I built this PC in 2023 using a guide and I'm not very experienced with PC hardware. It has an RTX 4080 16GB, an Intel Core i5-13600KF, an ASUS Prime Z790-P WiFi D4 motherboard, 32GB of Corsair DDR4 memory, an 850W power supply, a 1TB WD Black SN770 NVMe SSD, and a 240mm liquid cooler. Despite having fairly powerful components, the system doesn't seem to perform as well as expected. I notice occasional lag in Fortnite, and Adobe After Effects runs extremely poorly with severe stuttering. An older Alienware system with a GTX 1070 handled After Effects better, so I'm wondering whether the CPU, memory, storage, or another component should be upgraded. What should I check first, and are there any sensible upgrades that would improve performance?
3 Answers
For After Effects, make sure the application is updated and that GPU acceleration is enabled in its project and preferences settings. Clear the disk and media cache, check that the footage is stored on the NVMe drive, and close unnecessary background programs. After Effects can also perform badly with certain plugins, codecs, or corrupted preferences. Since the older computer worked better, comparing the project files, plugins, cache settings, and footage formats may be more useful than replacing the CPU.
This is already a very capable gaming and editing system, so I wouldn’t upgrade anything yet. The RTX 4080 and i5-13600KF should handle Fortnite and After Effects well. First check whether the monitor cable is connected to the graphics card rather than the motherboard, and confirm that the correct NVIDIA drivers are installed. Also monitor CPU and GPU usage, temperatures, clock speeds, and RAM usage while the lag is happening. That will show whether the problem is hardware-related or caused by software, settings, or drivers.
The 13600KF is not an obvious weakness for an RTX 4080, and upgrading it would probably provide little benefit unless monitoring shows the CPU consistently maxed out. The DDR4 memory is also adequate, but verify that XMP is enabled in the motherboard BIOS and that the memory is running at its advertised speed. For Fortnite, check the game’s frame limit, rendering mode, shader compilation, and background overlays. A clean driver installation and updated chipset and BIOS drivers could also help.
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