Editorial policy

CouchRig exists because most build advice is somebody’s vibe. The whole point of the site is that a number on it can be traced back to where it came from - so the rules about what money and free hardware can do here need to be written down where you can check them.

Here they are. Five of them.

1. Where numbers come from

Every spec on this site was read at the manufacturer. Every benchmark is cited to whoever actually ran it. We do not run benchmarks we have not run, and we do not round somebody else’s result into a claim of our own.

This one is not a promise, it is a gate. A build cannot be published if its performance figure has no source attached - the publish step refuses it. That is why the site launched with a lot of empty spec fields instead of plausible ones.

We have gotten this wrong before. A fabricated benchmark made it onto the live site once, which is exactly why the gate exists and why the corrections section below is not decoration.

2. AI writes drafts here, and we are telling you that

CouchRig uses Claude and GPT to draft part specs from manufacturer pages, and Claude to draft game write-ups from cited sources. That is a real thing the site does and you deserve to know it.

Two rules keep it honest:

• Two models have to agree - on part specs. A spec field is only marked as agreed when two different models independently pull the same value. One model concurring with itself is not corroboration, and a solo run cannot mark anything agreed - everything else lands as needs-review. Game write-ups are drafted by one model, so they are held to sourcing instead: grounded on cited pages, and checked by a person before they publish.
• A human publishes everything. Nothing on this site was generated and shipped unread.

AI is a research assistant here, not an author. If that changes, this section changes with it.

3. Review units

We will take hardware to test. Here is the whole deal, and it is not negotiable per-vendor.

What a vendor gets:

• The unit tested and written about honestly.
• A line on the page saying they supplied it, so readers can weigh that for themselves.

What a vendor does not get:

• Copy approval.
• A look at anything before it publishes.
• A veto, on the piece or on any number in it.
• A promise that we will cover it at all.
• A better result than the hardware earns.

Units go back when we are done. If we keep one, the page says so. A vendor who needs any of the second list should keep their hardware - we would rather have the empty slot than the arrangement.

4. Sponsorship

A sponsor can buy a placement, and it will be labelled as a placement everywhere it appears. That is the entire product.

A sponsor cannot buy:

• A benchmark number, or any change to one.
• A position on the headline performance ranking. It is computed from cited figures and an uncited number cannot appear on it at all. There is no editorial thumb on that scale and no price at which there could be. (The per-game fps charts also carry estimates, which is why every bar on them is labelled with where its number came from.)
• A recommendation.
• Inclusion in a build.
• A competitor’s removal, demotion, or omission.

If you are reading this because you are considering sponsoring something here, that list is not a negotiating position. It is the reason the placement is worth anything.

5. Affiliate links

Some links here earn a commission. Every page that carries one says so on the page itself, above the links, not buried in a footer. The long version is on how CouchRig makes money.

Commission does not decide what gets included or how it ranks. Most retailer prices here are read off the retailer’s own page and typed in, with the date we read them - so treat them as a checkpoint, not a live feed.

Amazon is the exception, and it is the one worth knowing about. We show no Amazon prices at all, because we hold no lawful source for them - and this is not a policy we could quietly drop. The admin refuses to let anyone switch Amazon prices on until a real source is configured. It would be easier to type one in by hand. There, the software will not let us.

Corrections

Found something wrong? Tell us: report a correction. A source link helps, but it is not required - “this number looks wrong” is a perfectly good report.

When we fix something factual, we say so on the page, with the date and what changed. We do not quietly edit a number and move on. A site that asks you to trust its figures has to show you when it got one wrong, or the trust is not worth anything. Every one we have published is listed on the corrections page.

If we cannot verify a correction, we will say that too, and where possible we will mark the figure as disputed rather than leaving it looking solid.

Who to talk to

All of it - corrections, review units, sponsorship, or telling us this policy is not being followed - goes to the contact page. The last one especially.