Would an i9 9900k be sufficient for an RTX 4070 Super or similar?

[YourTextHere]

EDIT: Post has become irrelevant since I may or may not have trashed my platform by spilling LM paste into one of the RAM ports , but I'm gonna leave this post here for people who have a similar dillema.

 

Hi,

I've got a PC thats currently based around an i9 9900k and an RTX 3060 Ti, running in a 1080p setup. The system is very obviously CPU biased, ever since I installed that i9 over and i5 of the same generation (I still am not sure why, it made no sense then and makes no sense now).
 

Anyways, the setup is slowly starting to age, both due to the natural progess in game tech (and subsequently, their hardware requirenments) AND due to the fact that I've been looking to upgrade from 1080p to 1440p. I have a rather flexible budget for a new GPU, but I'd prefer not to have to replace the entire (currently overkill) platform to accomodate for it.
 

I have built quite a few PCs for me and my friends back in the day, but I've been completely out of the loop ever since I got my current setup and my lack of familiarity with the current market has me not entirely convinced that a GPU like that would be the right fit and/or now would be the right time for an upgrade (taking into account the premiere of the 50 series and "other international economic events" ).
 

Does anyone have any experience with a similar setup? Will there be any noticeable bottlenecks in 1440p? Will my platform's support of only PCIe 3.0 hinder the PCIe 4.0 GPU? And if everything would be fine hardware-wise, is now a good time to make that upgrade?

[Hinjima]

7 minutes ago, YourTextHere said:

Hi,

I've got a PC thats currently based around an i9 9900k and an RTX 3060 Ti, running in a 1080p setup. The system is very obviously CPU biased, ever since I installed that i9 over and i5 of the same generation (I still am not sure why, it made no sense then and makes no sense now).
 

Anyways, the setup is slowly starting to age, both due to the natural progess in game tech (and subsequently, their hardware requirenments) AND due to the fact that I've been looking to upgrade from 1080p to 1440p. I have a rather flexible budget for a new GPU, but I'd prefer not to have to replace the entire (currently overkill) platform to accomodate for it.
 

I have built quite a few PCs for me and my friends back in the day, but I've been completely out of the loop ever since I got my current setup and my lack of familiarity with the current market has me not entirely convinced that a GPU like that would be the right fit and/or now would be the right time for an upgrade (taking into account the premiere of the 50 series and "other international economic events" ).
 

Does anyone have any experience with a similar setup? Will there be any noticeable bottlenecks in 1440p? Will my platform's support of only PCIe 3.0 hinder the PCIe 4.0 GPU? And if everything would be fine hardware-wise, is now a good time to make that upgrade?

Hello, welcome to the Forums  

The 9900k will be fine with a RTX 4070 Super or similar.

A 4070 Super or similar card will not saturate the PCIE 3.0 so you will not lose performance because of this.

 

I had a 9900k and I paired it with a 4080. It some CPU heavy games it was quite stuttery but overall was okay to play.

I did upgrade to a Ryzen 7700x and saw a decent uplift in performance and a massive uplift in 1% and 0.1% low ( stutter ) in CPU heavy games like Hell Let Loose and Metro Exodus.

That being said, most games ran fine with the 9900k and 4080 combo and it wasn't a problem gaming   This was at 1440p as well.

 

You'll be fine and should have a good time gaming with this setup, dont worry  

 

 

[jaslion]

You'll be fine yes in some cpu heavy games it will be held back a bit but it's fine really. Not worth investing heaps of money upgrading yet.

 

I'd also say WAIT on a gpu upgrade as prices are starting to settle now for all the overpriced new stuff and good chance that by summer you can get a 9070xt for a good price or similar. Unless you have a real deal on a 4070. I personally wouldn't get a 12gb card for 1440p these days as the push for more vram is happening and it's going quite fast.

[thekingofmonks]

It will severely bottleneck the 4070S in plenty of titles at 1440p, although it should be fine in certain games. What do you play?

[Hinjima]

6 minutes ago, thekingofmonks said:

It will severely bottleneck the 4070S in plenty of titles at 1440p, although it should be fine in certain games. What do you play?

Using the world severely is a bit strong.

It will be fine at 1440p with a 4070 Super.. Its still a decent 8 core / 16 threaded CPU even though its going on a bit in terms of age.

[YourTextHere]

11 minutes ago, thekingofmonks said:

It will severely bottleneck the 4070S in plenty of titles at 1440p, although it should be fine in certain games. What do you play?

A mixture of demanding AAA games - looove Cyberpunk and the Horizon series, about to buy Kingdom Come Deliverance 2, AS WELL AS a shit ton of smaller indie games and or old games/ not as graphically demanding - for example even the big stuff like Minecraft, Team Fortress 2, a couple metroidvanias and oddballs like Slime Rancher. In any case, I assume the slightly arthitic CPU and platform would have the biggest impact in the latter, in terms of a before and after difference, BUT I don't really expect much more performance in the case of that group. My biggest concern is with the generally demanding titles, and not with the CPU reliant, but already running at a satisfying level, likes of Minecraft or Team Fortress.

[YourTextHere]

27 minutes ago, jaslion said:

You'll be fine yes in some cpu heavy games it will be held back a bit but it's fine really. Not worth investing heaps of money upgrading yet.

