Silicon Lottery... cashes out? Goes bust? Help me think of a play on words here, I don't gamble. Point is, they're done.

[Middcore]

Summary

 Silicon Lottery, the company that marketed to overclockers with high-binned CPU's and delidding services, is shutting down next month. 

 

Quote

 After seven years of offering its unique services to the world, Silicon Lottery cites reductions in CPU overclocking headroom, the increasing use of thermal solder as a standard option, and market changes as causes for its decision to close the store. The closure will be effective on October 31st, with clients that want to have their CPUs delidded having until November 30th to send in their silicon for processing. 

 

My thoughts

Not really an overclocker myself (anymore) but I do remember hearing about this company a fair amount during the days over the infamous Intel "toothpaste" TIM and the delidding craze, then in the past few years I forgot they existed. Their demise is another sign, IMO, that the days of overclocking being a worthwhile endeavor for real performance gains are approaching an end. Optimizations made by Intel and AMD in both their product binning and in offering higher stock frequencies with technologies like PBO will eventually render it pointless except purely for bragging rights. 

 

Sources

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/cpu-specialist-silicon-lottery-to-close-shop-on-october-31st

https://siliconlottery.com/

 

 

[Taf the Ghost]

"Loses it all on Blue".

 

 

[Liltrekkie]

10 minutes ago, Middcore said:

Their demise is another sign, IMO, that the days of overclocking being a worthwhile endeavor for real performance gains are approaching an end.

 

Overclocking is still absolutely worthwhile, their niche, however, was not worthwhile. The CPU "shortages" probably didn't help them out either. 

[The_russian]

19 minutes ago, Caroline said:

next: cablemod

What do you not like about CableMod? Or Silicon Lottery for that matter?

[Middcore]

I don't see any good reason to think CableMod would go away. I am surprised they don't really have a major competitor.

[tim0901]

53 minutes ago, Liltrekkie said:

Overclocking is still absolutely worthwhile, their niche, however, was not worthwhile. The CPU "shortages" probably didn't help them out either. 

I wouldn't say overclocking in the classical sense is particularly worthwhile anymore. So much of the benefit of it can be gained automatically from technologies such as thermal velocity boost or multicore enhancement/powerboost overdrive that spending hours manually tweaking voltages and frequencies is absolutely less worthwhile than ever before.

[Spotty]

With the way CPUs intelligently boost these days I can't say I'm surprised. There really isn't much overclocking headroom left on CPUs these days either. 

 

1 hour ago, Middcore said:

The closure will be effective on October 31st, with clients that want to have their CPUs delidded having until November 30th to send in their silicon for processing. 

They close down at the end of October but people can still send their CPUs in for another month after they close? Pro tip: don't send your $500+ CPU to a company that has shut down and expect to get it back.

[SansVarnic]

Never had anything against OC or those that catered to the market, but honestly, I saw this coming years ago. Its has been a fun trend to watch though, good times and some interesting clock speeds.

[poochyena]

I'm not surprised. Ever since Ryzen released, overclocking has become less of a thing. I'm glad too. Its dumb you have to overclock to get the full performance out of your chip. It a big difference it would make on old chips too

[GDRRiley]

1 minute ago, Spotty said:

They close down at the end of October but people can still send their CPUs in for another month after they close? Pro tip: don't send your $500+ CPU to a company that has shut down and expect to get it back.

their online store will be closed, so it sounds like they don't want to buy any more chips to bin and resell themselves. its hard for them to make money because of how heavily intel is binning now

 

their historical data is interesting to look at. 5.0ghz has been intels limit for all core going back to 4790k with some of 10/11th gen being able to do 5.1

[Blademaster91]

Overclocking is still worth it IMO, auto boosting often applies too much voltage, or sometimes isn't as stable as a manual overclock. But I'm not surprised the niche of paying extra for a binned CPU is going away, it isn't worth paying more for a slightly better binned CPU.

[HenrySalayne]

8 hours ago, Middcore said:

I don't see any good reason to think CableMod would go away.

Once these horribly tempered glass side panels are out of style, CableMods business model will crumble. But we are not there yet.

[StDragon]

I'm sure by many what I'm about to say is heresy, but I would never recommend manual OCing CPUs and RAM to entry level PC builders. I know that there's a lot of marketing and enthusiasm surrounding overclocking in general, and looking back would have only been a dream 20+ years ago to have that kind of support and encouragement. Prior to that period, if you were OCing, you were renegades and voiding the warranty by default (push that too hard today, and that still can be the case; don't fry / over volt your stuff). So that said, why OC anymore??! It's not worth that 1% gain only to have a system on the ragged edges of instability. You will get that higher benchmarking score, but why would anyone leave their system OCed with random BSODs and data corruption (bit-flips in RAM)? Eff that noise. Your computational results and data integrity should be worth it more to you.

[Fasterthannothing]

8 hours ago, tim0901 said:

I wouldn't say overclocking in the classical sense is particularly worthwhile anymore. So much of the benefit of it can be gained automatically from technologies such as thermal velocity boost or multicore enhancement/powerboost overdrive that spending hours manually tweaking voltages and frequencies is absolutely less worthwhile than ever before.

I agree I bought a i9 10850k looked at what I was boosting to out of the box looked at possible best scenario OC and decided it wasn't worth my time. I used to be hardcore into overclocking even going so far as to flash high voltage bios on my GPUs. Now everything unfortunately is basically maxed out. GPUs you can still get a little bit more but even those are getting to the limit out of the factory.

