stop buying bad CPU and GPU combos let's get you the best CPU and GPU combo 2024 welcome back to PC Builder I'm Jason 2024 is another great year to build a PC as CPU and GPU prices continue to fall but I see so many people missing out on the best CPU and GPU combo for gaming and productivity it's hard enough to understand the best CPU for gaming and the best GPU for gaming by themselves combining them together for the best CPU and GPU combo it's even harder today we're going to cover everything that you need to know and we're going to give specific product recommendations at every budget level to get you the best CPU and GPU combo for gaming 2024 remember if you get value out of this video give it a like it makes a huge difference to the channel and of course subscribe click that Bell icon that way you get notified when we release cool content with that let's jump into it let's talk about bottlenecking which just means that one of our components it's limiting our performance and if we could upgrade that component to make it faster than our overall system performance would increase now the typical bottleneck for a gaming PC build is the CPU versus the GPU if our CPU is too slow to keep up with our GPU then increasing the speed of the CPU that give us more FPS if our GPU on the other hand is our bottleneck then getting a faster GPU instead will increase our performance now the CPU it's more likely to bottleneck when we're pushing huge amounts of frames and our GPU is usually the bottom neck when we turn up the resolution from 1080p to 1440p to 4K including if the GPU does not have enough vram to run the latest AAA titles on release at higher ultra settings but here's the thing that even experienced PC builders get wrong no matter what our system will always have a bottleneck it's our job as PC Builders to understand how to maximize our PC build performance whether that's in gaming it's in streaming video editing or heavy multi-threaded workloads once we figure that out we want to spend most of our budget on the component that's ball necking our performance for gaming we want to maximize our FPS that means getting the fastest GPU that we can afford while only spending enough on a CPU that it's not going to bottle like the graphics card and the less you have to spend the more important it is to get the balance right if we had All the Monies of course we'd just get the best CPU and GPU period and spend about $4,000 for the ultimate gaming PC but most of you out there you have a set amount that you can spend so choosing the best CPU and GPU combo are going to heavily impact your gaming performance remember that as we go up in CPU core count we also need to add in more Cooling and especially for Intel CPUs we probably need to buy a better motherboard which also costs more money along with the price differences between ddr4 and ddr5 RAM so we'll take all of this into consideration for example say we want to build a gaming PC with a ryzen 5600 CPU and an RX 6650 XT 8 GB GPU and then we decide to increase our budget another $100 to play at 1440p where should we spend it well we could upgrade the CPU to a ryzen 7600 which overall is quite a bit faster than the ryzen 5600 but at this GPU performance level it's only going to give us slightly more FPS because our GPU is the bottom neck not the CPU so we just spent an extra $100 on the ryzen 7600 not to mention more on the ddr5 RAM and more expensive am5 motherboard as well for about a 5% increase in fps not great instead if we spent that extra $100 to jump up to an RX 6700 XT 12 GB GPU and we kept our ryzen 5600 CP we' pick up about 30% more FPS because we're spending our money smartly by upgrading the component that's bottlenecking our performance we'll also jump out from 8 GB of vram on our GPU to 12 GB on vram which ensures we can run the latest AAA titles on release with ultra settings and not run into any vram issues even at 1440p and remember that as we go up in resolution from 1080p to 1440p to 4K that increases the load on the GPU and decreases load on the CPU so it makes even more sense to upgrade the GPU now when considering bottom X there are two important areas to think about the first is vram the amount of video RAM on your your GPU as we've already discussed and we go over in much more detail in our best GPU for gaming 2024 video which will link down in the video description if you want a deeper dive for no compromisers 1080P and 1440p gaming we recommend at least 12 GB of vram in 2024 so while budget GPU Shoppers have to contend with 8 gigs of vram I recommend moving up to at least 10 but more likely 12 GB gpus even over slightly faster GPU with only 8 GB of vram and I'm looking at you RTX 4060 and 460 TI 8 GB the second thing to consider is GPU driver overhead now we've seen repeated testing that AMD gpus require less CPU resources than Nvidia gpus which just comes down to driver overhead well the difference is they're not huge they are noticeable with lesser CPUs so we've taken that into account in our recommendations here's my quick warning about future proofing because this is the number one cause of bad CPU and GPU combos for gaming now some people still think that you should future prooof your CPU by bu buying a faster one than you need right now so that in 2 to 5 years time when you do upgrade your GPU you get slightly more FPS out of it in my opinion while there are some decisions like this