'll have some demographics to compare with a Dell precision.
Failure rates of PCs are typically caused by component failure well outside the scope of what Puget claims they are testing; bad caps, faulty ICs, nominal voltage controllers, flaky HD controllers and motors, etc.
I'm trying to find an ASUS or Antec brand component in our data center and can't.
The low power consumption was due to the weak processor and lack of a dedicated video card. We have some dual core Thin Clients that use a fraction the power of the Puget and run on flash memory - no HD either. Would you like to benchmark those?
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Belard - Thursday, April 7, 2011 - link
The Obsidian is designed for business people who don't want a generic looking Dell or HP or something that is tiny and hidden. Perhaps something they can see in their office.The parts makes it easy to work with and replace in the future. I had some older Dells that have to be sold for cheap or whatever because while the case/PSU are fine - the non-standard parts makes the computer fit for the city dump.
I've changed out full offices out of DELLs into hand-built computers I made myself. Usually with Antec cases - high end when possible. I am usually able to do a complete rebuild on the inside while keeping the PSU / optical drive.
Things like filters and high end anti-noise features are not part of Dell and HP, etc. Those are mass produce standard generic computers.
I've built a computer for a client 8 years ago - because of the RAID and extra features - it was about $800 in labor. I don't do work like that anymore... at most a rare gaming machine would require a bit of work.
As the article stated: The parts are nothing special. But its the testing and making sure they use some of the best parts that they sell to their customers.
IMHO: WD drives are louder than Seagates thou... ;)
JarredWalton - Thursday, April 7, 2011 - link
Most of the big businesses I know just junk (well, wipe and then recycle) old PCs after four or five years. That's what a corporation I worked at for four years did anyway. Some of the conclusion was added by me based off of my experience supporting Dell and HP desktops and laptops over the years, and I can guarantee that neither company that I worked for would have even considered a smaller computer shop.At one company, we also had the option for mini towers or desktops, and about 80% of the people preferred desktops. I like my towers, though, and would have loved an Antec P180 chassis. Not for $450 extra, though.
Obviously, different companies will have different priorities, but considering the cost and the size of Puget Systems (e.g. quite small), I'm betting mostly they get smaller local companies as opposed to any "enterprise" customers.
Penti - Friday, April 8, 2011 - link
Plus if businesses wants workstations they do have the much better option of buying professional properly built workstations from the OEMs such as HP and Dell that is designed to be workstations and have support. DIY builders cases such as this Antec is bad in comparison any way. So is the high-end gaming cases too. If they just want cheap clients then the cheap OEM machines is better any way. You cant add 70 - 110 dollar cases and 100 dollars PSUs onto 400 dollar clients. With 3 years warranty from the supplier. They simply get better desktopsdeals from others then you (OP). Small businesses can add other services though. You can even add 80+ PSUs as an option to those cheap 400 dollar clients by the way. I doubt anybody wants to support those 4+ years PSUs on the rebuilt clients any way Jarred. Computers can generally be used until they and their components is mostly useless a 3-4 year old PSU and optical drive isn't worth the time / labor to save / reuse. They are at home if there hasn't been shift in standards like moving to new connectors but thats another deal.Azethoth - Thursday, April 7, 2011 - link
I used this case on a custom build. It is full of win and awesome and quiet, etc.But wtf is up with the reset and power switches being hidden? You have to open the case to turn it on or off or reset it. Or if you do not have sausage fingers you can kind of hit the power button through one of the slots but its damn awkward.
JarredWalton - Thursday, April 7, 2011 - link
I could use something like that thanks to my one-year-old running around the house. LOLGami - Thursday, April 7, 2011 - link
it won't help..even at the age of one. They'll figure out how to open the door and than push those buttons.
