Introduction
For a long time here at Puget Systems, we have been putting together computer hardware recommendations for a wide range of applications. A lot of that advice is gathered from the far corners of the internet, by a range of different folks here within our company, but our Labs team delves especially deep into certain software and workflows. As such, we are beginning to brand some of our recommended systems with an additional "Labs Certified" status – and I wanted to take a moment to give you some details on why we are doing this and what it means for you, our customers.
The Story of Puget Labs
Our Labs team was started over a decade ago, but it has changed in focus and mission over time to meet the needs of our customers. It was initially envisioned to tackle hardware qualification and reviews: making sure the parts we carried in our workstations were high quality, while also providing reviews about those components to the general public. However, there were already larger and more established review outlets which could do a better job of that – especially with regards to performance in games. Moreover, our internal qualification process didn't always lead to interesting stories worth the telling. That role is still present internally at Puget Systems, with our Product Qualification team, but the Labs department switched gears towards analyzing how computer hardware impacts performance, specifically for professional applications.
The current goal of Puget Labs is to stay up to date on the latest workflows and techniques for professional applications in content creation, engineering, and HPC – and then to use that knowledge to design and implement hardware testing and benchmarks that will help end-users get the best possible systems for their use case. Many of these benchmarking tools have been polished and refined enough that we have even released them publicly, while others are only used internally. We also utilize benchmarks created by the software developers themselves, when available.
Results of this testing are available to the public through our numerous articles, webinars, and live streams. In addition, our Labs team is also responsible for training our consultants and support techs to make sure they understand the intricacies of common workflows and how modern hardware can improve performance. This knowledge is also used to help write the hardware recommendations upon which many of our recommended systems are built. That work, in particular, is what this new branding program is designed to highlight.
What Does “Labs Certified” Mean?
Starting today, we will be labeling our Recommended Systems which are heavily based on Labs testing and expertise with a badge and brief text description, as shown below. Clicking on the badge will link back to this very blog post for more details.
Puget Labs Certified
These hardware configurations have been developed and verified through testing by our Labs team.
So what does this badge represent? Hundreds or sometimes thousands of hours of Labs time spent on software and workflow research, benchmark development & testing, and organizing the results into specific hardware configurations that we stand behind as the best options available for our customers. In addition, this depth of experience flows over into how familiar our consulting and support departments are with these certified systems and related applications. That all combines to give the best possible experience when purchasing and using our workstations – whether as an individual, part of a small business team, or in a large enterprise environment.
What About Systems That Are Not Labs Certified?
Not all of our recommended systems will bear the Labs Certified badge, but that doesn't mean they are less reliable. It just means that we don't do our own, in-house testing for those applications. Instead, our consultants and others here at Puget Systems have researched how those programs interact with hardware and have built the recommendations based on their findings. A wide variety of sources are used in that research: information from the software developers themselves, benchmarks and testing data reported on other websites, and discussions with our existing customers to name a few. Our consulting team has decades of combined experience, and over that time they have built up a lot of knowledge about the needs and behavior of a wide variety of applications. The recommended systems they have helped tailor distill that into a form that we can share with visitors to our website.
Let Us Help You!
Our goal here at Puget Systems is to help our customers get the right workstation for their unique mix of applications. Whether through configuring a recommended system, reading our numerous articles, or speaking directly with our consultants, we want to help you!
Please let us know in the comments if you have ideas for more ways we can be of assistance.
Puget Systems offers a range of powerful and reliable systems that are tailor-made for your unique workflow.
Our Labs team is available to provide in-depth hardware recommendations based on your workflow.