to be made at the budget level and highend for most systems this strategy would mean sacrificing an entire GPU tier worth of performance so for instance getting an RX 7600 XT instead of a much faster RX 7800 XT so the future proofing strategy cost you FPS right now to maybe get slightly more FPS in 2 to 5 years time the one exception I can see is if you're right on the budget line between getting an older CPU like the ryzen 5600x or jumping up to the new ryzen 7600 which is going to be upgradeable with drop in CPU upgrades in the future in the end this is your call because after all it's your money but if you want to maximize FPS for your money spent then focus on maximizing current performance but what about production or creator workloads that need more CPU power well for these use cases we want more balance but it depends heavily on the types of programs that we're using take video editing in Adobe Premiere Pro while going up from four cores is nice Premier still tends to max out on how many CPU cores and threads it's going to use it once so going overkill on your CPU at the expense of your GPU which is still very much needed for video editing it might actually set your performance back meanwhile other programs they can use all the CPU resources that you can throw at them and they don't use the GPU very much at all that's why it's so important for professional users to understand their Suite of software programs and the recommended system required ments so you can figure out the right CPU and GPU pet for your applications let's jump in our recommendations for best CPU and GPU combo for gaming 2024 and we'll go through both AMD ryzen as well as Intel offerings note that we are expecting Zen 5 based ryzen 9000 CPUs and 15 gen Intel CPUs to launch sometime in the fall of 2024 though we aren't expecting huge uplifts from the current generation we do a monthly update video for both CPU and GPU pricing so leave those link down in the video description and of course all the CPUs and gpus are linked down there as well so you can check current pricing and availability in your region starting off at the budget level you can build a gaming PC right now for just about $550 us with all new parts now at this level we really want the cheapest CPU platform that just won't bottleneck our GPU right now Intel's I3 1200f and the AMD ryzen 5500 are both excellent options paired with inexpensive motherboards a $100 b660 for the i31 1200f and an $80 b450 for the ryzen 5500 they both come with very good included CPU coolers and we're using both with a $35 kit of 2x8 GB ddr4 3200 cl6 Ram though you can get a $50 kit of 3600 cl16 if you end up with a little extra money left over the total cost of these platforms is between $213 and $233 for a GPU we could go all the way down to a used GTX 1078 GB for about $100 or on the New Market on Ron rx6 c600 for $ 199 an RTX 3050 for 220 or an Intel Arc a580 GPU for about $180 not the RTX 3050 is considerably slower than those other gpus while the Intel gpus they're still a bit fussy and driver support is not yet at the level of AMD and Nvidia for on relase titles my advice just avoid any GPU with less than 8 GB of vram both the I3 1200f and ryzen 50500 they're very capable gaming CPUs and you can push them right up to about an RX 7700 XT or RTX 460 TI 16 GB performance but that's essentially redlining them and you want to look at a better CPU at that point here I'd prioritize getting to a recent GPU with more than 8 GB of vram if you can to be able to play the latest AAA titles on release at ultra settings so the Nvidia RTX 360 12 GB AMD RX 7600 XT 16 GB or an Intel Arc a770 16 GB GPU the next CPU performance tier up that I would look to is either the AMD ryzen 5600 for about $135 or the Intel i5 12400 F currently selling for about $141 now these CPUs they have nearly identical performance and with a GPU like an RX 6700 XT or RX 7600 XT 16 gab we'll see about a 10 maybe 15% FPS increase over the previous tier of CPUs I'll leave links to our build guides for both down in the video description and note that it does appear that a lot of the early issues with the i52400 and cheaper b660 motherboards have been fixed through bios updates so just make sure to update the bios for the i52400 currently ddr4 motherboards like the AAR b6m pro RS or gigabyte b760 M ds3h soell for right around $100 for the ryzen 50 600 virtually any b550 motherboard with a vrm heat sink is absolutely fine so something like the b550m ds3h AC ASRock b550m Phantom gaming or the b550m Pro 4 with upgraded audio is great for about $100 we're also using slightly faster ddr4 3600 seal6 Ram but if you want to save 15 bucks you can use the same 3200 seal 16 Ram kit from the previous Combos and both CPUs come with great included box coolers but you can also spend about $20 here on any budget Tower air cooler you want this gives us an upgrade cost of between $72 and $78 over our previous tier of CPUs for our GPU combo I'd look at a minimum of an RX 6600 RTX 350 or Arc a580 new GPU these CPU pretty well but they do hit a wall right around the RX 7800 XT or RTX 470 and at that point you'll definitely want to jump up to the next tier of CPU performance note that if you do need more cores for productivity you can consider the ryzen 5700x or Intel i5 12600 K possibly the 13400 but they don't give much more gaming performance for the extra expense and there's much better options