JarredWalton - Friday, April 8, 2011 - link
No, trust me, it would help. Right now, he's staring at my big blue glowing button on the front of my case and it's only a matter of time before he pushes it. Luckily it will just hibernate the PC and this particular system doesn't have a reset button. My wife's PC, though.... :)RaistlinZ - Thursday, April 7, 2011 - link
Nice system, but I think a business would be looking to minimize costs as much as possible. I configured the below from HP.comHP Pavilion Elite HPE-570t customizable Desktop PC
LC120AV#ABA
Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit
Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-2600 quad-core processor with Turbo-Boost [up to 3.8GHz, 8MB cache]
8GB DDR3-1333MHz SDRAM [4 DIMMs]
FREE UPGRADE! 1.5TB 7200 rpm SATA 3Gb/s hard drive from 750GB
No additional office software
Norton Internet Security(TM) 2011 - 15 month
1GB DDR3 ATI Radeon HD 5570 [DVI, HDMI, DP, VGA adapter]
FREE UPGRADE! Blu-ray player & Lightscribe SuperMulti DVD burner
Integrated Ethernet port, No wireless LAN
15-in-1 memory card reader, 1 USB, audio
No TV Tuner
Beats Audio (tm) -- integrated studio quality sound
HP USB keyboard and optical mouse
TOTAL: $909.99 + Free Shipping.
This system has the advantage of a faster CPU with Hyperthreading, larger hard drive, Blu-Ray player, and discrete graphics and still costs $400.00 less than the Puget system.
Just saying.
argosreality - Thursday, April 7, 2011 - link
Except a business is typically not going to buy a machine aimed at a consumer. Atleast, not a business larger than say 10 or so machines. The business line comes with better support, generally better design and is easier to work on. You also typically get better warranties and options for onsite, 24hr support let alone uplift capabilities. That makes a huge difference in the bottom line especially if you're leasing the machines or writing them off for tax purposes.I can't count the number of times we see business line machines from HP or dell (ok excluding the Dell GX2xx series...) that have been running for years without hardware problems. Consumer grade? Yea, good luck
gr00 - Friday, April 8, 2011 - link
I'm surprised that this system doesn't have RAID out of the box - it has only 1 hard drive. In a business environment where you keep it as a 24/7 running system (maybe as a in-office server) you don't want your hard drive failing - regardless of weather HP and Dell feature this as standard - they have very broad selection of workstations so that is your responsibility. Here you are advertised stability. Dell and HP don't feature 8GB at this price - don't look at desktops because you can get a desktop much cheaper than from those brands anyway, look at workstation section without Xeon cpus.What I'd like to see beside RAID is dual NIC MB.
What I'd do is build a desktop and buy extended warranty.
dawp - Saturday, April 9, 2011 - link
in most business environments I've been in, all the business critical apps are run of the server and very little is kept on the local machines, mostly personal settings and files. a raid setup for that is 1 more step and/or headache the IT department would have to take.erple2 - Sunday, April 10, 2011 - link
The business community has a server to store critical information, and essentially "dumb terminals" (well, slightly smarter than a true thin client) that are essentially "commodity" hardware. For that user, where a re-build costs nearly nothing (image from a central server via network at the touch of a button), and, you're good to go. All "critical" files (business files - proposals, documents etc) are stored in a collaboration area anyway, and that's backed up with RAID 5 or better, plus off site storage, and you only need the apps on the local machine.For that user, you don't need RAID on the local machines.
PWRuser - Friday, April 8, 2011 - link
"The configuration our Deluge Mini review unit shipped with (what) makes for an interesting comparison with the Origin Genesis we recently reviewed."flexcore - Friday, April 8, 2011 - link
Why couldn't they use a power brick for a machine like this that uses such little power? They would get great efficiency and no noise from it? I don't understand why low power office machines and other computers with low power computers don't use power bricks?Taft12 - Sunday, April 10, 2011 - link
They do. They're called laptops and many large companies provide laptops for most ro all employees.7Enigma - Tuesday, April 12, 2011 - link
Limited upgradability most likely. Remember while few there are custom options that would significantly increase the power draw of the system. I agree though that it should be an option if your build has <150w total system draw. For aesthetics they could still have the power brick inside of the case with just the cord coming out, but you'd get the benefits of the higher efficiency/no noise.MadMinstrel - Sunday, April 10, 2011 - link
I'm not sure what type of office use requires a quad core. Seems like overkill. The five uses of more than two cores are rendering, encoding, web and database servers, some types of scientific calculation and gaming. Machines like the Obsidian are unlikely to ever be faced with one of those. Anything I've missed?bobbozzo - Tuesday, April 12, 2011 - link
Developers - Visual Studio now supports multi-threaded compilation, and of course gcc has for years.bobbozzo - Tuesday, April 12, 2011 - link
Besides, Dell and HP are selling quad-core desktops nowadays.You can't even get a single-core Dell Latitude anymore in the 14" and above size.
