Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 4090 is an absolutely monstrous graphics card in every measurable metric. It’s the best-performing consumer-level GPU while using the most power, and it’s also the largest in physical size. The Ada Lovelace architecture it is built on enables huge generational gains, most of which are from the furtherance of ray tracing and DLSS. The 24GB of GDDR6X makes this a great card not just for gaming at 4K or beyond but for creators, AI scientists, and professionals who need all the graphical power they can get.

To keep up with the best RTX 4090 cards, you need a CPU that supports the PCIe bandwidth the GPU needs while also being able to keep up. After all, your PC is meant to work in synergy, and using a capable CPU will get the best out of the power on offer. I’ve collected what I feel are the best CPUs to pair with an RTX 4090, so you can worry about what you’re going to play or create.

These are the best CPUs to keep up with the RTX 4090

The Ryzen 9 7950X3D is by far and away the best CPU to pair with the RTX 4090. It’s the fastest consumer chip available, with the addition of 3D V-cache to the already powerful 16-cores and 32-threads of the 7950X.

AMD managed to keep the 5.7GHz boost clocks of its existing flagship while doubling the L3 cache to 128 MB. It also has a lower TDP, at only 120W, so it runs cooler while cranking out a higher level of performance. It’s the most performant processor for gaming use, beating the 13900K, and only slightly behind Intel’s best in productivity tasks.

That performance does come at a cost, and it’s one that your wallet will have to bear. It’s the most expensive consumer CPU, but if you’re putting an RTX 4090 into your PC, it’s likely you have a higher budget overall.

The other thing to factor in is that to get the best out of both processor and graphics card, you’ll want to get one of the best AM5 motherboards, so you’re not leaving an ounce of performance on the table. This really is the buy once, cry once CPU choice, with enough power to last many years of AAA gaming.

The other alternative for a no-holds-barred build is to get Intel’s Core i9-13900K to pair with Nvidia’s flagship GPU. It’s insanely capable at productivity tasks, where the 5.8GHz boost clock makes short work out of single-threaded workloads. Remember that it’s power-hungry, with a 253W max TDP before overclocking, so you will want to factor in a higher-wattage PSU and better cooling into your overall budget.

The hybrid design with 8 P-cores and 16 E-cores gives an overall count of 24 cores and 32 threads. At desktop workloads like word processing, the E-cores keep the thermals low while giving great performance. Where this chip really shines is in heavy workloads, like video editing, live streaming, and, yes, graphically intensive gaming.

Really, you don’t need this many cores for a pure gaming PC, but neither do you need an RTX 4090. When you’re going for the best graphics card, why let thermals or core count get in the way of a good thing?

The one thing we will recommend getting along with the 13900K is a quality CPU cooler. The best CPU fan coolers can tame this beast, but we recommend a 360mm AIO liquid cooler, which will have a better chance of keeping the temperature away from the 100 Celsius thermal throttle point. Our testing showed it regularly exceeds the 253W TDP, drawing up to 330W on our test rig. Once the heat is kept in check, you have a supremely capable processor.

The Intel Core i5-13600KF has six P-cores, eight E-cores, 20 threads, and 44MB of combined L2 and L3 cache for enough power to handle single-threaded or multi-threaded tasks with aplomb. What it doesn't have is an iGPU, which has been removed to tame the thermals slightly.

When we reviewed its almost-twin, the Core i5-13600K, the bottom line was it was the best CPU to put into a gaming PC. The KF version has the iGPU disabled, and you won’t miss it because you’re pairing it with the best graphics card on the market.

This powerful mid-range processor will perform like a top-tier one during gaming loads. It has a 5.10GHz turbo frequency for the Performance-cores and is capable of single-core boosts of up to 5.3GHz. That’s at stock before you do any tinkering in the overclocking menu, as this is an unlocked chip.

This is also a power-hungry chip, with a 125W base TDP and max TDP of 181W. Unlike the 13900K, this chip will keep to those limits, making it easier to keep cool. You might not need a 360mm AIO liquid cooler to handle things, but if you’re planning on overclocking, we recommend picking up one anyway.

