Pc Building Simulator

# FAQ

Q: What is the combo rank for the Intel Core i5-9400 with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 in Pc Building Simulator?

A: This combo ranks 1120th out of 3723 tested combinations, placing it in the upper portion of the database. The rank reflects a balanced pairing where neither component dramatically bottlenecks the other in this simulation title.

Q: What is the best 4K Ultra preset performance for this combo?

A: At 3840x2160 with Ultra settings, the combo achieves an average of 62 FPS. This is the lowest average among all tested settings at that resolution, indicating that Ultra is demanding but still playable for most users.

Q: How does the RTX 5070's memory bandwidth compare to its nearest rivals?

A: The RTX 5070 has a memory bandwidth of 672.0 GB/s with 12 GB of GDDR7 memory on a 192-bit bus. Its nearest rivals by average benchmark score—AMD Radeon Pro 580, Radeon Pro WX 7100, Radeon Pro 5300, and NVIDIA RTX A500 Mobile—are all within a -1.2% to 2% score delta, but none match the 5070's memory bandwidth in the data.

Q: What is the CPU's single-core performance relative to its multi-core performance?

A: The i5-9400 scores 935 in Cinebench R23 single-core and 6629 in multi-core. The single-core score represents about 14.1% of the multi-core figure, which is typical for a 6-core, 6-thread processor without hyper-threading.

Q: At which resolution does the FPS drop most significantly from Low to Ultra settings?

A: At 1920x1080, the drop from Low (244 FPS) to Ultra (185 FPS) is 59 FPS, or about 24%. At 3840x2160, the drop from Low (129 FPS) to Ultra (62 FPS) is 67 FPS, or about 52%, showing a much steeper penalty at higher resolution.

Q: Does the CPU's benchmark percentile suggest it is a limiting factor in this game?

A: The i5-9400 sits at the 47th percentile among all CPUs, which is mid-pack. Given that the RTX 5070 ranks at the 82nd percentile among GPUs, the CPU is the weaker link in this pairing, likely capping performance in lower-resolution scenarios.

Settings Recommendations

The measured FPS data shows a consistent pattern: Medium settings offer the best balance of visual quality and frame rate across all resolutions. At 1920x1080, Medium delivers 214 FPS average with a minimum of 182 FPS and maximum of 247 FPS, which is only 30 FPS lower than Low settings but substantially smoother than the 188 FPS of High and 185 FPS of Ultra. At 2560x1440, Medium achieves 175 FPS average with a 149-202 FPS range, while High drops to 124 FPS and Ultra to 118 FPS. The Medium preset at 1440p still comfortably exceeds 144 Hz refresh rates, making it the recommended choice for competitive or smooth gameplay.

At 3840x2160, Medium produces 92 FPS average with a 78-105 FPS range, which is playable on high-refresh displays but not sufficient for 120 Hz panels. High settings at 4K yield 65 FPS, while Ultra drops to 62 FPS—both are borderline for 60 Hz monitors. Low settings at 4K reach 129 FPS, but the visual compromise is significant. For 4K users, Medium is the clear winner: it maintains a 92 FPS average with a minimum of 78 FPS, staying above common V-sync thresholds. The data suggests that Ultra settings provide only marginal gains over High in this game, with a 3 FPS difference at 4K and 6 FPS at 1440p, so High is preferable to Ultra when frame rate matters. For maximum smoothness, Low at 1080p reaches 244 FPS, but the Medium preset's 214 FPS is nearly as fast with better visuals.

Resolution Scaling

The FPS progression from 1080p to 4K reveals a clear GPU-bound trend at higher resolutions. At High settings, the combo drops from 188 FPS at 1920x1080 to 124 FPS at 2560x1440—a 34% reduction—and then to 65 FPS at 3840x2160, a further 48% drop from 1440p. This scaling is steeper than the pixel count increase would suggest, indicating that the RTX 5070's rasterization throughput is the primary constraint as resolution rises. At Low settings, the 1080p result of 244 FPS falls to 209 FPS at 1440p (14% drop) and 129 FPS at 4K (38% drop from 1440p). The relatively smaller 1080p-to-1440p gap at Low settings suggests that the CPU is nearing its limit at lower resolutions, where the i5-9400's 6 cores and 2.90 GHz base clock become the bottleneck.

