[SOLVED] Will My Gigabyte Z390 Master Mobo and i7 9700KF CPU be OK with RTX 3090

[Cheshy-Nyan]

Hi everyone, I built a PC earlier this year and I'm pretty happy with everything in it. But I'm planning on upgrading my Gigagbyte RTX 2080 Super Waterforce to the Gigabyte RTX 3090 Waterforce sometime early next year. Will my current mobo and CPU be able to utilize the new card to it's full potential or will I have to upgrade those, as well? Thanks in advance for any advice given!

 

[RTX 2080]

No one can give you a complete answer right now, seeing as how only embargoed reviewers have Ampere GPUs at the moment. What I can do is give you an educated guess based on my experience with hardware similar to yours and extrapolating based on that.

I'm assuming you're playing at 4K, as do I. In our situation, our CPU is more than up to the task. It seems to me that increases in GPU power will allow for higher quality settings and/or higher frame rates. This will increase our CPU needs somewhat, but probably not so much as to merit our CPUs unable to keep up.

Your CPU needs will depend more on the games you want to play. I play Microsoft Flight Simulator, and it is very hard on my overclocked i7-9700k, overwhelming it at times and introducing a bunch of stutter until it can catch up. This would be magnified that much more for me were I to upgrade my RTX 2080 to a RTX 3090.

Bottom line, I'm guessing that if you're not having any CPU-related problems now, you'll probably be fine even with a RTX 3090, although it'll really depend on how much the game's CPU utilization scales with the increased GPU power. You'll probably have to upgrade in a year or two either way though as games increasingly become optimized to run on more than 8 threads (I regret not buying a 9900k for this reason).

 

[Cheshy-Nyan]

Ah dammit! I was so close to buying the 9900K too, but wasn't quite tempted enough. Hopefully I will be able to snag one before they go out of print, as I hear the 10th gens require new motherboards and possibly a new AIO watercooler?

 

[RTX 2080]

Intel likes to release a new socket (and by extension a new series of motherboards) every other generation. Z390 motherboards are for 8th and 9th gen, Z490 motherboards are for 10th and 11th gen (not released yet).

I'm honestly going to try and hold out for the Z590 motherboards when those become a thing in two years. The 10900k is the best there has ever been, but it is a huge pain to cool (basically need a 280mm AIO minimum to take advantage of it) and is super power hungry. As powerful as it is, I don't want to pay around $1000 for a new CPU and motherboard just for 25% more cores & hyperthreading. I'm holding out for a 12th gen flagship CPU/motherboard combination that will hopefully:

a) Finally move away from the 14 nm +++++ process node
b) Fully support PCIe 4.0 from the get-go
c) Support DDR5 RAM (Rumored to be a thing possibly around 2022)
d) Lead to a 12 Core/24 thread CPU

Now THAT would be something I'd be willing to trade in my 9700k for