Pc Building Simulator

Pc Building Simulator is a simulation title that rarely stresses modern hardware in the way a AAA shooter does, yet the benchmark data for the Intel Core i5-9400 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5080 reveals a clear and consistent pattern: the RTX 5080 is doing almost all of the heavy lifting, with the CPU providing a stable but unspectacular foundation. The measured frame rates across all resolutions and settings show a system that is heavily GPU-bound, even at 1080p, which is unusual for a game that simulates component assembly rather than rendering vast open worlds.

Resolution Scaling

The FPS drop from 1080p to 4K is dramatic and tells a clear story about where the bottleneck lies. At High settings, the system delivers 188.1 FPS at 1920x1080, which drops to 160.1 FPS at 2560x1440, and then falls to 84.7 FPS at 3840x2160. That is a 55% reduction in frame rate from 1080p to 4K, indicating that the GPU is being pushed progressively harder as pixel count increases. The scaling is not linear, but the steep cliff between 1440p and 4K suggests the RTX 5080’s memory bandwidth and shading units are being saturated at the higher resolution.

At Low settings, the pattern is even more pronounced. The system hits 245.9 FPS at 1080p, 211.2 FPS at 1440p, and 163.9 FPS at 4K. The fact that 1080p Low is still below 250 FPS—despite the RTX 5080 being one of the most powerful GPUs on the market—points directly at the Core i5-9400 as the limiting factor. With only 6 cores and 6 threads, the CPU cannot feed the GPU enough draw calls to push past that threshold, even in a light simulation workload. The gap between 1080p and 1440p at Low is a modest 34.7 FPS, but the gap from 1440p to 4K is 47.3 FPS, showing that the GPU starts to take over as the primary constraint only when resolution rises.

Ultra settings show the most dramatic scaling, with 188.1 FPS at 1080p, 147.4 FPS at 1440p, and just 75.6 FPS at 4K. That 4K result is less than half the 1080p figure, a 60% drop. This is a classic sign of a GPU-limited scenario at Ultra, where the RTX 5080’s 16 GB of GDDR7 memory and 960.0 GB/s bandwidth are fully utilized. Interestingly, High and Ultra produce identical average FPS at 1080p (188.1), suggesting that the CPU is capping the frame rate before the GPU can differentiate between those two settings. The data shows that the i5-9400 is the ceiling at lower resolutions, while the RTX 5080 becomes the ceiling at 4K.

How This Combo Ranks

In the grand scheme of tested combinations, this pairing sits at rank 386 out of 1769 combos, placing it in the top 22% of all systems tested for Pc Building Simulator. That is a respectable position, but it is far from the top, and the data suggests that the CPU is holding back a GPU that is capable of much more. The RTX 5080 alone sits in the 89th percentile of all GPUs, with an average benchmark score of 59188 across all tests. The i5-9400, by contrast, sits in the 50th percentile of all CPUs, with an average score of 2305.

The CPU’s nearest rivals in synthetic benchmarks highlight its mid-range standing. The Intel Core i3-10305 scores 2300, just 0.2% behind, and the Intel Core i3-1125G4 also scores 2299, again 0.2% behind. The Intel Xeon E-2134 is 0.4% behind at 2295. On the other side, the Intel Core i7-8809G scores 2319, which is 0.6% ahead of the i5-9400. These are all extremely tight margins, meaning the i5-9400 is essentially neck-and-neck with a range of other mid-tier processors in raw compute, but none of them are what you would pair with an RTX 5080 in a modern gaming rig. The GPU’s nearest rivals—the Intel Arc A570M at 58239 (1.6% behind), the Intel Arc Pro A60 at 60326 (1.9% ahead), the Intel Arc A580 at 57756 (2.5% behind), and the AMD Radeon Pro W5500X at 57661 (2.6% behind)—show that the RTX 5080 is in a class of its own, yet this combo rank of 386 proves that the CPU drags it down.

In Pc Building Simulator specifically, the 386th rank out of 1769 means there are 385 other combos that deliver higher average frame rates. Given that the RTX 5080 is in the 89th GPU percentile, the fact that this combo is not higher is almost entirely attributable to the i5-9400’s 50th percentile standing. The data indicates that swapping the CPU for a stronger model would likely push this combo much higher up the charts.

FAQ

Q: Does the Intel Core i5-9400 bottleneck the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5080 in Pc Building Simulator?

A: Yes, but only at lower resolutions. At 1080p with High or Ultra settings, the average FPS is identical at 188.1, which strongly suggests the CPU is capping performance. At 4K, the GPU becomes the limiting factor, as seen by the drop to 84.7 FPS at High and 75.6 FPS at Ultra.

Q: What is the best resolution to play this game with this combo?

A: 2560x1440 appears to be the sweet spot. The system delivers 160.1 FPS at High settings and 147.4 FPS at Ultra, which is well above 144 Hz for most monitors, while 4K drops below 100 FPS at anything above Medium settings.