[Middcore]

1 hour ago, HenrySalayne said:

Once these horribly tempered glass side panels are out of style, CableMods business model will crumble. But we are not there yet.

Ah, I see. Well, good luck with that. Any day now.

[Cyberspirit]

2 hours ago, HenrySalayne said:

Once these horribly tempered glass side panels are out of style, CableMods business model will crumble. But we are not there yet.

It's all up to personal preference. Transparent side panels, LEDs, custom cables these all have been around for a real long time long before they became mainstream and I doubt they will ever go away.

 

Even if they did, people would just do what they have done for a long time and just mod their cases.

[Zodiark1593]

2 hours ago, SlidewaysZ said:

I agree I bought a i9 10850k looked at what I was boosting to out of the box looked at possible best scenario OC and decided it wasn't worth my time. I used to be hardcore into overclocking even going so far as to flash high voltage bios on my GPUs. Now everything unfortunately is basically maxed out. GPUs you can still get a little bit more but even those are getting to the limit out of the factory.

Is it really that unfortunate that manufacturers are squeezing the silicon for all they’re worth out of the box?

[shaz2sxy]

8 minutes ago, Cyberspirit said:

It's all up to personal preference. Transparent side panels, LEDs, custom cables these all have been around for a real long time long before they became mainstream and I doubt they will ever go away.

 

Even if they did, people would just do what they have done for a long time and just mod their cases.

I remember having cathode tub elight in my PC in 2010ish lol

 

RGB for life

[suits]

2 hours ago, HenrySalayne said:

Once these horribly tempered glass side panels are out of style, CableMods business model will crumble. But we are not there yet.

I really don't think that's going to happen anytime soon. The day in which we hide the internals will only come if something else awful happens, like no one can afford pcs anymore.

[Vishera]

15 hours ago, Middcore said:

that the days of overclocking being a worthwhile endeavor for real performance gains are approaching an end.

Not really,give it voltage,cooling and bump the clock speed.

I got really nice improvements overclocking on Ryzen.

[HenrySalayne]

2 hours ago, Caroline said:

SL was kiiinda the same, let's say "legally" the guys were simply selling BIOS setup settings plus a compatible used CPU as "a gift" to avoid being subject to used chips standard market prices, even I must admit that's a clever way to get away with a ripoff.

They commercialized the process of getting a whole lot of CPUs and testing the overclock capabilities of every single one of them. It's not a rip-off. If you don't have a gigantic stash of cash, you cannot do it by yourself. 

I don't know why some people have to complain about these things all the time. Companies, like CableMod or Silicon Lottery, don't take anything away from you, they offer a service and that's how they make money. 

[SteveGrabowski0]

With overclocking showing such minimal gains in gaming nowadays vs even 7 years ago much less 20 years ago it's no surprise. Even back in the Haswell days I didn't think it was worth it for someone on a tight budget since the added cost of the Z-series board plus aftermarket cooler could easily be put towards a better gpu instead, but nowadays it seems so pointless. 

[Brooksie359]

5 hours ago, Caroline said:

Ridiculous prices and shit quality? they literally sell the exact same cables you can get at aliexpress or any other wholesale chinese site for 1/4 of the price with a cool bag and some stickers

 

This is my favourite example. Unfortunately the user wasn't able to get his money back.

If PSU manufacturers decided to do the same -sell coloured cable kits for their units- taking advantage of the edgy gaming trend, these guys would be gone in a day.

 

SL was kiiinda the same, let's say "legally" the guys were simply selling BIOS setup settings plus a compatible used CPU as "a gift" to avoid being subject to used chips standard market prices, even I must admit that's a clever way to get away with a ripoff.

Did silicon lottery do something to you personally or why do you seem so upset about what a business does? They objectively did something that alot of people wanted and paid for back when Intel had crap thermal compound. I mean Intel cpus were much cooler after a delid and so that alone was worth paying for if you don't want to risk delidding yourself because it does come with some risk of breaking the cpu. You get that and then they also bin it to basically guarantee am overclock which is just the cherry on top. Sure the service doesn't make as much sense now but back then it was really nice to have for those who wanted it and clearly they were open for business for quite some time so I would guess there was sufficient demand back then. 

[mr moose]

1 hour ago, SteveGrabowski0 said:

With overclocking showing such minimal gains in gaming nowadays vs even 7 years ago much less 20 years ago it's no surprise. Even back in the Haswell days I didn't think it was worth it for someone on a tight budget since the added cost of the Z-series board plus aftermarket cooler could easily be put towards a better gpu instead, but nowadays it seems so pointless. 

7 years ago I said almost exactly that,  The way silicon was developing the writing was on the wall for overclocking being of any real world benefit.

 

 

 

 

[Zodiark1593]

2 hours ago, SteveGrabowski0 said:

With overclocking showing such minimal gains in gaming nowadays vs even 7 years ago much less 20 years ago it's no surprise. Even back in the Haswell days I didn't think it was worth it for someone on a tight budget since the added cost of the Z-series board plus aftermarket cooler could easily be put towards a better gpu instead, but nowadays it seems so pointless. 

I thought about grabbing a 4790K to drop in. Even on a locked board, 4.4 GHz Turbo is still mighty tasty. It’s not as though overclocking gave super high gains on the average chip anyway. Though it’s much too expensive and much too late in the game to touch now.