Pc Building Simulator

# Pc Building Simulator: Intel Core i5-10400F + NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080

The pairing of Intel's 6-core Comet Lake processor with NVIDIA's Ampere flagship creates a fascinating study in bottleneck behavior within Pc Building Simulator. This simulation title, released in 2019, places unusual demands on both components, and the measured frame rates reveal a system that shifts from GPU-bound at 4K to increasingly CPU-limited at lower resolutions. The combination ranks 655th out of 1769 tested combos, placing it in the upper third of all configurations, with the RTX 3080's 80th percentile standing against the i5-10400F's 73rd percentile among their respective component pools.

Resolution Scaling

The frame rate progression from 1080p to 4K tells a clear story about where this system's limits reside. At Ultra settings, the average FPS drops from 166.1 at 1920x1080 to 109.1 at 2560x1440, then falls further to 54.2 at 3840x2160. That represents a 67.4% reduction from 1080p to 4K, indicating that the GPU is being increasingly taxed as pixel count rises. The scaling pattern suggests that at 1080p, the CPU is holding back the RTX 3080, while at 4K, the GPU becomes the dominant constraint.

The Low settings data confirms this interpretation. At 1080p Low, the system produces 258.3 FPS, which drops to 217.5 at 1440p and 115.3 at 4K. The relatively modest decline from 1080p to 1440p (just 15.8%) at Low settings points to a CPU-imposed ceiling at the lower resolution. When the graphical load is lightened, the i5-10400F simply cannot feed the RTX 3080 enough frames to reach its full potential. However, the jump from 1440p to 4K at Low settings shows a 47% performance drop, revealing that even this powerful GPU hits a wall when pushing 8.3 million pixels.

Medium settings offer the most balanced scaling curve: 223.4 FPS at 1080p, 154.8 at 1440p, and 82.3 at 4K. This represents a 63.2% total reduction across the three resolutions, with each step showing diminishing returns as resolution increases. The High settings profile follows a similar trajectory with 177.5, 109.8, and 59.5 FPS respectively, demonstrating that the game's visual complexity at High and Medium settings creates a more consistent GPU-bound scenario than Low settings.

GPU Role

The RTX 3080 brings substantial hardware to this simulation: 8704 shading units, 272 texture mapping units, and 96 raster output pipelines operating at a boost clock of 1710 MHz. Its 10 GB of GDDR6X memory on a 320-bit bus delivers 760.3 GB/s of bandwidth, which proves critical for handling the texture-heavy workbenches and component models in Pc Building Simulator. The GPU's 80th percentile ranking among all tested graphics cards indicates strong overall capability, though its nearest rivals include the AMD Radeon RX 7900 GRE at 0.9% higher average score and the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 Ti Mobile at 1% lower.

The memory configuration deserves particular attention. With 10 GB of GDDR6X, the RTX 3080 has ample capacity for this game's demands, and the 760.3 GB/s bandwidth ensures that texture streaming from the simulation's detailed 3D models never becomes a bottleneck. The pixel rate of 164.2 GPixel/s and texture rate of 465.1 GTexel/s provide the raw throughput needed to maintain playable frame rates even at 4K Ultra, where the GPU's compute capabilities are stretched to their limits.

The 4K Ultra result of 54.2 FPS sits just below the 60 FPS threshold that many consider the minimum for smooth gameplay, while 4K High achieves 59.5 FPS. This suggests that users targeting 4K should either select High settings or accept a slightly compromised experience at Ultra. The GPU's 28,300 million transistors on a 628 mm² die with 45.1M transistors per mm² density reflect the Ampere architecture's brute-force approach to rendering, which pays dividends in this simulation's complex scenes.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i5-10400F provides 6 cores and 12 threads with a base clock of 2.90 GHz and boost clock of 4.30 GHz. This Comet Lake processor, built on Intel's 14 nm process, features 12 MB of shared L3 cache and 42.7 GB/s of memory bandwidth through its dual-channel DDR4 controller. The CPU's 73rd percentile ranking among all processors places it as a mid-range performer, with its Cinebench R23 multicore score of 10297 and single-core score of 1453 indicating respectable but not exceptional computational power.

