Did you know, for example, that you can bypass the so-called ‘silicon lottery’ when it comes to buying a CPU? At a cost…
Building a gaming PC could be fun, or it could be rather frustrating, depending on how you approach the pursuit, and of course your own personal circumstances. You may be constrained by a tight budget, and therefore experience difficulty picking the right parts to achieve what you want in terms of performance. Or you might be a relative tech novice, and unsure of how to best put together a PC which can cope well with modern games. Don’t worry, because help is at hand. Beginners should head over to our article on how to build your first gaming PC, and then this guide gives you all the info you’ll need to subsequently put the thing together, all broken down into easy to follow steps. That’s all the core stuff covered, then – but what about the trimmings? In this feature, we’re going to look at five additional tips you may not be aware of that will help make sure that your gaming PC is everything it should be. As you’re probably aware, processors aren’t created equal. For any given specific model of CPU, there’ll be slight variances in the manufacturing process that will mean some chips are a little better than others (although they will all be in the same ballpark). So when you buy an unlocked processor – which can be overclocked – folks refer to the ‘silicon lottery’, essentially meaning that you’re keeping your fingers crossed that you get one of the better examples of that particular CPU model. Because these slightly superior products might overclock with considerably more headroom. But you don’t have to rely on blind luck to secure a good CPU in this respect. That’s because there are companies out there who buy in processors, test them to see exactly how good they are, and then sell them on to PC builders who want a guarantee of what speed they’ll be able to overclock up to. Silicon Lottery is one firm which does exactly this, and we recently mentioned the company in a couple of pieces about new Ryzen 3000 chips already running unusually close to their maximum performance in terms of clocks, generally speaking. Now, a few caveats here. Of course, these operations – which also include the likes of Overclockers UK and German retailer Caseking – obviously charge more than the RRP for these CPUs, and some folks believe that you’re simply better off spending that extra money on upgrading other components to boost performance in your gaming rig. Indeed, whether this makes sense or not, and how much mileage you might get out of going this route, will likely vary depending on the exact build and processor you’re looking at. In some cases, the expenditure might be such that it could simply be a better idea to step up to a faster (different) CPU (assuming there is one and you aren’t looking at the flagship already). Also bear in mind that you may need to buy a certain spec of motherboard (i.e. not an entry-level model) to run a particular chip at the speed advertised by Silicon Lottery (or whoever you are buying from). Still, this is certainly an interesting option for those who don’t mind forking out extra in some scenarios to achieve the absolute best build for their gaming PC. Finally, remember that these CPUs can be delidded by the company to lower the temperature they run at, which again is a useful boon for those looking to really push their processor to the limits. It’s not uncommon to see some pretty beefy gaming PC builds proposed online, where the builder has picked cheap, maybe even bottom-of-the-line, non-critical components.
