Effective May 22, 2026.
The short version
Pages on this site that recommend specific CPUs and GPUs include “Buy on Amazon” links. If you click one of these links and make a purchase, we earn a small commission from Amazon. The commission is paid by Amazon out of their margin — you do not pay anything extra.
That’s the entire business model. We do not sell user data, run display ads, charge for premium tiers, or take money from manufacturers to influence recommendations.
Required FTC disclosure
Per the United States Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR Part 255 (Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising):
PC Bottleneck Calculator is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com. Our Amazon Associates ID is pcbottleneck-20. We earn from qualifying purchases.How we decide what to recommend
Our recommendations are driven by the same engine that powers the bottleneck calculator: benchmark indices, measured FPS data, and a published accuracy methodology (the engine reports its own measured 21.6% MAEon a held-out test set). We don’t adjust our recommendations to favor any brand or specific product.
Specifically:
- The “Best CPU for RTX X” guides rank parts by their calculated 1440p gaming performance index — not by affiliate margin
- The calculator’s “suggested swap” recommends the part with the highest FPS-gain-per-dollar, ranked purely by the engine
- If Amazon doesn’t carry a part we recommend, we still recommend it — the affiliate link just won’t earn anything
- We don’t accept payment from CPU/GPU manufacturers to feature parts. None of NVIDIA, AMD, Intel, or any board partner has paid us anything, ever.
Where the affiliate links appear
Every page that links to Amazon will have a visible “Affiliate link” notice next to the button. The links themselves are tagged tag=pcbottleneck-20 and carry rel=“sponsored nofollow noopener noreferrer”attributes (per Google’s spam guidelines for affiliate links).
Locations with affiliate links:
- Every CPU page (“Buy this CPU” button)
- Every GPU page (“Buy this GPU” button)
- Every CPU × GPU pair page (“What next?” section)
- The homepage calculator result panel after you run a calculation
- Specific guides like Best CPU for RTX 4090 and the rest of the buying-guide series
Other things we don’t do
- We don’t run display ads (AdSense, Mediavine, etc.)
- We don’t sell user data
- We don’t offer paid placement or sponsored guides
- We don’t have a Pro tier, paid features, or any subscription
- We don’t run email marketing — we don’t collect email addresses
EU / UK consumer information
Under the EU Unfair Commercial Practices Directive (2005/29/EC) and the UK Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008, we are required to clearly mark any commercial communication. The “Affiliate link” notice next to each Amazon button serves as that mark. The relationship is also disclosed in this page and in our privacy policy.
Questions
Email sm.salmanahmed47@gmail.com. We answer every message.