Thanks
They say the only way to win is to not play. /s, overclocking has debatable improvements in games anyways, mostly affecting render times if you're into that sort of thing, so imo if you don't win it's not that big of a deal and I don't know why I'm writing this long of a supplement in regard to this.
The silicon lottery is basically describing how the CPU you got compares in overclocking to some of the others out there. Typically, for early generations of CPUs, you will have a lot more chips that have the silicon lottery (some people can get a lot more performance than others). For example, the 4770k has more silicon lottery than the 4790k does, because the 4790k is a "generation" later than the 4770k and generally more stable.
How to play? Well, it's rather random, hence the term lottery. You can take precautions by always riding the late waves (4790k vs. 4770k), though you'll be very much on the back of waves in terms of upgrading. If you don't care about overclocking, then you really don't need to worry about it (though if you won the lottery, you could run cooler). Otherwise, you can just gamble and see what your results are.
What about in GPUs
Exactly how it sounds. Lol
Computer components are made of of silicon. And winning the lottery from a technilogical standpoint. It means they have a component that overclocks fairly well.
So when you hear someone say "oh i won the silicon lottery, they mean they have a component that overclocks amazingly. It could be a GPU, CPU. Ram etc.
Basically this.
I'd like to expand on what's been said so far, while yes it is very random because of the effects of mere slight manufacturing differences one batch of CPUs (or RAM, GPU) could be made 'better' than others hence giving it increased overclocking ability. A way to increase your chances from random to a better chance is finding components from the same batch as known golden chips. Definitely takes work (in terms of advertising in FS sections, research etc) and might not pay out but as I said it just increases the chance from random to a possibility of getting a good chip
I'm pretty sure it's basically more of how well made the part you got is, like the 9590s from AMD are simply really well made 8350s that could easily go to 5ghz.
Chips from the center of the wafer are normally better than chips near the edge for overclocking. Base clocks are based on the weakest chip from the wafer.
How do you get a better chip, buy used chips from reviewers since they normally send the best chips to them. Other than that, you can't.
To expand on what @Taco_Bell said, if you check the manufacture dates on some chips you can sometimes guess if you're in a sweet spot or not.
For example; the FX-8350 had a very pronounced sweet spot of 1250(ish) to 1401 before they started pulling ALL the super high end chips off to be 9370s and 9590s. If you have an 8350 from that range of date codes you are almost 90% guaranteed that you can get 5GHz or more.
Until you buy the product, and test out its overclocking capabilities, you can't know how good of a chip you have for overclocking. Not every chip is exactly alike, there are always minute differences. These differences may mean that the chip will run at 4.0ghz with only 1.2v, or run at 4.0ghz with 1.3v.
I was "lucky" with my FX-8320. I can get 5ghz with ~1.46v, if I recall correctly. I know of one person who managed to get to 5ghz with around 1.4v - exceptionally lucky! Some people can't get 5ghz even with 1.55 volts - the absolute maximum voltage you want to feed your CPU.
So, even with proper cooling and the right amount of power, the performance you can get out of your chip depends on the quality of the silicon.
Wow, what cooler are you running? At around 4.2-1.43 I'm pushing how hot I want to go. Haven't done a proper stress test because of that.
I had to use 1.47v and tickle the bus a bit. So OP, you see I didn't loose the lotto but @zanginator did better than me in said lotto.
Thermalright Archon SB-E X2. I get pretty close to 60C, if I remember correctly, so if I feel the need for speed, I have a 4.7ghz profile set-up.
However, I rarely crank my overclock up that high. I run 4.4ghz, sometimes, but my main overclock is 4.0ghz - the same as a stock FX-8350. With the high degree of diminishing returns in most games, it's not worth it. shrugs
Tips... sacrifice something to the silicon gods may a boost in chances of getting higher binned components.