Question Identifying Weak Point in my Gaming PC

[kevtronmedia]

Hello all. Brand new here! Thanks for taking a moment to look at this. This computer is used to play iRacing primarily and is setup with a full steering rig, button boxes, etc. I feel like for what I paid to get this built, it should run better than it does. Wondering what a weak spot might be to upgrade.

1. Windows 10 Pro - 22H2
2. Intel (R) Core i9-10980XE CPU @ 3.00GHz
3. 64 GB Ram
4. Nvidia GeForce RTX 3090
5. Water Cooled
6. 1- 1 Terabyte & 1- 2 Terabyte drives, both with 80% available

 

[geofelt]

I am no expert on iracing, but the require specs are not particularly steep.
Racing sims usually depend on the performance of the single master thread.
The cpu you are using is as good as it gets for your motherboard.
It is very good for multithreaded batch apps, but not so good for games that depend on single thread performance.
Run the cpu-Z bench test on your 10980XE and look at the single thread performance rating.
You should get a score about 574 if all is running well.
Here are some scores for other processors:

CPU-Z Benchmark for Intel Core i9-14900K (1T) - CPU-Z VALIDATOR

Best CPU performance - 64-bit - July 2025

valid.x86.fr

3090 is a very strong graphics card so I would not expect a gpu upgrade to do much.
But, just in case, try this test:
Run YOUR game, but lower your resolution and eye candy.
This makes the graphics card loaf a bit.
If your FPS increases, it indicates that your cpu is strong enough to drive a better graphics configuration.
If your FPS stays the same, you are likely more cpu limited.

To see the impact of cpu performance,
Limit your cpu in windows power management, limit the maximum cpu% to something like 70%.
Go to control panel/power options/change plan settings/change advanced power settings/processor power management/maximum processor state/
This will simulate what a lack of cpu power will do.
Conversely what a 30% improvement in core speed might do.

Your game does not need 36 processing threads.
You may do a bit better if you try disabling hyperthreading.

There is no processor upgrade available to you for your motherboard.
If money is not a problem, you could change the motherboard to a Z790 based motherboard with ddr4 support and use
a I9-14900K. Your aio cooling system will need a lga1700 mounting kit if it can be reused.

 

[allidsarebusy]

Your CPU is to old for your GPU.

 

[Roland Of Gilead]

What ram are you using? Exact make and model. Is your ram running in XMP mode. You can check this with CPU-z.

Also, you can check which bios you are running. New bios' may bring bug fixes or performance enhancements for the CPU, and mem compatibility.

Your CPU is to old for your GPU.

There's an element of that going on, in that the CPU can be a limiting factor at 1080p. But beyond that, the CPU is less limited, as the load switches to the GPU.