Silicon Lottery, the specialty retailer that’s best known for selling pre-binned processors guaranteed to run stable at higher clock speeds, is closing next month after seven years of business. As noted in a post shared on its front page, Silicon Lottery has decided to close up shop for a number of reasons that include the dwindling amount of overclocking headroom in modern CPUs and challenges such as supply issues. Silicon Lottery’s last day of operation will be October 31.
Per Silicon Lottery:
We’re shutting down not for just one reason, but for a combination of many. As you may be aware, overclocking headroom has been dwindling these past several years with manufacturers offering higher frequencies at stock, better boosting algorithms, and tighter bins between models which reduces overclock frequency variation (the 11900K is essentially a binned 11700K, so with the 11900K we’re binning what has already been fairly heavily binned). This type of product segmentation is nothing new, but having such minor differences between two models is a more recent shift. Intel has also switched from a polymer TIM back to a solder TIM starting with their 9th generation CPUs, which has reduced the thermal benefits achieved from delidding. In addition, supply issues have taken a major toll on us, even before the pandemic started. Our orders with distributors for the last few releases have been nightmares of delays upon delays.
With all of this in mind, sales have fallen below the point where it makes sense for us to keep the store open. We know many of you are eagerly wanting Alder Lake CPUs, and we’re sorry that we won’t be able to fulfill your needs this time. We have seen your emails rolling in these past couple of weeks, and we’re sorry for not getting back to you guys earlier as we’ve been busy juggling this decision.
That said, Silicon Lottery says it might resurrect its business if things change in the market and processors feature a substantial amount of overclocking headroom again. Any orders placed for Silicon Lottery’s delidding service will need to be delivered to the store by November 30, 2021 for completion.
Source: Silicon Lottery