Pc Building Simulator

# Pc Building Simulator — Intel Core i5-11400F + Intel Arc B390

This pairing of a 6-core Intel Rocket Lake CPU with Intel’s integrated Xe3-LPG graphics creates a distinctive bottleneck dynamic in Pc Building Simulator, a simulation title that rarely stresses modern hardware but still exposes the Arc B390’s severe performance ceiling. The combo ranks 2650th out of 3002 tested combinations, placing it in the bottom 12% of all pairings, which suggests that while the CPU is a competent mid-range part, the GPU holds this system back dramatically. Benchmark results indicate that this is a playable but far-from-smooth experience at lower resolutions and settings, with the integrated graphics solution being the primary limiting factor across every measured configuration.

FAQ

Q: How does the Intel Core i5-11400F compare to its nearest CPU rivals in overall benchmark performance?

A: The i5-11400F’s average benchmark score of 17177 places it virtually neck-and-neck with the AMD EPYC 7H12 (17120, 0.3% ahead), the Intel Core i5-12450H (17239, 0.4% behind), the AMD Ryzen 3 PRO 8300G (17278, 0.6% behind), and the Intel Core Ultra 7 164U (17074, 0.6% ahead). This indicates the CPU sits in a dense performance cluster where single-digit percentage differences separate it from both server-grade and mobile parts.

Q: What is the Arc B390’s standing among all tested GPUs?

A: The Arc B390 ranks in the 9th percentile of all GPUs, with an average benchmark score of 1482. Its nearest rivals include the NVIDIA GeForce GT 520MX (1463, 1.3% ahead), GeForce 800M (1460, 1.5% ahead), GeForce GT 625 OEM (1446, 2.5% ahead), and GeForce GT 710 (1443, 2.7% ahead), placing it at the very bottom of the performance spectrum alongside decade-old entry-level parts.

Q: What is the best measured frame rate achieved by this combo?

A: The highest average FPS recorded is 125 at 1920x1080 with Low settings. This is the only configuration that comes close to high-refresh-rate territory, all other settings and resolutions produce significantly lower averages.

Q: How does the combo perform at 4K Ultra settings?

A: At 3840x2160 with Ultra settings, the combo delivers an average of 20 FPS, which is effectively unplayable for any interactive application. Even at 4K Low, the average only reaches 41 FPS.

Q: Is there a settings preset that provides both playable frame rates and acceptable visual quality?

A: At 1920x1080, the Medium preset delivers 88 FPS average with a minimum of 75 FPS and maximum of 102 FPS, making it the best balance of smoothness and quality among the measured rows. High settings at 1080p still achieve 62 FPS but with less headroom above the 60 FPS threshold.

Q: What does the combo’s rank of 2650 out of 3002 indicate?

A: The rank places this pairing in the bottom 11.7% of all tested combinations. Given that the CPU alone sits at the 71st percentile of all CPUs, this low combo ranking is almost entirely attributable to the GPU’s 9th percentile standing.

How This Combo Ranks

The combo’s rank of 2650 out of 3002 tested combinations places it firmly in the lower tier of all possible CPU-GPU pairings for Pc Building Simulator. This is a striking result when considering the CPU’s standalone credentials: the Intel Core i5-11400F achieves a 71st percentile ranking among all CPUs, with an average benchmark score of 17177. The discrepancy between CPU percentile (71) and combo rank (bottom 12%) highlights an extreme imbalance where the graphics component is the overwhelming performance bottleneck.

The data suggests that this pairing would be dramatically improved by almost any discrete GPU, as the CPU has substantial headroom to drive higher frame rates. The nearest CPU rivals — the AMD EPYC 7H12 (17120), Intel Core i5-12450H (17239), AMD Ryzen 3 PRO 8300G (17278), and Intel Core Ultra 7 164U (17074) — all show that the i5-11400F is not the limiting factor in this equation. Instead, the GPU’s 9th percentile standing, with an average score of 1482, places it alongside the NVIDIA GeForce GT 520MX (1463) and GeForce 800M (1460), both of which are legacy parts from a bygone era.

The rank becomes more understandable when examining the measured FPS data. At 1080p Low, the combo achieves 125 FPS, which is respectable, but this is the absolute ceiling. As settings increase, the frame rate collapses rapidly, indicating that the GPU is saturated even at low resolutions. The fact that the CPU can handle 12 threads at boost clocks up to 4.40 GHz yet the combo still ranks in the bottom 12% confirms that Pc Building Simulator’s modest graphical demands are still too much for the Arc B390’s integrated architecture to handle efficiently.

