Hey guys,
I’ve been benching casually for a while and recently joined the Novice League to start logging some results. It’s been super fun so far, but now I’m wondering what the best approach is if I want to move up to Rookie or beyond.

Do you think it’s better to focus on one benchmark (like Cinebench, GPUPI, etc.) and try to push really hard there, or spread out and submit across as many benchmarks as possible? Also, are there any “hidden gem” benchmarks that are less competitive but still give decent points?

Right now I’m running a 13600K on air and a 4070, nothing extreme, but I’m tempted to try chilled water or maybe even my first LN2 grade calculator session if I get the chance.

Would love to hear your strategies when you first started climbing the ladder!

Edited September 19, 2025Sep 19 by evelynwang

I would suggest that you master benchmarking skills with older hardware - superpi in XP etc. That will build a strong foundation for further growth. Buy either 775 board (preferably Asus x38 ddr3) or AM3 board (Gigabyte 890fx based) and several popular cpus for that socket (775 - e8400-e8500, am3 - 565BE, 965BE) and learn how to make good ambient scores with them (by reaching good efficiency). That will also add some solid hw points to your profile. Problems here is to catch reputable board at reasonable price and get proper RAM (elida hyper as best option - yet with oem samsung g-die you may still have good efficiency).

For 3d, probably having smth from Radeon 4xxx (both single gpu and crossfire) and Geforce 5xx (both single gpu and sli) is also a good starting point. Those old benches (3dmark01se-3dmark06) are pretty nice and won't be cpu bottlenecked with LGA1700. For multigpu make sure your board is able to bifurcate PCIE into x8/x8 otherwise stay with single gpu.

Cooling-wise, good way is to pass all stages - air/AIO, custom water (tap water included), dry ice, LN2.