as we'll go over next jumping up to our mid-range CPU and GPU combo we basically have two options here with current pricing the best best mostly gaming CPU it's the ryzon 7600 or 7600 X for about $200 to $230 currently they're selling for about $199 if we need a hybrid gaming and production CPU the I5 14600 KF currently sell for the same price as a 13600 KF at $285 but if the price drops on the 13600 k then I'd probably save a little bit of money there we have build guys for both the ryzen 7600 and i53 600k which is basically the same as the i54 600k and those guides cover things like the differences between the 7600 and 7600 X as well as the 13600 K versus the 13600 KF so check them out for more details these CPUs will give us about 25% more FPS using an RX 7800 XT or RTX 470 over the previous tier in the ryzen 5600 and i52 400f for our GPU combo given how much we're spending on the CPU platform now we want a minimum of an RX 7700 XT or RTX 46ti 16 GB both right around 4 $130 at the time of filming we can take either of these CPUs all the way up to the RX 7900 XTX or even RTX 490 but at that point if we still have money left over in our budget our only option for more performance is to upgrade the CPU because those are the fastest gpus currently available now at current pricing it's really hard to recommend the Intel build as for that price you can almost get the ryzen 7800 x3d instead or you just dump that extra money into your GPU which is probably the route that I would go and the ryzen 7600 it's going to allow you to drop in a future CPU upgrade well the 14 gen Intel it's essentially end of life for that socket I want to give a quick honorable mention to the ryzen 5700 x3d and 5800 x3d now at the time of filming the 5700 x3d has just launched for 249 and the 5800 x3d remains around $300 to $320 if you're currently on am4 with any non x3d CPU like Ryon 1000 2,000 3,000 even 5,000 non x3d CPU either the ryzen 5700 x3d or 5800 x3d will deliver similar performance to the ryzen 7600 often even beating it in really CPU intensive titles so if I had one of those older ryzen CPUs even if I had to upgrade my Ram kit to the 3600 seal 16 one for $50 so 300 total that's potentially a very compelling upgrade now let's look at the current top tier of gaming CPUs in 2024 there are of course many options here but for gaming the main CPU for AMD is the ryzen 7800 x3d for around $390 the it often goes on sale for less and for Intel it's likely the i7 14700 K or KF for about the same price even with ddr5 ram the i71 14700 K Trails the ryzen 7800 X3 slightly in gaming with ultra highend gpus like the RTX 490 and it uses a ton more power and cooling but the i71 14700 K is significantly stronger if you do a ton of professional multi-threaded production applications in addition to gaming though for any normal person the ryzen 7800 x3d is going to be more CPU than they need anyway note the 13700 K and KF so for almost the same price as the 14700 K and KF and they do have fewer cores so I just skip them unless the price gets cut drastically compared to our previous tier of CPUs the ryzen 7800 x3d and I74 700k can sometimes bring an uplift of up to 20% in some very CPU intensive titles using an ultra fast GPU though at 1440p and 4K in many games we're entirely GPU bound and we don't see that much of an FPS increase for the ryzen 7800 X 3D build we're going to use a mid-range to hire an air cooler like the thermalite assassin 120 for $40 the same $140 b650 motherboard like the ack b650 M Pro RS Wi-Fi and the $100 kit of 2x6 GB ddr5 6000 cl30 for the I74 700k good ddr5 z690 and z790 motherboards run right around $180 us to start and we use the same ddr5 6 30 kit for $100 we also want a higher performance air cooler like the Deep cool AK 620 or consider a liquid cooler as well you also likely need a much bigger power supply for the i7 but that will also depend on your GPU and it's harder to calculate costs as there's a big jump in prices from 1,000 watt units to 1200 watt and higher units so I've left out that extra cost that brings our upgrade cost for the 7800 x3d to $26 over the previous CPU tier and for the I74 700k the upgrade cost is at least $271 more than the previous tier for our GPU combos for a minimum I'd recommend the rayon 7900 XT currently selling for around $729 or the RX 470 TI 12 GB selling for about the same price now ideally we'd want the fastest GPU possible so RX 7900 XTX for AMD currently selling around $920 and the currently $2,000 RTX 490 but I also really like the RTX 470 TI super 16 GB and 480 super here as well paired with these higher performance CPUs we've linked all of the CPUs and gpus mentioned in this video down in that video description so check out those links for current pricing and availability in your region and of course if you got value out of the video give it a like it makes a huge different to the channel and of course subscribe click that Bell icon that way you get notified when we release cool content speaking of cool content if you want a deeper dive into picking the best GPU for gaming 2024 check out this video where we go through the differences between AMD Nvidia and Intel gpus including features like FSR versus dlss versus xss and questions like doesn't matter if you buy the cheapest GPU model or more premium one and everything else you need to know to get the best GPU for gaming in 2024 and we'll catch you on the next one
