Top all-time · #619
Puget Systems
Company blog · pugetsystems.com/labshardwarescience
Puget Systems is the company blog at pugetsystems.com, writing about hardware and science. Since 2013, 101 different Hacker News readers have linked it 138 times, most often “Gaming PC vs. Space Heater Efficiency (2013)”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-29, and you can follow it by feed.
Rarely recommended · 1 of 40 sampled comments recommend it?
Why HN links it
HN readers cite Puget Systems' hardware lab articles and benchmarks on Premiere, After Effects, MKL, NVLink and cooling as performance evidence in hardware debates.
- Recommended for · 1 comments
- Openly admitting Samsung SSD failures and past advice mistakes; few vendors would say that publicly, per one commenter.1
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 40 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Puget Systems specializes in tailor-made computing solutions for all business needs. We build quality workstations and servers for your unique workflows.
Most-linked posts?
- Gaming PC vs. Space Heater Efficiency (2013)6 people · 7 mentions · first linked 2017-02-14
- Reducing the Performance Gap of Intel's MKL on AMD Threadripper5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2019-12-07
- Update on Samsung SSD Reliability4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2023-02-03
- Puget Systems' Perspective on Intel CPU Instability Issues4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2024-08-03
- Quad GeForce RTX 3090 in a desktop – Does it work?3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2020-10-22
- /labs/articles/gaming-pc-vs-space-heater-efficiency-511/2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2023-12-09
- /recommended/Recommended-Systems-for-DaVinci-Resolve-187/Hardware-Recommendations2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2020-05-07
- Mineral Oil Cooled PC (2014)2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2024-01-09
- Most Reliable PC Hardware of 20162 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2017-01-01
- Puget Systems Most Reliable Hardware of 20242 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2025-01-14
What Hacker News says?
In short, yes. Exactly (well minus a few used to spin fans and hard drives). Here's one source from a quick search: https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/Gaming-PC-vs-Spac... I remember seeing a paper referenced here once explaining why that energy loss is actually necessary, but I don't seem to have it saved anymore.
Comment linking /labs/articles/Gaming-PC-vs-Space-Heater-Efficiency-511/
on “This website has 81% battery power remaining”Submitted Effects of grill patterns on fan performance/noise (2011) as a story · 360 points
HN discussionNot sure what is required of a dev, but as an example, Adobe Premiere pro doesn't take any advantage of >1 CPU, at least on Windows. https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/Should-you-use-a-...
Comment linking /labs/articles/Should-you-use-a-Dual-Xeon-for-Premiere-Pro-CC-2017-932/
on “Apple M1 Ultra”Submitted Reducing the Performance Gap of Intel's MKL on AMD Threadripper as a story · 222 points
HN discussionOil will certainly move on you, but it might not destroy your components, depending perhaps on the specific oil chosen: you can actually buy or build fully oil-cooled PCs. https://www.pugetsystems.com/submerged.php as an example.
Comment linking /submerged.php
on “Moved a server from one building to another with zero downtime”Submitted Puget Systems' Perspective on Intel CPU Instability Issues as a story · 181 points
HN discussion> In older NVidia cards this could be done through a faster link called NVLink but the hardware for that was ripped out of consumer grade cards and is only in data center grade cards now. NVLink is still very much available in both RTX 3090 and A6000, both of which are still on the market. It was indeed removed from the RTX 40 series{0]. [0]: https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/nvidia-nvlink-202...
Comment linking /labs/articles/nvidia-nvlink-2021-update-and-compatibility-chart-2074/
on “Hacked Nvidia 4090 GPU driver to enable P2P”Submitted 2025 Tariff Impacts at Puget Systems as a story · 178 points
HN discussionYes, definitely. You can see it among the benchmarks here. https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/hpc/RTX-2080Ti-with-NVLINK... It's the slowest tested obviously, mainly because of limited memory (so you have to put less on the device and compute less in parallel). But it would still be a huge speed up over CPU, like night and day. And "as fast as a 1080Ti" is really, really great. I will add, Pop!_OS comes with the late…
Comment linking /labs/hpc/RTX-2080Ti-with-NVLINK---TensorFlow-Performance-Includes-Comparison-with-GTX-1080Ti-RTX-2070-2080-2080Ti-and-Titan-V-1267/
on “Thelio – System76”Submitted RTX3080 TensorFlow and NAMD Performance on Linux as a story · 131 points
HN discussion> What will get me more bang out of the processor, the "super" architecture of Zen 2, or the coveted AVX512? Bychance, have you seen the article from puget systems on how to use MKL with Ryzen[1]? It explores some of the different trade-offs between AMD and Intel for numeric computing. [1] https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/hpc/How-To-Use-MKL-with-AM...
