Bottleneck

[Phobosy]

So this year I’m looking to upgrade my graphics card to something a bit more future proofed and that can run most games at high to ultra details at 144fps but I’m worried about the big scary word BOTTLENECK. In an ideal world I would love to get a rtx 3070 but my hopes for that aren’t too high. Im currently running an i5 9600KF @ 4.3GHz with 32gb corsair vengeance RGB pro @2666MHz (max my mobo supports) I also have a 650watt 80+ bronze psu from corsair. What would everybodys pick for best gpu for 144fps gaming at 1080p for a i5 9600KF? Any help is appreciated :)

[NelizMastr]

1 minute ago, Phobosy said:

So this year I’m looking to upgrade my graphics card to something a bit more future proofed and that can run most games at high to ultra details at 144fps but I’m worried about the big scary word BOTTLENECK. In an ideal world I would love to get a rtx 3070 but my hopes for that aren’t too high. Im currently running an i5 9600KF @ 4.3GHz with 32gb corsair vengeance RGB pro @2666MHz (max my mobo supports) I also have a 650watt 80+ bronze psu from corsair. What would everybodys pick for best gpu for 144fps gaming at 1080p for a i5 9600KF? Any help is appreciated

I think you'll get away with a 3070 for now, at least. You might need to upgrade to a CPU with some more threads, like an i9-9900 or 9900K, to get the best results, though.

[Stahlmann]

If your main task is gaming, your system will do just fine. Your 9600KF should also easily overclock to 5GHz or more. This way you can get almost the same gaming performance as the 10th gen 10600K.

[VeganJoy]

a new motherboard is in order. the 9600k needs to be overclocked to be competitive and worth its price; at 4.3ghz with 2666mhz ram it has little, if any, advantages over a 3600. aside from microstutter from a lack of hyperthreading, at 4.3ghz i would expect it to keep up with something in the range of a 1080ti. clock it higher and youd be able to utilize a 2080ti/3070 without significant losses in average framerates.

[Phobosy]

1 minute ago, VeganJoy said:

a new motherboard is in order. the 9600k needs to be overclocked to be competitive and worth its price; at 4.3ghz with 2666mhz ram it has little, if any, advantages over a 3600. aside from microstutter from a lack of hyperthreading, at 4.3ghz i would expect it to keep up with something in the range of a 1080ti. clock it higher and youd be able to utilize a 2080ti/3070 without significant losses in average framerates.

Hey,a new motherboard is what ive been looking at getting to bee able to overclock it above 4.3. would i need a new cooler to cool it @5GHz? i currently have a 212 evo from coolermaster

[VeganJoy]

itd be close to the limits of that cooler, a nice noctua or other quality air cooler would do the trick. if you dont mind running the fans a bit loud then the hyper 212 could be enough, depending on case airflow and ambient temps. you should be able to find a lightly used z390 for cheap, i got a like new z390 maximus hero for 160 bucks a couple months ago so for a 9600k ~100 bucks should get you a fine z390. ideally youd swap the 9600k for an 8700k as well, it would clock lower but provide stable framerates in all games since it has hyperthreading, whereas some games shit themselves when presented with a non-SMT processor. depends on the games you play though, mostly just a few AAA titles that have this issue, like far cry 5.

[Ha-Satan]

8 minutes ago, Phobosy said:

Hey,a new motherboard is what ive been looking at getting to bee able to overclock it above 4.3. would i need a new cooler to cool it @5GHz? i currently have a 212 evo from coolermaster

Don't buy a new motherboard just to overclock the 9600K, that's throwing money at a dead platform and not a good long-term investment. The biggest limit on the 9600K is its lack of hyper-threading and overclocking will not change that.

 

I think you should wait until you get your 3070 and see how it goes with your current setup. Most likely you will be pleased with the performance. Then you can see if you need to upgrade your CPU. Upgrade if the performance is noticeably bad, don't upgrade just because a bottleneck calculator told you to.

 

If you do want to upgrade your CPU, look at moving to a new platform like the upcoming Zen 3 architecture.

[Chris Pratt]

31 minutes ago, Phobosy said:

So this year I’m looking to upgrade my graphics card to something a bit more future proofed and that can run most games at high to ultra details at 144fps but I’m worried about the big scary word BOTTLENECK. In an ideal world I would love to get a rtx 3070 but my hopes for that aren’t too high. Im currently running an i5 9600KF @ 4.3GHz with 32gb corsair vengeance RGB pro @2666MHz (max my mobo supports) I also have a 650watt 80+ bronze psu from corsair. What would everybodys pick for best gpu for 144fps gaming at 1080p for a i5 9600KF? Any help is appreciated

At 1080p any of the 30 series cards will be CPU bottlenecked with even something like a 10900K. A bottleneck isn't necessarily an issue, though. It just means you're not getting the full performance possible, but you're still going to get good performance. I definitely wouldn't recommend buying a 3090, because that would just be a total waste, but getting a 3070 or something is perfectly fine. Maybe you'll be a little CPU bottlenecked, but you can always upgrade that later, and the card is ready and waiting to take advantage of the increased throughput.