Pc Building Simulator

Pc Building Simulator places unusual demands on a system because the rendered scene is often a static workbench or storefront, making frame rates highly sensitive to both CPU simulation logic and GPU fill-rate. The data for the Intel Core Ultra 9 290K Plus plus NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 combination shows a configuration that is overwhelmingly GPU-bound at lower resolutions, yet still delivers excellent playability at 4K. The measured FPS rows reveal that the best experience balances visual fidelity with the high refresh rates this hardware can achieve, and the standout preset is Medium at 1440p, where the average of 232 FPS and a minimum of 197 FPS provide a smooth, responsive feel without the steep drop seen at Ultra.

Settings Recommendations

The measured data supports a clear hierarchy: Low presets produce the highest frame rates but sacrifice the visual polish that makes a building simulator engaging, while Ultra presets cut performance by nearly half compared to Medium at the same resolution. For 1080p, the Low preset hits 486 FPS average, which is far beyond any display’s refresh rate, making it wasteful; the Medium preset at 368 FPS average with a 313 FPS minimum still leaves enormous headroom while offering better textures and effects. However, the most balanced choice across the board is Medium at 1440p, which delivers 232 FPS average and a minimum of 197 FPS—these numbers indicate that even in complex scenes with many components on screen, the system never drops below a very high refresh rate threshold. At 4K, the Medium preset’s 121 FPS average with a 103 FPS minimum is the only 4K row that includes minimum and maximum values, and it shows a frame time consistency that makes it preferable to High (86 FPS average) or Ultra (82 FPS average), which lack min/max data but likely have tighter gaps given the lower averages.

Ultra settings are the least attractive option because the performance cost is steep: at 4K, Ultra averages 82 FPS versus Medium’s 121 FPS, a 32% reduction, and at 1440p the gap is from 232 FPS down to 156 FPS, which is a 33% drop. For a game where the camera often pans across a desk with dozens of individual components, the extra shadow quality and ambient occlusion at Ultra do not justify losing that much frame rate, especially when the RTX 4090’s 24 GB VRAM and 1.01 TB/s bandwidth are not the limiting factor—the data shows the bottleneck shifts to the CPU at lower resolutions. The best experience per the measured rows is Medium at 1440p: it offers a 197 FPS minimum, which is higher than the 4K High average of 86 FPS, and it stays well above the 144 Hz refresh rate that most high-end monitors use. For users who insist on 4K, Medium is also the recommendation because its 103 FPS minimum is above the 82 FPS Ultra average, meaning Medium provides both higher average and better worst-case performance.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 is the clear performance driver at 4K, where its 24 GB of GDDR6X memory and 384-bit bus width (1.01 TB/s bandwidth) prevent any VRAM capacity or bandwidth bottlenecks. The GPU’s base clock of 2235 MHz and boost clock of 2520 MHz, combined with 16,384 shading units and 176 ROPs, provide the raw fill-rate needed to push 86 FPS at 4K High and 171 FPS at 4K Low. The pixel rate of 443.5 GPixel/s and texture rate of 1,290.2 GTexel/s explain why the 4K Low preset still achieves 171 FPS—the card has massive headroom for simple shading, and the simulation’s mostly static scenes do not stress the geometry pipeline as heavily as a fast-paced shooter would. The RTX 4090’s 82.58 TFLOPS FP32 performance is more than sufficient for this game’s DirectX 12 Ultimate API, and the 128 RT cores are largely idle because Pc Building Simulator does not employ ray-traced effects in the measured settings.

At 1080p, the GPU’s role diminishes because the frame rates (247–486 FPS) approach the point where the CPU’s ability to feed draw calls becomes the limiting factor. The RTX 4090’s 88th percentile ranking among all GPUs and its average benchmark score of 60,347 place it far above the near-rival Intel Arc Pro A60 (60,326, deltaPct 0) and AMD Radeon Pro Vega 48 (60,140, deltaPct 0.3), but those comparisons are from synthetic benchmarks like 3DMark Steel Nomad (9,223) and Geekbench Vulkan (271,631), which do not directly translate to this simulation’s workload. The GPU’s 24 GB VRAM is never a constraint—even at 4K Ultra, the memory footprint of a workbench scene is small, and the measured FPS drop from Low to Ultra at 4K (171 to 82) is due to shading complexity, not memory capacity. The data suggests the RTX 4090 is overkill for 1080p, where the 486 FPS Low result is meaningless for most displays, but at 4K it provides a playable experience at all settings, with Medium being the sweet spot due to its 121 FPS average.

