Multi-CPU Support, ECC, Registered RAM & More
May 1, 2015
Recently we rolled out a number of new feature and compatibility updates to the site.
By popular demand, we now support multi-CPU Xeon systems. With supporting motherboards and processors, you can now add multiple CPUs to your build. (Note: Opteron support isn't available yet, but it is on our roadmap.) Similarly, we've added support for registered RAM, and significantly upgraded the number of listings of ECC RAM. As with unbuffered RAM, registered and ECC RAM compatibility checking is available.
Also on the compatibility front, when evaluating power supply compatibility with video cards we now factor in the number of PCI Express power connectors. Previously if the wattage supply was sufficient but there were insufficient power connectors on the power supply, we'd recommend using a molex-to-PCIe adapter. Lately though it seems less and less video cards are shipping with those adapters, so we decided to make the compatibility stricter. Starting today, you'll see incompatibility alerts if the power supply has an insufficient number of 6, 6+2, or 8-pin PCI express power connectors for the video card(s) in your part list.
We hope you find these updates useful, and please let us know if you have any feedback or suggestions! (We also have some great stuff in the works coming soon, so stay tuned!)
Charity:Water Completion Report #2
March 2, 2015
Our second Charity:Water completion report has arrived! Thanks to your support of PCPartPicker, we were able to fund a water and sanitation project serving 223 people in Ethiopia, Africa. Our first completion report for Malawi, Africa can be found here.
This project provided a shallow borehole well and sanitation for the Timket-Keze School. Above is a map showing the GPS coordinates of the project pictured (13.63684, 38.78488).
More than 50 million Ethiopians don't have access to safe water. Most rural families survive on less than five liters of water per day and walk up to four hours to collect it from open sources. Projects like these make a real difference in people's lives, and I'm so happy to be able to be a part of it with you.
PCPartPicker is supported through affiliate commissions from participating retailers. We donate a portion of our earnings to charity. When you purchase components through retailer links on PCPartPicker, you're not only supporting this site - you're also helping provide clean water and sanitation to people in need. Thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for being a part of this and helping us make this happen.
External Hard Drives
Feb. 24, 2015
I'm happy to announce that PCPartPicker now lists external hard drives! Whether you're including it into your part list or looking for great external storage deals, we now have you covered.
This initial rollout supports desktop and portable drives ranging in capacity from 120GB to over 20TB. We are not currently listing NAS devices yet, but hope to support them in the future.
We're continually adding new drives to our listings. However if you can't find the one you're looking for let us know in the forums and we'll get it added promptly.
Site Update, Part 2
Feb. 24, 2015
After the release of the new site design last week we received a considerable amount of feedback. Since then we've rolled out additional improvements, style adjustments, and bug fixes. Some changes are more subtle than others, so I wanted to call them out individually.
Our first priority was to fix any bugs we introduced with the new layout. I believe we've addressed most (if not all) of the bugs found during the rollout. If there are any issues you're still seeing, send us a note over on our site feedback forum and we'll get it taken care as fast as we can.
Based on feedback, we made a number of style adjustments to the layout:
- Reduced padding in a number of areas - in page headings, filter lists, etc.
- Increased font sizes in areas where it was hard to read, such as part category lists
- Improved visibility of the part list on part category pages
- Improved visibility of the wattage breakdown on part lists
- Added delete links to saved part lists and completed builds in a more obvious place
- Doubled the number of parts shown per page when viewing part categories
With the rollout of build guides, we heard your feedback that price sliders were hard to use for lower budget systems. We've made improvements there, so please check it out again and let us know what you think.
Filter sliders also got some additional attention that I hope should improve usability. Specifically, you can now click on the slide labels and edit the value manually. Below is a demonstration on how they work:
We did receive suggestions to bring back the old site layout. That is not likely to happen. The new site layout also incorporated numerous backend changes and performance improvements that are no longer practical to backport. Additionally it would be a substantial amount of work to maintain both versions of the site.
We also received suggestions to move the filters from the left side back to the right side. We made the change in our development setup and tested it - in the end it wasn't something we felt looked right. Filters will remain on the left side.
Thank you for all of your feedback to date. We're still iterating on the site, both in appearance and in functionality. While we can't always act on all of it, we do want you to know that we read through and consider all of your suggestions. (Sometimes different suggestions conflict, other times it may not be feasible from a time or implementation standpoint.)
Site Update
Feb. 16, 2015
Today we're pleased to roll out significant updates to the site. In addition to a rework of the look and feel, we've also introduced a number of new features and performance improvements. While we're not done with all the updates we're working on, we did want to push live what we have to date.
Updates:
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Site look and feel: First and foremost, you'll notice a massive change in the appearance of the site. This is the first fruit of bringing on board our design lead Phil Coffman.
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Site performance: We massively improved the performance of part selection pages. You should notice a difference immediately. We made not just the backend server processing but also the page load and rendering times significantly.
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Part sorting: Part categories are now default sorted by popularity. We aggregate a significant amount of usage data that we then use to determine this ordering. What you'll find is that the parts you most commonly want will be right at the top (or close). We've been doing this on the mobile version since its release last May and decided to roll it out to the desktop version as well.
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Part price filter: You've been asking for this for a while, and we heard you! You can now filter parts, completed builds, and build guides by price.
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Build guides: Up until now only staff could publish PCPartPicker build guides. We've opened it up now so that anyone can create and publish a guide. You can also view other guides, as well as vote and comment on them. Feel like you have the best idea for an Intel or AMD based build? Create your guide!
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User avatars: On comments and user pages, you can now have your own avatar. Just go to your profile page and upload your own profile image.
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Build tags: Initially just for build guides, we'll be rolling out tagging support for completed builds soon too.
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Sortable saved builds: We've totally revamped how saved and completed builds are displayed in your profile. You can now easily sort saved builds, completed builds, and your build guides. We have a few more improvements slated for this area, so stay tuned!
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Ability to reorder completed build images: Now you can reorder your completed build images however you would like. We'll pull the first three images in the set and use those for the thumbnails when viewing the list of completed builds.
We hope you like the changes, and of course, let us know if you run into any issues!