GPU Role

The Intel Arc B390 is an integrated graphics solution built on the Xe3-LPG architecture, fabricated on Intel’s 3 nm process. Its most distinctive characteristic is that it uses System Shared memory, meaning it draws from the same DDR4 pool as the CPU rather than having dedicated VRAM. This creates a fundamental bandwidth limitation that directly impacts performance in Pc Building Simulator.

With 1536 shading units, 48 texture mapping units, and 24 raster output units, the B390 has a theoretical pixel rate of 60.00 GPixel/s and a texture rate of 120.0 GTexel/s. Its FP32 performance is rated at 7.680 TFLOPS, which sounds respectable on paper, but the System Shared memory bandwidth — described as "System Dependent" — means that actual throughput is constrained by the CPU’s dual-channel DDR4 memory bus. The Core i5-11400F supports DDR4 with a theoretical bandwidth of 51.2 GB/s, but this is shared between CPU and GPU workloads, creating contention.

The GPU’s clock behavior is telling: a base clock of 300 MHz boosting to 2500 MHz. The wide boost range suggests power management aggressively scales the GPU, but the 80 W TDP for the entire integrated solution limits sustained high clocks. In Pc Building Simulator, which is not graphically intensive by modern standards, the B390 still struggles to maintain playable frame rates beyond Low settings at 1080p. The fact that this GPU scores in the 9th percentile of all GPUs, with its nearest rival being the NVIDIA GeForce GT 520MX (1463 score, 1.3% difference), contextualizes its abilities: this is entry-level integrated graphics from over a decade ago in terms of real-world capability.

The API support — DirectX 12 Ultimate (12_2), OpenGL 4.6, and Vulkan 1.4 — confirms modern feature support, but Pc Building Simulator is a 2019 title that does not leverage ray tracing or other advanced DX12 features. The GPU’s 12 ray tracing cores are therefore unused in this game, making its hardware specifications largely irrelevant to the measured results.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The measured FPS data reveals a consistent pattern across all three resolutions: Low settings produce dramatically higher frame rates than any other preset, while Ultra and High cluster closely together at the bottom. At 1920x1080, the full settings ladder shows the following averages: Low hits 125 FPS, Medium achieves 88 FPS (with a minimum of 75 and maximum of 102), High drops to 62 FPS, and Ultra falls to 59 FPS. The 66 FPS gap between Low and Ultra at 1080p demonstrates that the GPU is severely constrained by shader complexity and memory bandwidth as settings increase.

Moving to 2560x1440, the pattern repeats with lower absolute numbers: Low produces 79 FPS, Medium delivers 56 FPS (minimum 47, maximum 64), High reduces to 39 FPS, and Ultra bottoms out at 38 FPS. The Medium preset at 1440p is the only configuration above 60 FPS at this resolution, and it barely clears that threshold. The gap between Low and Ultra at 1440p is 41 FPS, showing that resolution scaling compounds the settings penalty.

At 3840x2160, the results become marginal across the board: Low averages 41 FPS, Medium drops to 29 FPS (minimum 25, maximum 34), High falls to 21 FPS, and Ultra achieves just 20 FPS. No 4K configuration reaches 60 FPS, and only Low is arguably playable for a simulation title where frame rate consistency matters less than in action games. The Medium preset at 4K shows a minimum of 25 FPS, indicating that even the average is flattered by occasional higher frames.

The data shows that the B390’s performance scales almost linearly with pixel count: 1080p Low (125 FPS) to 1440p Low (79 FPS) represents a 36.8% drop, while 1440p Low to 4K Low (41 FPS) is a 48.1% reduction. This suggests that the GPU is fill-rate limited, with the System Shared memory architecture unable to feed the shader units efficiently at higher resolutions.

Settings Recommendations

Based on the measured FPS rows, the optimal configuration for this combo is 1920x1080 with Medium settings, which delivers 88 FPS average, a 75 FPS minimum, and a 102 FPS maximum. This preset provides the best balance of smoothness and visual quality, with the minimum frame rate staying well above the 60 FPS target and the maximum approaching triple-digit territory. The Medium preset at 1080p is the only measured configuration that combines a comfortable average with a minimum above 60 FPS.