FAQ

Q: Which resolution and settings combination delivers the highest average frame rate?

A: The 1080p Low preset achieves the highest measured average at 486 FPS, followed by 1080p Medium at 368 FPS and 1440p Low at 328 FPS. These numbers far exceed typical display refresh rates, indicating the GPU is not the bottleneck at these settings.

Q: Why does the Ultra preset show such a large performance drop compared to Medium?

A: At 4K, Ultra averages 82 FPS versus Medium’s 121 FPS, a 32% reduction; at 1440p, the drop is from 232 FPS to 156 FPS, a 33% reduction. The extra rendering features at Ultra (likely higher shadow resolution and post-processing) impose a significant fill-rate cost even on the RTX 4090’s 443.5 GPixel/s pixel rate.

Q: Is the RTX 4090’s 24 GB VRAM necessary for this game?

A: The measured FPS data does not show any VRAM-related stutters or limits; even at 4K Ultra, the average of 82 FPS indicates the GPU’s compute and memory bandwidth (1.01 TB/s) are sufficient. The 24 GB capacity is far beyond what Pc Building Simulator needs, so it is not a deciding factor.

Q: How does the Intel Core Ultra 9 290K Plus compare to its nearest rival in CPU benchmarks?

A: The Core Ultra 9 290K Plus has an average benchmark score of 84,003, which is 0.2% higher than the Intel Core Ultra 9 285K (83,807) and 1.1% higher than the AMD EPYC 4584PX (83,090). It is 1.3% slower than the AMD EPYC 7F72 (85,072), but those differences are marginal in synthetic tests.

Q: What is the best preset for a 144 Hz monitor at 1440p?

A: The Medium preset at 1440p provides a 232 FPS average and a 197 FPS minimum, which comfortably exceeds 144 Hz. Even the High preset at 164 FPS average would work, but Medium offers better frame time consistency based on the min/max data (197–267 FPS).

Q: Does the CPU or GPU limit performance at 1080p?

A: The 1080p Low preset’s 486 FPS average strongly suggests a CPU limitation, because the RTX 4090’s raw power could push higher if the CPU could feed it. The Core Ultra 9 290K Plus has 24 cores and 24 threads, with a boost clock of 5.80 GHz, but the game’s simulation logic likely runs on fewer threads, capping frame rates at these extreme values.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1080p, the data shows a monotonic decrease as settings increase: Low averages 486 FPS, Medium averages 368 FPS with a minimum of 313 FPS and maximum of 423 FPS, High averages 260 FPS, and Ultra averages 247 FPS. The gap between Low and Medium is 118 FPS, while the gap between High and Ultra is only 13 FPS, suggesting that Ultra adds minimal visual benefit over High at this resolution. The 1080p Medium row’s min/max range (313–423 FPS) indicates a 110 FPS spread, which is proportionally smaller than the 4K Medium range (103–140 FPS, a 37 FPS spread) when normalized to the average, meaning frame pacing is tighter at higher resolutions where the GPU is more consistently loaded.

At 1440p, Low averages 328 FPS, Medium averages 232 FPS (min 197, max 267), High averages 164 FPS, and Ultra averages 156 FPS. The drop from Low to Medium is 96 FPS, and from Medium to High is 68 FPS, while High to Ultra is just 8 FPS. This pattern repeats: the largest performance hit comes from enabling Medium over Low, and Ultra provides diminishing returns. The 1440p Medium min of 197 FPS is notably higher than the 4K High average of 86 FPS, reinforcing that 1440p is the resolution where this combo shines.

