Question Is my new build balanced or will it bottleneck?

[HamishZwar]

Hi everyone,
I’m planning to upgrade soon and I’m not sure if this setup will be balanced enough:

• CPU: Intel i5-12400F
• GPU: RTX 3060 Ti
• RAM: 16GB DDR4 3200MHz
• Monitor: 1080p 144Hz

I’ve read about CPU/GPU bottlenecks but I’m a bit confused about how to check if this build will run smoothly. Some people say calculators are useful, others say benchmarks are better.
How do you usually check for bottlenecks? Do you just look at benchmarks or use some kind of tool?
Thanks in advance!

 

[Aeacus]

In every system, performance is limited what the hardware is capable of.

For example, in CPU bound game (e.g Cities: Skylines), the FPS is limited on what CPU is able to compute. The better the CPU - the more FPS you get. But since CPU bound games are usually slow-paced strategy games, high FPS isn't needed for them. GPU plays a little role in such games.

But for GPU bound games (e.g Cyberpunk 2077), the FPS is limited on what GPU is able to produce. The better the GPU - the more FPS you get. And since most faced-paced games are GPU bound, high FPS matters quite a bit. Due to that, many people upgrade their GPU far often than that of a CPU.

It is nigh-impossible to create a system that utilizes both the CPU and GPU at same level when gaming. Because there aren't any modern games that only utilize CPU or GPU. Both are utilized, but depending on a game, either CPU or GPU is favored more.
Well, if you focus on one single game, you can create that balanced system but once you change to another game, all that balance is out of the window.

No matter how you look at it, FPS will always be limited by what CPU or GPU can provide, thus, there is no such thing as "bottleneck".