I want to upgrade my PC for Minecraft with a high render distance while maintaining a locked 60 FPS. I currently have an Intel i5-12400F with an H610 motherboard and am considering either a Ryzen 7 5800X3D with a compatible motherboard or a Core i9-14900KF paired with an MSI PRO B760-P DDR4 motherboard. I can get either CPU-and-motherboard combination for roughly the same price. My other hardware is a be quiet! Pure Power 13 M 1000W power supply, 32GB of DDR4-3200 memory, and an RTX 3080. I do not use shaders, but I do use a very large render distance, which seems to put considerable strain on my current CPU.
2 Answers
For regular Minecraft at 60 FPS, your i5-12400F is already generally capable. The Core i9-14900KF is substantially faster than the 5800X3D in overall CPU performance, but both options need strong cooling. If you decide to upgrade anyway, the 14900KF would provide more raw performance, though it may be excessive for your use case.
The RTX 3080 is still a strong graphics card, and upgrading the GPU probably will not help much with normal Minecraft unless you use demanding shaders or graphics mods. Large render distances, heavy worlds, and complex redstone areas can make Minecraft more CPU-limited, so a faster processor could help in those situations. Without shaders, your current GPU should be fine.
I do not use shaders, so the GPU is fine for Minecraft. My main issue is the very large render distance, which is putting a lot of load on the i5.
So if I upgrade, would the 14900KF be the better choice?