At 4K, the settings scaling is steeper: Low averages 171 FPS, Medium averages 121 FPS (min 103, max 140), High averages 86 FPS, and Ultra averages 82 FPS. The jump from Low to Medium is 50 FPS, but Medium to High is 35 FPS, and High to Ultra is only 4 FPS. The 4K Ultra average of 82 FPS is barely above the 86 FPS High average, meaning there is no reason to choose Ultra over High at this resolution—the 4 FPS difference is within measurement noise, and Ultra’s extra effects do not justify the potential for lower minimums. The 4K Medium row’s 103 FPS minimum is the only 4K data point with a min value, and it suggests that Medium is the only 4K preset that guarantees a triple-digit frame rate in all scenes.

Resolution Scaling

The FPS drop from 1080p to 4K is dramatic and reveals the GPU-bound nature of this workload. At Low settings, 1080p averages 486 FPS, dropping to 328 FPS at 1440p (a 32.5% reduction) and 171 FPS at 4K (a 64.8% reduction from 1080p). At Medium settings, the progression is 368 FPS at 1080p, 232 FPS at 1440p (a 37% reduction), and 121 FPS at 4K (a 67% reduction from 1080p). This scaling is steeper than the theoretical pixel count increase, which is because the GPU’s fill-rate (443.5 GPixel/s) becomes the limiting factor at higher resolutions, but the CPU’s simulation overhead remains constant.

The scaling from 1440p to 4K is consistent: Low drops from 328 to 171 FPS (a 47.9% reduction), Medium from 232 to 121 FPS (a 47.8% reduction), High from 164 to 86 FPS (a 47.6% reduction), and Ultra from 156 to 82 FPS (a 47.4% reduction). This near-uniform ~48% reduction across all settings indicates that the RTX 4090’s memory bandwidth (1.01 TB/s) and pixel rate are the dominant factors at 4K, regardless of the complexity of the shaders. At 1080p, the scaling from Low to Ultra (486 to 247 FPS, a 49% drop) is similar to the resolution scaling, but the 1080p numbers are so high that the CPU’s 24 cores and 5.80 GHz boost clock are likely preventing even higher frame rates. The fact that 1080p Low (486 FPS) is 2.84 times faster than 4K Low (171 FPS) suggests that the CPU can handle the simulation logic easily, while the GPU’s fill-rate at 4K is the bottleneck—a conclusion supported by the RTX 4090’s 176 ROPs and 443.5 GPixel/s pixel rate.

CPU Role

The Intel Core Ultra 9 290K Plus is a 24-core, 24-thread processor with a base clock of 3.70 GHz and a boost clock of 5.80 GHz, and its data shows it is not the limiting factor at 4K but may cap performance at 1080p. The CPU’s average benchmark score of 84,003 places it in the 96th percentile of all CPUs, and it edges out its nearest rival, the Intel Core Ultra 9 285K (83,807, deltaPct 0.2), while being 1.1% ahead of the AMD EPYC 4584PX (83,090). In synthetic tests, the CPU achieves a Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 51,731 and a single-core score of 7,303, with a PassMark single-thread score of 4,823—these figures indicate strong per-core performance that is relevant for a game like Pc Building Simulator, which likely uses a few threads for simulation and rendering commands.

At 4K, the CPU’s role is secondary because the GPU is clearly the bottleneck—the 4K Low average of 171 FPS is lower than the 1080p Low average of 486 FPS, and the scaling pattern matches a GPU fill-rate limit. However, at 1080p, the 486 FPS Low result is suspiciously close to the CPU’s potential frame generation limit, especially given that the RTX 4090 could theoretically push higher if the CPU could feed it. The CPU’s 24 threads and 36 MB of shared L3 cache provide ample headroom for the game’s background simulation (component pricing, compatibility checks, and user interactions), but the PassMark multithread score of 60,860 and data compression score of 698,346 show that the CPU excels at parallel workloads, which may not translate to a single-threaded game loop. The CPU’s 125 W TDP and 3 nm process node (TSMC) ensure it can sustain high clocks during extended sessions, but the measured FPS data does not include CPU-specific metrics, so the exact bottleneck point cannot be isolated—yet the 1080p Low to Medium drop (486 to 368 FPS) is larger than the 1440p Low to Medium drop (328 to 232 FPS) in percentage terms, suggesting that at 1080p the CPU’s single-thread performance (Cinebench R15 single-core 736, R20 single-core 3,067, R23 single-core 7,303) becomes the limiting factor when trying to exceed ~500 FPS.