Can computer parts hold each other back

[kingWolfJM]

This is just a hypothetical but if I got say a Titan GTX 980ti and then paired it with an i3 cpu or even something cheaper would my gpu suffer in performance because of my cpu

 

[KLawinger]

Yes, this is called a bottleneck

A bottleneck is essentially where your cpu/gpu/storage or what have you gets held back by another component in the system because its running at a slower speed.

so if you pair an i3 with a 980 ti, you would put a severe bottleneck on your gpu and it would likely only run at around ~50% max while the cpu would be pinned at 100

 

[Kaisa_Sosa]

Depending on what you were hoping to achieve with the parts, it is easily possible for the GPUs to be 'limited' by the CPU. However this depends on how well the program you are using has balanced usage of parts, for example GTA 5 is very balanced if you were to use a low end dual core, or a high end i7. This is as long as your graphics are sufficient