 

I'd also say WAIT on a gpu upgrade as prices are starting to settle now for all the overpriced new stuff and good chance that by summer you can get a 9070xt for a good price or similar. Unless you have a real deal on a 4070. I personally wouldn't get a 12gb card for 1440p these days as the push for more vram is happening and it's going quite fast.

well, I was definetely going for a used one, and the prices where I live are not generally that bad. Add to that the money I will most likely get back from seling the almost pristine, high shelf 3060ti (Aorus Master, won the option to buy at close to MSRP back in the height of the GPU market crash). I could probably afford to go even a teeny tiny bit higher but i think the 4070 super or AMD equivalent (I havent looked into AMDs lineup in a looong time) is a kind of sweet spot for maxing out the GPU while not bottlenecking it too badly

[jaslion]

22 minutes ago, YourTextHere said:

well, I was definetely going for a used one, and the prices where I live are not generally that bad. Add to that the money I will most likely get back from seling the almost pristine, high shelf 3060ti (Aorus Master, won the option to buy at close to MSRP back in the height of the GPU market crash). I could probably afford to go even a teeny tiny bit higher but i think the 4070 super or AMD equivalent (I havent looked into AMDs lineup in a looong time) is a kind of sweet spot for maxing out the GPU while not bottlenecking it too badly

Amd's equivalent things would be a 6900xt/6950xt (technically a smidge better) or the 7900gre. Else well look at a 7900xt or 7900xtx.

[AVTrainz]

7 hours ago, YourTextHere said:

Hi,

I've got a PC thats currently based around an i9 9900k and an RTX 3060 Ti, running in a 1080p setup. The system is very obviously CPU biased, ever since I installed that i9 over and i5 of the same generation (I still am not sure why, it made no sense then and makes no sense now).
 

Anyways, the setup is slowly starting to age, both due to the natural progess in game tech (and subsequently, their hardware requirenments) AND due to the fact that I've been looking to upgrade from 1080p to 1440p. I have a rather flexible budget for a new GPU, but I'd prefer not to have to replace the entire (currently overkill) platform to accomodate for it.
 

I have built quite a few PCs for me and my friends back in the day, but I've been completely out of the loop ever since I got my current setup and my lack of familiarity with the current market has me not entirely convinced that a GPU like that would be the right fit and/or now would be the right time for an upgrade (taking into account the premiere of the 50 series and "other international economic events" ).
 

Does anyone have any experience with a similar setup? Will there be any noticeable bottlenecks in 1440p? Will my platform's support of only PCIe 3.0 hinder the PCIe 4.0 GPU? And if everything would be fine hardware-wise, is now a good time to make that upgrade?

Hello!

I am a fellow 9900K owner (mine is paired with a 3080Ti), and I figured I would share my experiences. As far as bottlenecking issues, I don't feel like I get too many bottlenecks at 1440p and even less at 4K, although some are worse than others. Overall I think you would do well with a 4070-S or Ti-S, since they're somewhat close to the 3080Ti in performance.

[xg32]

11 hours ago, YourTextHere said:

.

i have mine oc'd to 5.1 avx 24/7 (cpu is showing its age), these are my estimated bottleneck at 4k/120hz with a 3080ti

 

reBAR 2%, or 3-5% at 1440p (too many bios versions to update for me), if you have reBAR on, disregard this

 

dead space -30%

space marine -30%

hitman 20%

cp2077 20%

kc2 10-15%

mhwilds 10-15%

titan quest 2 demo 0%

poe2 10-15% (very small sections)

diablo 4 0%

ff7/16 0%

 

for any management/4x games that uses 100% cpu the 9900k is about half of what a 9800x3d does.

 

overall i would not switch cpu for it but i also would not pair it with anything higher than a 4070ti 

[Hinjima]

On 3/24/2025 at 6:14 PM, YourTextHere said:

EDIT: Post has become irrelevant since I may or may not have trashed my platform by spilling LM paste into one of the RAM ports , but I'm gonna leave this post here for people who have a similar dillema.

 

Perfect way to make yourself upgrade to a newer platform

And this is also why we don't recommend Liquid Metal at all, its not worth it.

[YourTextHere]

56 minutes ago, Hinjima said:

Perfect way to make yourself upgrade to a newer platform

And this is also why we don't recommend Liquid Metal at all, its not worth it.

Well I'm propably gonna end up selling my current pc for parts and holding off for a couple months with buying a new one and just ride my laptop in the meantime, cuz a new GPU for an already existing platform plus a 1440p monitor which I got a good deal on would be fine, but an entire new platform on top of that is way beyond my current budget. 

 

Also yea, liquid metal is not worth it for most us regular mortals. Tho I had it in my system for a long time and through 3 cooler reinstallments, but I just had to replace my AIO cuz the pump died after years of torture and my brother had some leftover and well, there is always the first spill

 

I mean I could just buy a replacement used motherboard and hope that only it got fried (cuz being me I didn't notice the LM until my PC started blackscreening and I started investigating), but idk whether it's worth it to invest money into reviving an aged system like this over just waiting it off till I expand my budget. 

[xg32]

28 minutes ago, YourTextHere said:

.

if u live near an mc, they might be open to mixing and matching components too.

 

https://www.microcenter.com/product/5006970/amd-ryzen-7-9700x,-gigabyte-b650-gaming-x-ax-v2,-gskill-flare-x5-series-32gb-ddr5-6000-kit,-computer-build-bundle

[YourTextHere]

1 hour ago, xg32 said:

if u live near an mc, they might be open to mixing and matching components too.

 

https://www.microcenter.com/product/5006970/amd-ryzen-7-9700x,-gigabyte-b650-gaming-x-ax-v2,-gskill-flare-x5-series-32gb-ddr5-6000-kit,-computer-build-bundle

Unfortunately, I live in eastern Europe, so no microcenters or such places are available.