The single-thread performance is particularly relevant for Pc Building Simulator, which relies heavily on game logic and physics calculations that often cannot fully utilize multiple cores. The 3DMark single-thread score of 688 and Passmark single-thread score of 2541 suggest that the i5-10400F's 4.30 GHz boost clock provides adequate responsiveness for the simulation's management elements. However, the 1080p Low result of 258.3 FPS versus the 4K Low result of 115.3 FPS indicates that at lower resolutions, the CPU becomes the limiting factor, unable to process the game's simulation logic fast enough to feed the RTX 3080's massive rendering capabilities.

The CPU's nearest rivals paint an interesting picture of its positioning. The AMD EPYC 7552 scores 0.4% higher, while the AMD Ryzen 3 7320C sits 0.8% below, and the Intel Core i5-8500 trails by 1.1%. These tiny margins suggest that the i5-10400F is well-matched against its contemporaries, but none of these processors approach the RTX 3080's performance tier, explaining why the combination shows CPU bottlenecking at lower resolutions.

How This Combo Ranks

With a rank of 655 out of 1769 tested combinations, this pairing falls in the 63rd percentile of all system configurations. This placement is notable because the RTX 3080 alone ranks in the 80th percentile among GPUs, while the i5-10400F sits at the 73rd percentile among CPUs. The combined rank is lower than either component's individual percentile, which reflects the inherent imbalance of pairing a 10th-gen mid-range CPU with a high-end Ampere GPU.

The data suggests that in Pc Building Simulator specifically, the CPU's limitations prevent the combo from achieving the performance that the GPU's raw power would otherwise permit. At 1080p, the system produces 166.1 FPS at Ultra settings, which is still highly playable but falls well short of what the RTX 3080 could deliver with a more capable processor. The 4K Ultra figure of 54.2 FPS shows the GPU carrying the load effectively, but the system's overall rank indicates that many other combinations achieve better balance in this title.

The gap between component percentiles and combo rank highlights the importance of pairing in simulation games, where CPU logic and GPU rendering must work in concert. Users with this combination would benefit from playing at 1440p, where the 109.8 FPS at High settings represents the best balance between visual fidelity and smooth performance, or from using 4K with High settings to leverage the GPU's strengths while mitigating CPU constraints.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the system delivers its highest frame rates: 258.3 FPS on Low, 223.4 on Medium, 177.5 on High, and 166.1 on Ultra. The progression from Low to Ultra shows a 35.7% performance penalty, which is modest compared to higher resolutions, confirming that the CPU is the primary constraint at 1080p. The difference between High and Ultra at this resolution is just 11.4 FPS, suggesting diminishing returns from the highest settings.

Moving to 2560x1440, the frame rates remain strong: 217.5 FPS on Low, 154.8 on Medium, 109.8 on High, and 109.1 on Ultra. The Low-to-Ultra spread narrows to 108.4 FPS, and notably, High and Ultra produce nearly identical results, differing by only 0.7 FPS. This convergence indicates that at 1440p, the system reaches a balance point where both CPU and GPU contribute meaningfully to performance.

At 3840x2160, the GPU becomes the dominant factor: 115.3 FPS on Low, 82.3 on Medium, 59.5 on High, and 54.2 on Ultra. The Low setting still achieves triple-digit frame rates, but the Ultra setting drops below 60 FPS. The scaling from Low to Ultra at 4K shows a 53% reduction, highlighting the pixel-throughput demands that the RTX 3080 must handle. The 4K High result of 59.5 FPS is the most playable option for 4K users, as it stays just above the 60 FPS mark while providing substantially better visual quality than Medium's 82.3 FPS.