The Medium preset shows the most consistent scaling: 214 FPS at 1080p, 175 FPS at 1440p (18% drop), and 92 FPS at 4K (47% drop from 1440p). The 4K penalty is consistent across all settings—roughly 47-52% reduction from 1440p—which confirms that the GPU's memory bandwidth and shading capacity are the determining factors at 3840x2160. The RTX 5070's 672.0 GB/s bandwidth and 30.87 TFLOPS FP32 performance are substantial, but the game's simulation workload still demands significant pixel throughput at 4K. At 1080p, the data shows a ceiling around 244 FPS at Low settings, which is likely CPU-limited given the i5-9400's 47th percentile ranking among all processors.

How This Combo Ranks

The combo ranks 1120th out of 3723 tested combinations in Pc Building Simulator, placing it in the 30th percentile of all pairings. This is a modest ranking that reflects the mismatch between a mid-range 2018-era CPU and a high-end 2025 GPU. The i5-9400's average benchmark score of 2254 places it just below the Intel Core i7-1068NG7 (2259, -0.2% delta) and slightly above the Intel Core i7-10710U (2248, +0.3% delta) and AMD Ryzen 5 PRO 1500 (2246, +0.4% delta). The nearest rival, Intel Core i3-10305, scores 2264, just 0.4% higher. These tiny deltas indicate that the CPU's performance is tightly clustered with several other mid-range parts, meaning the ranking is primarily driven by the GPU's contribution.

The RTX 5070's average benchmark score of 40377 places it at the 82nd percentile among all GPUs, with nearest rivals AMD Radeon Pro 580 (40318, +0.1% delta), AMD Radeon Pro WX 7100 (40063, +0.8% delta), AMD Radeon Pro 5300 (40870, -1.2% delta), and NVIDIA RTX A500 Mobile (39568, +2.0% delta). The GPU's strong percentile ranking suggests that in GPU-bound scenarios, this combo should perform relatively well. However, the overall combo rank of 1120/3723 indicates that many other pairings achieve better in-game results, likely due to more balanced CPU-GPU combinations. The 30th percentile ranking means that about 70% of tested combos outperform this pairing in Pc Building Simulator, which aligns with the CPU being a limiting factor in certain settings.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 is built on the Blackwell 2.0 architecture with a GB205 chip fabricated on TSMC's 5 nm process. It features 6144 shading units, 192 texture mapping units, and 80 raster output units, with 48 ray tracing cores and 192 tensor cores. The GPU's base clock is 2325 MHz, boosting to 2512 MHz, and it operates at a 250 W TDP. The 12 GB of GDDR7 memory on a 192-bit bus provides 672.0 GB/s of bandwidth, which is substantial for a mid-high-range card. The pixel rate is 201.0 GPixel/s and texture rate is 482.3 GTexel/s, with FP32 performance of 30.87 TFLOPS.

In Pc Building Simulator, the GPU's role becomes evident in the resolution scaling. At 4K Ultra, the combo achieves 62 FPS, which is nearly identical to the 65 FPS at 4K High—a mere 3 FPS difference. This suggests that the game's Ultra preset does not significantly increase GPU workload beyond High, or that the GPU is already near its limit at 4K. The 4K Medium result of 92 FPS shows that dropping to Medium provides a 42% improvement over High, indicating that the GPU's shading units and memory bandwidth are the primary drivers at this resolution. The RTX 5070's 30.87 TFLOPS FP32 throughput is sufficient for 92 FPS at 4K Medium, but the 62-65 FPS range at High/Ultra suggests that the game's more demanding settings require more than the 672.0 GB/s bandwidth can deliver at those quality levels.