Q: How does the i5-9400 compare to its closest CPU rivals in synthetic benchmarks?

A: The i5-9400 has an average score of 2305, which is 0.2% higher than the Intel Core i3-10305 (2300) and the Intel Core i3-1125G4 (2299), and 0.4% higher than the Intel Xeon E-2134 (2295). The Intel Core i7-8809G is 0.6% faster with a score of 2319.

Q: Is the RTX 5080’s 16 GB of VRAM sufficient for 4K gaming in this title?

A: Yes, the data confirms that 16 GB of GDDR7 memory is not a limiting factor. At 4K Ultra, the system still produces 75.6 FPS, and the bottleneck at that resolution is the GPU’s raw compute, not its memory capacity.

Q: What is the difference in performance between Low and Ultra settings at 4K?

A: The jump from Low to Ultra at 3840x2160 is significant. Low settings yield 163.9 FPS, Medium drops to 115.7 FPS, High falls to 84.7 FPS, and Ultra bottoms out at 75.6 FPS. That is a 54% reduction from Low to Ultra.

Q: How does this combo’s rank of 386 out of 1769 compare to the individual components’ percentiles?

A: The GPU is in the 89th percentile of all GPUs, and the CPU is in the 50th percentile of all CPUs. The combo rank of 386 out of 1769 (roughly the 78th percentile) reflects the CPU’s mediocrity pulling down an otherwise elite GPU.

Measured FPS Breakdown

The measured data provides a complete matrix of average FPS across four resolutions and four settings levels. At 1920x1080, the system produces 188.1 FPS on High, 245.9 FPS on Low, 217.7 FPS on Medium, and 188.1 FPS on Ultra. The identical High and Ultra results are a red flag for CPU limitation, as the GPU should theoretically deliver more frames at High than at Ultra if it were the bottleneck.

At 2560x1440, the numbers are 160.1 FPS on High, 211.2 FPS on Low, 183.2 FPS on Medium, and 147.4 FPS on Ultra. The spread between Low and Ultra is 63.8 FPS, which is a 30% drop from the lowest settings to the highest. This is more in line with a GPU-bound scenario, though the CPU is still clearly contributing to the ceiling at Low settings.

At 3840x2160, the system finally shows signs of being fully GPU-bound. The results are 84.7 FPS on High, 163.9 FPS on Low, 115.7 FPS on Medium, and 75.6 FPS on Ultra. The gap between Low and Ultra is 88.3 FPS, which is a 54% reduction. Notably, the 4K Low result of 163.9 FPS is still lower than the 1080p Low result of 245.9 FPS, which confirms that the GPU is now the primary constraint at 4K, as the pixel fill rate demands exceed what the RTX 5080 can deliver at its boost clock of 2617 MHz.

The data also shows that the jump from Medium to High at 4K costs 31 FPS (from 115.7 to 84.7), while the jump from High to Ultra costs only 9.1 FPS (from 84.7 to 75.6). This suggests diminishing returns at the highest settings, where the GPU is already near its limit. Across all resolutions, the Low setting is always the fastest, and Ultra is always the slowest, with High and Medium falling in between in that order.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5080 is the clear performance driver in this combo, and its specifications explain why it dominates the frame rate charts. With a base clock of 2295 MHz and a boost clock of 2617 MHz, the GPU has substantial headroom to push pixels, but it is the memory subsystem that matters most for a simulation game like Pc Building Simulator. The 16 GB of GDDR7 memory operates at 1875 MHz with a 30 Gbps effective rate, delivering 960.0 GB/s of bandwidth across a 256-bit bus. That bandwidth is critical at 4K, where the game’s asset loading and scene complexity demand rapid data transfer.

The GPU’s 10752 shading units and 336 texture mapping units are also relevant, as they handle the game’s UI elements, 3D previews, and component models. The pixel rate of 293.1 GPixel/s and texture rate of 879.3 GTexel/s are more than sufficient for this title, but the data shows that they are not fully utilized at 1080p due to the CPU bottleneck. At 4K, however, the GPU is working hard, and the 112 ROPs are likely the limiting factor for the 75.6 FPS Ultra result.

The RTX 5080’s FP32 performance of 56.28 TFLOPS is impressive, but it is not the deciding factor in this game, which is more dependent on draw calls and memory bandwidth than raw compute. The GPU’s position in the 89th percentile of all GPUs, with an average benchmark score of 59188, confirms that it is a top-tier part. The fact that it is paired with a 50th-percentile CPU means that in Pc Building Simulator, the GPU is often waiting for the CPU to issue commands, particularly at 1080p where the 188.1 FPS cap appears at both High and Ultra settings. The RTX 5080’s launch MSRP is 999 USD, and its benchmark data suggests that it is being held back by the i5-9400 in this specific title, especially at lower resolutions where the CPU’s 6 threads are maxed out.