For users who prioritize frame rate above all else, 1080p Low delivers 125 FPS average, which is the highest measured result. However, the visual quality penalty is substantial, and for a simulation game where reading text and understanding system components is important, Low settings may hinder gameplay comprehension. The data shows that Medium at 1080p only costs 37 FPS compared to Low, but the visual upgrade is likely worth the trade-off.

At 1440p, the Medium preset (56 FPS average, 47 FPS minimum) is marginally playable, but the minimum dipping below 50 FPS could cause noticeable stutter in a game that involves frequent UI updates. The 4K resolution should be avoided entirely, as even Low settings only reach 41 FPS, and the Medium preset’s 29 FPS average with a 25 FPS minimum is too inconsistent for a playable experience.

The Ultra presets at all resolutions are the worst value: at 1080p, Ultra (59 FPS) is only 3 FPS slower than High (62 FPS), but at 1440p the gap narrows to 1 FPS (38 vs 39), and at 4K it is also 1 FPS (20 vs 21). This indicates that Ultra settings add little beyond High for this GPU, making High the better choice when moving beyond Medium.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i5-11400F is a 6-core, 12-thread processor based on the Rocket Lake architecture, manufactured on Intel’s 14 nm process. Its base clock of 2.60 GHz boosts to 4.40 GHz, and it features 12 MB of shared L3 cache, with 80 KB of L1 and 512 KB of L2 per core. The CPU supports DDR4 memory in dual-channel configuration with 51.2 GB/s of bandwidth, and it connects via PCIe Gen 4 with 20 lanes.

In Pc Building Simulator, a title that is not computationally demanding, the i5-11400F is vastly overqualified. Its benchmark scores are solid: Cinebench R23 multicore reaches 14340, single-core hits 2024, and Geekbench multicore scores 7737 with a single-core score of 1777. The 3DMark threaded tests show scaling from 1691 (2 threads) to 5652 (max threads), indicating good multi-threading efficiency. PassMark results range from 2981 in single-thread to 16908 in multithread, with floating point math at 34127 and integer math at 57624.

The CPU’s 71st percentile ranking among all CPUs confirms that it is a capable mid-range part, but in this combo, its performance is entirely wasted. The measured FPS at 1080p Low (125 FPS) is the only scenario where the CPU might approach its limits, and even then, the GPU is likely the bottleneck. The fact that the combo ranks 2650th out of 3002, despite the CPU being above average, proves that the i5-11400F is not the constraint. Its nearest rivals — the EPYC 7H12 (17120, 0.3% ahead), i5-12450H (17239, 0.4% behind), and others — all perform within 1% of each other, showing that CPU choice matters little when the GPU is this weak.

Resolution Scaling

The FPS drops across resolutions reveal a clear GPU-bound system. From 1080p Low (125 FPS) to 1440p Low (79 FPS), the frame rate falls by 36.8%, and from 1440p Low to 4K Low (41 FPS), it falls by another 48.1%. This near-linear scaling with pixel count — 2.25x pixels from 1080p to 1440p, and 2.25x from 1440p to 4K — indicates that the GPU is fill-rate limited, not CPU limited.

The Medium preset shows a similar pattern: 1080p (88 FPS) to 1440p (56 FPS) is a 36.4% drop, and 1440p to 4K (29 FPS) is a 48.2% drop. The consistency of these percentages across settings suggests that resolution scaling is independent of settings complexity, which is characteristic of a memory-bandwidth-constrained integrated GPU. The System Shared memory architecture means that as resolution increases, the GPU must access more data from system memory, and the 51.2 GB/s DDR4 bandwidth becomes the limiting factor.

At High and Ultra settings, the absolute FPS values are so low (21-62 FPS range) that percentage drops become less meaningful, but the pattern persists: 1080p High (62 FPS) to 1440p High (39 FPS) is a 37.1% drop, and 1440p High to 4K High (21 FPS) is a 46.2% drop. The fact that the GPU’s boost clock of 2500 MHz and FP32 throughput of 7.680 TFLOPS cannot overcome this scaling confirms that memory bandwidth, not compute power, is the bottleneck.

The data implies that this combo is only viable at 1080p, and even then, only at Low or Medium settings. The 4K results are uniformly unplayable, with the best case (Low, 41 FPS) still below the 60 FPS target. This resolution scaling analysis reinforces the conclusion that the Intel Arc B390, despite its modern architecture and 3 nm process, is fundamentally limited by its integrated nature and shared memory design, making it unsuitable for any resolution above 1080p in Pc Building Simulator.