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Mini Serenity Group Buy

Jon Bach, Puget Systems

Puget Systems is quite accustomed to meeting the needs of photography enthusiasts, and we have put together a recommended computer that gives you a great, balanced configuration to ensure you are spending your time on your craft, not waiting for your PC! This PC is based on our Serenity Mini, which is an extremely quiet, but high performance workstation. We have configured this PC as we would recommend for high performance photography work -- generous ram, fast hard drive, and a high end quad core CPU! At our core, we are a custom PC company, so we are also offering a range of hard drive, video card, and optical drive options, to allow this group buy to meet a wider range of needs and budgets.

Recommended configuration:

Photos representative of recommended configuration.

Price as configured: $1953.57

Configuration options:

Primary hard drive:

Add a secondary hard drive:

Silent video card options:

Performance video card options (not silent, and removes middle hard drive cage due to size):

Optical drive:

***pricing above may not be exact, as minor pricing changes are frequent with computer components***

When it comes to scalable performance, power efficiency, and best bang for the buck, Intel's Sandy Bridge platform is a clear choice today. With Intel Turbo Boost 2.0, the processor automatically overclocks or downclocks based on load. This gives you both excellent performance when you need it, and low power draw when you don't. We have given this configuration a generous 8GB of system memory, and we do it using two 4GB sticks, which means you still have two free memory slots, allowing you to upgrade to 16GB in the future! For those not needing high end graphics performance, you can save some money and use the onboard Intel graphics (which is plenty of power if you aren't gaming or using GPU acceleration). For those looking for more power, the NVIDIA GT 430 gives you the most power possible while maintaining complete silence. Or you can kick it up even higher, and turn this into a gaming PC. Use the NVIDIA 570 or 580 for compatibility with Adobe's Mercury Playback Engine. In all cases, we will leave the Intel graphics enabled, giving you the ability to connect more monitors, and to use Intel QuickSync video transcoding.

This configuration is packaged in our Serenity Mini design, which is compact and incredibly efficient and quiet. We have poured years of experience into the Serenity design, to achieve the most quiet high performance computer available on the market. There are many resources you can find online (and even our website) that will show you the components necessary to build a quiet computer, but it's simply not possible to build a system with the stability, reliability, performance and silence of a Serenity without the tools that we have here at Puget Systems. We use thermal imaging cameras to view the real time heat dispersion inside our computers and then tune the location and speed of our fans to give the best silence vs. performance levels. We custom program the fan RPM curves for optimial temperature response. We cherry pick the quietest of components from our inventory. Then we back it up with our industry leading warranty. In the world of quiet computers, there is simply nothing (including completely passive systems) that can top the performance and silence of the Serenity.

It is difficult to convey just how quiet this PC is without hearing it in person. We encourage you to check out our page detailing our Serenity PC line, at http://www.pugetsystems.com/serenity.php. It is also recommended you take some time to look over the following press reviews. The configuration in these reviews aren't identical, but give you a good sense of the build quality, and dedication to quiet computing at Puget Systems:

A custom PC built for Jim Erhardt, owner of Nature Photographers:

Serenity Mini on Masahble (the reviewer loved the PC so much that he bought it instead of returning it!):

Serenity Mini on Attack of the Show, on G4 TV:

Finally, some reviews on our full size Serenity SPCR Edition.  It is larger, but our Serenity Mini is even quieter!

Group Buy Instructions:

Only current NPN members are eligible to participate in this group buy! To verify your membership, please refer to instructions in the group buy thread.

Go to https://www.pugetsystems.com/saveconfig.php?id=85192 and if you would like the recommended configuration, simply click the link to purchase the system.  If you would like changes made to the configuration as outlined above, then click the link to save the configuration to your account.  Our website will step you through creating an account as part of the process.  Once saved to your account, use the form at the bottom of the page to send us a message, telling us what changes you would like made.  We will get those changes in place for you, and will email you with confirmation and a link to purchase the system.

This group buy will be open for 30 days, until June 6, 2011. All credit cards will be authorized immediately, but funds will not be captured until the group buy closes and we begin to build the PCs. At the end of 30 days, if we get 5 buys, all orders will receive a 5% discount. If we get 10 buys, it will be a 10% discount. If we get 20 buys, all orders shipping to the continental USA will receive free FedEx Express shipping.

If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to ask in the group buy thread!

Jon Bach
President
Puget Systems