Puget Systems Serenity SPCR Edition: Blissful Silence
by Dustin Sklavos on February 10, 2011 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Systems
- Intel
- Radeon
- Sandy Bridge
- Puget Systems
- Serenity SPCR
Gaming Performance
It's not going to surprise anyone to see the Puget Serenity take last place in all of these tests; the second-slowest gaming system we've reviewed sports a Radeon with more than twice the number of stream processors, more than twice the memory bandwidth, and higher clocks to boot. That said, many of the really high scores we've seen are largely academic: can anyone really tell the difference between 100 frames per second and 150? Without getting into the ridiculous argument of whether or not the human eye can see more than 30 frames per second (if it's not supposed to be able to, I'm pretty sure most of the video geeks in the readership—myself included—are superhumans), that framerate should still be your baseline for acceptable performance.
Outside of the stunningly CPU-limited StarCraft II, Puget Systems's Serenity is able to at least beat the 30fps mark by a fairly healthy margin. I like to see framerates in at least the forties to ensure smooth gameplay, but any of these games are perfectly playable at our "High" preset, which is basically running them at maximum or near-maximum (as in the case of Call of Pripyat) settings, 1080p, and no anti-aliasing (excepting Left 4 Dead 2). Knowing that we're a little bit close to our ceiling, let's see what happens when we do kick anti-aliasing in with our "Ultra" preset.
Battlefield: Bad Company 2 is pushing its luck and Call of Pripyat is fairly punishing even on our other systems, but for the most part these games (outside of Call of Pripyat) remain playable and fluid. Shifting the bottleneck back to the video card in StarCraft II sends the Serenity tumbling back to the bottom of the heap, but even then it's still very playable. Gamers looking for extra frames may want to disable anti-aliasing in that title anyhow, as the image quality difference is negligible when the performance impact is taken into account. Suffice it to say these settings are basically the threshold for the Radeon HD 5750, and while performance is good, the 6850 is going to be a welcome upgrade.
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MeanBruce - Thursday, February 10, 2011 - link
You don't need an Anechoic Chamber, all you need is a pair of ears in good working condition!Shadowmaster625 - Thursday, February 10, 2011 - link
I have been focusing more on quiet parts for years. But it is really tough to find quiet parts at a decent price. SilentPC review is almost worthless because of the outrageous prices of the parts that they review. sigh.HangFire - Thursday, February 10, 2011 - link
Huh? Do you have examples?WD Green drives are hardly pricey. You only need one or two CPU fans, so while $19 each may be "twice the price" of a noisy fan, it is still not a lot of money. I picked up my Mugen 2 for $55 plus shipping, and better deals have been had for that item. It works so well I had to turn off the BIOS alarm because the PWMA CPU fan kept dropping below 100RPM and the CPU idles 2C above ambient. A P183 costs less than most Lian Li's and certainly a lot less than a ThermalTake Level 10. Since most silent builds don't use a big card like a GTX 580 the total system costs are usually less than a mid-range gaming rig.
The only nearly "pricey" item I can see at SPCR is the Seasonic X-400 Power Supply. Given that you are getting a Gold Rating and fanless operation, in a P/S with a long warranty and very high quality capacitors, with low ripple and tight regulation, it is obvious you are getting what you pay for. The overall system longevity and reliability is worth it, especially compared to bargain gaming power supplies, many of which have false ratings. If you are comparing it price-wise to a same-wattage low end Rosewill or a Diablotek, well, anyone who buys something like that gets what they deserve when the magic smoke comes out.
Shadowmaster625 - Friday, February 11, 2011 - link
I'm mainly thinking of power supplies and fans. In the case of fans, a few years back I bought one they recommended and it wasnt nearly as quiet as I expected. Things could be different now but I feel like an idiot dropping $20+ on a fan anyway.With power supplies, I was looking for a good quiet reasonably priced 300W supply. Something that is only going to be powering a dual core with 2 drives and a HD5670. Nothing big. And when I did find one, I would go to newegg and the thing would have a horrible rating with lots of DOAs and "died after 2 weeks" type comments. It is hard to pull the trigger and pay $60 for a 300 watt psu that people are having problems with. I think $60 is pretty steep for a 300W supply, even if it is very quiet. If I pay that much I want it to be a 5 star product.
HangFire - Monday, February 14, 2011 - link
SPCR is the place to go for noise reviews. For Power Supply quality reviews, there is jonnyguru and [H]ardOCP. Not Anandtech, and certainly not Tom's.Just a few years ago, buying a quality power supply for a decent price was very difficult. Part of the problem is that it costs almost as much to build a 300W P/S as a 600W (same number of components, same labor, same shipping, same marketing, same return rate, slightly different rating on components), yet the market will not pay as much. Since then, competition (mainly between Antec and Corsair) has given us several reasonable choices.
The existence of $15 power supplies colors the users opinion as well, and the existence of $15 P/S that sell for $60 doesn't help either. Keeping in mind that cheap P/S often are missing advertised features (like Over Current Protection), don't meet ATX specs (typically voltage regulation at rated wattage), and are missing A/C filtering components (lots of noise put back on the mains). Getting all this stuff right costs money. Doing it very quietly costs more.
As for loud fans and a dead P/S, everyone has bad luck, that is what RMA's are for. Sure, we are usually out the shipping, but we can let our displeasure be known in reviews and forums, and by buying the competitor's products.
But your idea that SPCR is almost worthless and reviews primarily outrageously expensive products is silly. Compared to cutting edge performance products, almost everything on SPCR is cheap.
PartEleven - Thursday, February 10, 2011 - link
I frequent SPCR, and I have no idea where you got this opinion. They suggest some of the most reasonably-priced parts out of all of the tech sites I've read. Which parts are you looking at? And for that matter, what's your idea of "reasonably priced"? You're not going to get quality quiet parts for the bargain-basement $1 per fan price you find on deal sites.Golgatha - Thursday, February 10, 2011 - link
They replaced some case fans, used an aftermarket cooler with a more silent fan, and cut some foam to fit inside an Antec case. This + service (last I checked the individual components are warrantied by the manufacturers) != a $1000 markup. Also, at this price point it should come with a SSD.Golgatha - Thursday, February 10, 2011 - link
Sorry, my mistake, it does some with a SSD. Still the parts list is lacking for the price they want.HangFire - Thursday, February 10, 2011 - link
Wow, you made the same point as Dustin, and even got the cost differential wrong the same amount, too. Good job!KayDat - Thursday, February 10, 2011 - link
I guess that means you don't fall under Puget's target market. There are certain markets where silent computer is important. Noise is often a forgotten aspect when people build computers, basically as long as it doesn't sound like an outright vacuum cleaner/blow dryer, people accept it.While you could buy identical parts for much much cheaper, they cherry pick their parts to iron out batch variation and electrical noise in motherboards and power supplies. They have anechoic chambers for testing. The list goes on. Clearly, it's not something an average Joe can do off New Egg. That might not mean much to many, especially the readership of AT, but it is important to some.