The GPU's benchmark percentile of 82% and average score of 40377 confirm its strong standalone performance. However, in this pairing, the CPU's limitations become apparent at lower resolutions where the GPU is underutilized. The 1080p Low result of 244 FPS is likely near the CPU's maximum frame delivery, as the RTX 5070 would theoretically handle far more frames given its 3DMark Steel Nomad score of 5077 and PassMark G3D score of 29137.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the combo delivers high frame rates across all settings. Low averages 244 FPS, Medium averages 214 FPS with a minimum of 182 and maximum of 247, High averages 188 FPS, and Ultra averages 185 FPS. The spread from Low to Ultra is 59 FPS, or about 24%, which is modest and indicates that even at 1080p, the game is not heavily GPU-bound at lower settings. The Medium preset's 182 FPS minimum still well exceeds 144 Hz refresh rates, making it suitable for high-refresh monitors.

At 2560x1440, the performance drops noticeably but remains strong. Low averages 209 FPS, Medium averages 175 FPS with a 149-202 FPS range, High averages 124 FPS, and Ultra averages 118 FPS. The Medium-to-High gap of 51 FPS is significant, suggesting that High settings introduce a substantial GPU workload increase at this resolution. The 149 FPS minimum at Medium is still above 144 Hz, but High's 124 FPS average falls below that threshold.

At 3840x2160, the frame rates become more moderate. Low averages 129 FPS, Medium averages 92 FPS with a 78-105 FPS range, High averages 65 FPS, and Ultra averages 62 FPS. The 4K Medium result of 92 FPS is the only 4K setting that maintains a comfortable average above 60 FPS, while High and Ultra hover near 62-65 FPS, which is acceptable for 60 Hz displays but not for higher refresh rates. The 4K Low result of 129 FPS shows that even at 4K, the GPU can deliver high frame rates when settings are reduced, confirming that the RTX 5070 is capable of 4K gaming with appropriate settings.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i5-9400 is a 6-core, 6-thread processor based on the Coffee Lake architecture, manufactured on Intel's 14 nm process. It has a base clock of 2.90 GHz and a boost clock of 4.10 GHz, with a 65 W TDP. The CPU features 64 KB L1 cache per core, 256 KB L2 cache per core, and 9 MB of shared L3 cache. Memory support is DDR4 with dual-channel configuration, providing 42.7 GB/s of memory bandwidth. The CPU supports PCIe Gen 3 with 16 lanes and includes UHD 630 integrated graphics. Its production status is end-of-life, with a release date of 2018-10-18.

In benchmark tests, the i5-9400 scores 668 in Cinebench R15 multi-core and 94 in single-core, 2784 in Cinebench R20 multi-core and 392 in single-core, and 6629 in Cinebench R23 multi-core and 935 in single-core. Geekbench results show 5141 multi-core and 1389 single-core. The average benchmark score is 2254, placing it at the 47th percentile among all CPUs. Its nearest rivals are all within a 0.4% score delta, indicating that the i5-9400 is firmly in the mid-range category.

In Pc Building Simulator, the CPU's role is most apparent at 1080p where the frame rates approach 244 FPS at Low settings. The 6 cores and 6 threads are sufficient for the game's simulation logic, but the lack of hyper-threading may limit performance in scenes with heavy background processing. The 2.90 GHz base clock is modest, though the 4.10 GHz boost helps with single-threaded tasks. The 47th percentile ranking suggests that many CPUs would provide better performance in CPU-bound scenarios, and the combo rank of 1120/3723 reflects this. At 4K, the CPU's influence diminishes as the GPU becomes the bottleneck, but at 1080p, the data suggests that the i5-9400 caps frame rates around 244 FPS, preventing the RTX 5070 from reaching its full potential in this game.