Comment linking /labs/hpc/How-To-Use-MKL-with-AMD-Ryzen-and-Threadripper-CPU-s-Effectively-for-Python-Numpy-And-Other-Applications-1637/
on “New MacBook Air”Submitted PyTorch for Scientific Computing: Quantum Mechanics Example Part 2 as a story · 102 points
HN discussionUh, those numbers are more than three/five years old at this point. Beyond comments on the test bench not being properly set up, Ryzen has improved significantly since then. AMD's latest consumer-level chips significantly outperform Intel's chips in both price and performance. When talking about prosumer video editing performance, the Ryzen 9 5900x, the second most expensive "new" chip from AMD is a 3.4% performance…
Comment linking /labs/articles/Adobe-Premiere-Pro-AMD-Ryzen-5000-Series-CPU-Performance-1960/
on “Intel CEO Bob Swan to step down, VMware CEO Pat Gelsinger to replace him”Submitted 2080 RTX performance on Tensorflow with CUDA 10 as a story · 87 points
HN discussionPremiere Pro apparently doesn't use the GPU for h.264/5, so sadly if you want that, you have to use an Intel CPU: https://www.pugetsystems.com/recommended/Recommended-Systems...
Comment linking /recommended/Recommended-Systems-for-Adobe-Premiere-Pro-143/Hardware-Recommendations
on “AMD Claims World’s Fastest Per-Core Performance with New EPYC Rome 7Fx2 CPUs”Submitted Mineral Oil Cooled PC (2014) as a story · 74 points
HN discussionI will admit I have never used it but Puget lists insane hardware recommendations, like RTX 3090 and a Threadripper. https://www.pugetsystems.com/recommended/Recommended-Systems... How is a tablet going to fare?
Comment linking /recommended/Recommended-Systems-for-DaVinci-Resolve-187/Hardware-Recommendations
on “DaVinci Resolve for iPad”Submitted RTX3090 TensorFlow, NAMD and HPCG Performance on Linux as a story · 70 points
HN discussionNo need to develop and alternative when you can trick MKL into not crippling AMD: https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/hpc/How-To-Use-MKL-with-AM... Edit: the link I posted follows Agner's advice from the bottom of OPs link. However I think the extra information that it adds is that Zen2 Threadrippers outpaced then-current Intel's top contender. Once Zen3 and Intel's 11th Gen become available, repeating this benchmarks…
Comment linking /labs/hpc/How-To-Use-MKL-with-AMD-Ryzen-and-Threadripper-CPU-s-Effectively-for-Python-Numpy-And-Other-Applications-1637/
on “Intel's “cripple AMD” function (2019)”Submitted Update on Samsung SSD Reliability as a story · 56 points
HN discussionImportant to remember the half-precision tensorcore misrepresentations where the 8x improvement over fp32 claimed on Imagenet with tensorcores (V100) was actually only 1.2-2x [1,2]. Furthermore, there are major precision issues with network architectures like variational autoencoders and many others. We use V100s for Richardson-Lucy like deconvolutions for example, where we have near-exact photon counts up to 10,000…
Comment linking /labs/hpc/TensorFlow-Performance-with-1-4-GPUs----RTX-Titan-2080Ti-2080-2070-GTX-1660Ti-1070-1080Ti-and-Titan-V-1386/
on “Nvidia CEO Introduces Nvidia Ampere Architecture, Nvidia A100 GPU”Submitted Impact of PCIe 5.0 Bandwidth on GPU Content Creation and LLM Performance as a story · 47 points
HN discussion> Intel keeps getting it right with numerical libraries. They're open. They work well. They work on AMD. What Intel numerical libraries are you thinking of? When I think of Intel numerical libraries, the first that comes to mind is MKL. MKL is neither open-source nor does it work well on AMD without some fragile hacks [0]. [0] https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/hpc/How-To-Use-MKL-with-AM...
Comment linking /labs/hpc/How-To-Use-MKL-with-AMD-Ryzen-and-Threadripper-CPU-s-Effectively-for-Python-Numpy-And-Other-Applications-1637/
on “Nvidia CEO Introduces Nvidia Ampere Architecture, Nvidia A100 GPU”Submitted Puget Systems' Perspective on Intel CPU Instability Issues as a story · 16 points
HN discussion> 2011 is not some kind of ancient history in the domain of fluid mechanics and fan design. But it is for most of the other articles this site publishes about consumer computer hardware, like the two that were published surrounding this one ([1], [2]). This article just happens to be an exception. [1]: https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/Product-Qualifica... [2]: https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/Pro…
Comment linking /labs/articles/Product-Qualification-Antec-Solo-II-108/
on “Effects of grill patterns on fan performance/noise (2011)”Submitted Memory Speed Terminology Guide as a story · 13 points
HN discussionAlso relevant in this context: https://www.pugetsystems.com/blog/2024/08/02/puget-systems-p... to;dr: they heavily customize BIOS settings, since many BIOSes run CPUs out-of-spec by default. With these customizations there was not much of a difference in failure rate between AMD and Intel at that point in time (even when including Intel 13th and 14th gen).
Comment linking /blog/2024/08/02/puget-systems-perspective-on-intel-cpu-instability-issues/
on “I am giving up on Intel and have bought an AMD Ryzen 9950X3D”Submitted AMD Ryzen Threadripper Pro 9000WX Content Creation Review as a story · 13 points
HN discussionAs far as TDP goes, the transferrence of electrical energy to heat is equivalent to that of a space heater as Puget Systems demonstrated here: https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/Gaming-PC-vs-Spac...
Comment linking /labs/articles/Gaming-PC-vs-Space-Heater-Efficiency-511/
on “AMD Prepares 32-Core Naples CPUs for 1P and 2P Servers: Coming in Q2”Submitted Apple M1 MacBook vs. PC Desktop Workstation for Adobe Creative Cloud as a story · 13 points
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