There's nothing worse than buying all the hardware for your new gaming PC and then finding that the components you chose will affect performance or, worse, aren't compatible at all. While there's no definitive guide to the best CPU and GPU pairings for your specific gaming PC, there are some guidelines you can follow to ensure your hardware doesn't underperform once you've built it.
Mismatched parts like motherboard and processor or CPU and GPU aren't always guaranteed to work well together, which can lead to instability, crashes, or even hardware damage. The last thing you want to do is pair a top-notch graphics card like the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 with a humble Intel Core i3 processor.
What is a bottleneck?
A system bottleneck is when a component isn't powerful enough to keep up with the rest of the PC. It's usually a single component that's significantly less powerful than the rest. The most common causes of this are your CPU or GPU, but it could also be that you have too little or slow RAM, or that you're still using an HDD-based hard drive instead of an SSD.
Unfortunately, there is no way to completely eliminate bottlenecks on your PC. Even if you have the best hardware, there will always be performance differences between the different hardware on your PC. Additionally, programs and games do not use hardware resources evenly, which means you need to gear your PC towards the type of work you will be doing on it.
If money is no object, just go for the best GPU and the best CPU money can buy. In such a case, you won't have to worry about bottlenecks as you would be using the fastest consumer hardware available. But for everyone else, do your research beforehand and choose components that fit your budget and meet your PC needs.
What is best for gaming?
Your GPU is the most important piece of hardware in a gaming PC, but that doesn't mean you should neglect your CPU, as it has some very important roles to fulfill as well. Rendering huge 3D worlds generally places a much higher demand on the GPU than the CPU. The majority of the time spent rendering a single frame of a video game is spent by the GPU, and only a small portion of that is taken up by the processor for physics or logical calculations.
When running modern AAA single-player games at high resolution and graphics settings, a powerful GPU becomes much more important. And on top of that, if you want a high frame rate, you'll need to invest in both a good CPU and a good GPU, as frame rate depends on both. On top of that, most modern AAA games aren't even particularly well optimized at launch, which leads us to run games that are more CPU intensive.
Games that have many moving parts or involve many logical processes or simulations think Assassin's Creed Odyssey, Star Citizen, X4: Basicsor most RTS games can often bring low to mid-range CPUs to their knees. Likewise, trying to achieve a frame rate of more than 200 FPS in old games or competitive first-person shooters with relatively simple graphics, like Brave or Rainbow Six Siegewill be more demanding on your CPU than if it were running at a frame rate of 60 or even 120 FPS. Since these games have simple graphics, any modern mid-range GPU should be able to easily hit a frame rate of 200 and above, but you won't get away with an Intel Core i5 this time.
So, with a gaming PC, it's important to consider the average resolution and frame rate of your games, as well as the type of games you plan to run on it, before choosing a CPU and GPU. Keep in mind, however, that while you may be able to save some money by buying a relatively weak GPU or CPU that performs well for your use case, this will limit you in the future when playing other types of games where the weakest component is causing a bottleneck.
What is best for work?
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Most productivity-related applications and tasks place greater demands on the CPU than the GPU. Things like running multiple browser tabs, spreadsheets, documents, Adobe applications, programming software, and web design all directly impact your CPU. To get the best performance out of it, you need a powerful CPU, so you can do without a strong GPU if you don't need it.
For 3D rendering software, CPU and GPU are equally important, so you can't skimp on either. Video editing and data analysis software also rely on these two components, so you'll need a powerful CPU and GPU to get the best performance here.
How to calculate a bottleneck
While this is only a very rough estimate, sometimes it can be helpful to use an online bottleneck calculator. Here's how to do it, but again, caution is advised.
- Go to Bottleneck calculator Website.
- Select the Processor and GPU You plan to buy.
- Select the Screen resolution of the monitor on which you want to run these components.
- Select the type of tasks you are likely to perform on this PC and press Calculate. I choose GPU intensive tasks since I mostly play single player games.
- The results show you the Percentage of bottleneck one component causes the other. Anything under 5% is a good match.
It might be time for an upgrade
If after building your PC you find that it is bottlenecked, there isn't much you can do about it other than upgrading the affected hardware. Fortunately, upgrading a GPU is pretty easy. All you need to do is plug in a new and faster graphics card and you're good to go.
Unfortunately, if you upgrade a CPU to a newer generation chip with a different socket, you'll also need to get a new motherboard and possibly even upgrade your RAM from DDR4 to DDR5. Even if you upgrade your CPU within the same generation, the process of changing CPUs is still much more tedious than a GPU swap, so it's always a good idea to future-proof your processor as much as possible to avoid the hassle of upgrading later.