Hardware Basics
GPUs, RAM, cooling, HDD — the four components that decide how big your models can be and how fast your runs finish.
Your rig is what limits the size and speed of the brains you can train. Every component has its own job.
The four pillars
- GPU — drives pretrain speed (tok/sec, tok/click) and unlocks larger model tiers (VRAM gate). The single most important upgrade during pretrain.
- RAM — dataset cache and module slot count. Higher-tier RAM allows more modules on the same brain.
- Cooling — drives run duration. Better cooling → the same run finishes faster with fewer clicks. See below.
- HDD — domain storage. More HDD = more domains you can own + more active slots.
GPU and Cooling are two separate speeds — GPU accelerates pretrain, Cooling shortens runs. Neither substitutes for the other.
Cooling — how much faster your runs finish
Cooling is measured on a scale from 1 (Starter Stock Bronze) to 32 (Cluster Cryo Gold). Each cooler you buy sits somewhere on that ladder, and the number is exactly the run-speed engine of your rig.
Concretely, cooling controls how many clicks a run demands to complete:
- Cooling 1 — a one-hour run requires ~150 clicks to finish and takes the full hour idle.
- Cooling 32 — the same one-hour run requires ~50 clicks and finishes in about 30 minutes idle.
Every upgrade along the cooling ladder shaves clicks and shaves time proportionally. Run boosts can push it further — see the Run Configuration guide for stack math.
Cooling doesn’t inflate rewards. It’s a throughput / convenience upgrade, not a money printer. The Ru a run pays depends on the brain’s quality, config, contracts, and reputation — not on how much cooling you have. Better cooling just means the same reward arrives sooner and with fewer clicks.
Rarity tiers (Bronze / Silver / Gold)
- Bronze — entry. Cheapest, lowest stats, shortest lifespan.
- Silver — mid. Costs more, modest stat lift, longer life.
- Gold — premium. Best stats, longest life. Often raises slot counts (module / domain / active) by one step.
- Exotic (Black Market only) — unrepairable, lasts about 2× longer than standard hardware. See Black Market items for the tradeoff.
Save your Cu for one good upgrade rather than four mediocre ones. Rarity within your current chassis often beats jumping to the next chassis’s Bronze baseline.