shady28 - Sunday, April 10, 2011 - link
I haven't seen any system reviews on Anand or any of the enthusiast sites that I would consider an enterprise / corporate PC. Occasionally you'll get the corporate laptop - like a Dell E6410/20 or something along those lines, but never a corporate desktop.
Those, by and large, are the Optiplex series. If you want to see a real corporate desktop, look at the Optiplex 960, or HP Elite series desktops - or the HP thin clients.
By most enthusiast measures, there are simply well built underpowered PCs. Most of these are still selling with C2D E8400 or E8500 processors and integrated 4500 graphics.
That's all that's needed in 98% of the offices in corporate america.
Dustin Sklavos - Monday, April 11, 2011 - link
We're actually working on getting enterprise-class desktops in for review right now.robbster - Monday, April 11, 2011 - link
Have had occasion to use Puget for a couple of custom builds over the years for video/animation work and CAD. Their focus on quite machines that are uber-reliable is the key, and puts them in a special niche' that is attractive to folks in large businesses who also need a custom rig. The two builds I got worked very well and lasted a long time, with the exception of the hard drives, which were subject to the same risk of failure as all mechanical drives.Net, I agree that, if you're going to go with Puget for the quality and quite, then definitely equip the Obsidian with a SSD boot and larger RAID for data (using RAID-specific drives), to which you can backup the main drive as well. This is also how I build 'em for home, works great!
7Enigma - Tuesday, April 12, 2011 - link
So basically I can build this same exact system for much less and have Puget to thank for the R&D that went into the component selection. :) sounds like a win.Seriously though, they need some form of custom design in order to justify the price hike. I don't think you can compare this build to a Dell or HP as some of those vital components are total junk, the Puget uses quality gear. But without making a real need from a custom angle (sound dampening, ducting, etc.) and the pathetic warranty I just couldn't recommend this system to someone.
Thanks for the informative review.
yehuda - Tuesday, April 12, 2011 - link
With reliability being the primary selling point I'm surprised they did not use a server board and ECC memory. Do they not mind the risk of using consumer RAM in a business critical machine? Or maybe there's no practical risk? I'm genuinely curious.bobbozzo - Tuesday, April 12, 2011 - link
I don't know about Sandy Bridge systems, but many 'enthusiast' systems I have built over the years will run with ECC memory.yehuda - Tuesday, April 12, 2011 - link
No, not since the 975X I'm afraid. None of the enthusiast or mainstream platforms that followed supported it, and I really don't know how we should approach the subject nowadays, because personally I've always worried that a system without ECC memory is inherently unstable.Seeing as this build lauds reliability so much and yet Puget found it appropriate to ship 8 gigs of non-ECC memory to a very demanding sector, I'll be happy if they could share their reasoning.
spikespiegal - Monday, April 18, 2011 - link
So, Puget slaps together enthusiast parts and suddenly they are an HP / Dell contender? Yeah...OK. When you sell a million towers then you'll have some demographics to compare with a Dell precision.Failure rates of PCs are typically caused by component failure well outside the scope of what Puget claims they are testing; bad caps, faulty ICs, nominal voltage controllers, flaky HD controllers and motors, etc.
I'm trying to find an ASUS or Antec brand component in our data center and can't.
The low power consumption was due to the weak processor and lack of a dedicated video card. We have some dual core Thin Clients that use a fraction the power of the Puget and run on flash memory - no HD either. Would you like to benchmark those?