This is a great CPU to pair with the RTX 4090, capable of gaming at 4K and handling desktop productivity tasks. The fact that it’s half the price of the 13900K makes it worth looking at, as you can pretty much pay for your motherboard with the difference.

For making a purely gaming PC that can keep up with the RTX 4090, the best pairing is the AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D. It has the same 3D V-cache as the flagship 7950X3D while giving similar ingame performance at a substantially lower cost. We found that it even outperforms the 13900K, which is an amazing feat for a CPU that costs well over a hundred dollars less.

To get that level of performance, the 3D V-cache is twice the amount as in the 7800X, at 96MB. That means it can cache more data, so it’s not transferring data back and forth from the storage drive when it needs it, it’s already inside the CPU to access nearly instantly.

The eight cores and sixteen threads have lower clock speeds than the more expensive models in the X3D family, but we found that’s not as much of an issue in real-world testing as it’s easier for the operating system to schedule threads when it only has one Core Complex Die (CCD) to worry about. It still has a base clock of 4.2GHz and boosts up to 5.0GHz, which is plenty of single-core performance for gaming or productivity tasks.

Those lower clocks and single CCD come with another benefit. The 7800X3D has a way lower TDP than other 7000-series chips, so it’s easier to cool and stays cooler under load. Our testing showed it used 90W under load while staying under 85 degrees Celcius with a 240mm AIO liquid cooler attached. That’s a big deal, especially since we routinely recommend larger 360mm AIO coolers for performance processors.

Budget isn’t often a word we’d use when pairing a CPU with a $1,500 graphics card, but here we are. The Ryzen 5 7600 is the best value processor in the 7000-series range, bringing incredible levels of performance for a very low MSRP. It’s also power-efficient, so you can get away with a lower-wattage PSU or reuse the one you already have.

It has six cores, 12 threads, and a max boost clock of 5.1GHz. It’s awesome that most CPUs can hit over 5GHz these days, when this was an unheard-of number for AMD without exotic cooling solutions like liquid nitrogen being part of the equation. The 7600 also has a 65W TDP, so it can be cooled adequately by the included fan cooler. You’ll get more performance stepping up to a larger fan cooler or an AIO liquid cooler, but it’s nice to know you can get going without spending more.

The 7600X might have better boost clocks, but it also has a higher TDP and cost, and you don’t get that much more in performance. The 7600 “non-X” is more efficient than its Intel rival, the i5-13600KF that we mentioned earlier. It also matches it in performance, so your RTX 4090 won’t be bottlenecked in the slightest.

The cost savings of this CPU can be spent on other meaningful upgrades, like more RAM or more NVMe storage for fast data access. The point here is that almost every CPU nowadays is great, so you only have to spend the amount you are comfortable with for a powerful PC.

Not everyone who buys Nvidia’s flagship graphics cards is going to be using it for gaming. They might not even stop at buying one, as workloads like Machine Learning can take advantage of multiple graphics cards in the same system. For a CPU that can keep up while supplying enough PCIe lanes for multiple RTX 4090s, it’s time to look at the incredibly expensive and powerful AMD Ryzen Threadripper Pro 5995WX.

This workstation processor is about as good as any desktop CPU gets. It enables handling huge data applications, from its 64 cores and 128 threads. If the motherboard supports it, you can put up to 2TB (2,048 GB) of RAM across eight memory channels. That’s a colossal amount of working memory when most consumer CPUs top out at 192 GB of RAM.

To feed data to multiple RTX 4090s, you also get 128 PCIe 4.0 lanes from the CPU, increasing to a total of 152 from the chipset of compatible motherboards. What’s more, every PCIe slot on a TRX80 motherboard runs at x16, so there will be plenty of bandwidth for those powerful graphics cards to use.

With Intel all but abandoning its HEDT platform on desktop, the Ryzen Threadripper Pro 5995WX is the perfect choice for a big data-crunching workstation with the most powerful graphics card on the planet.

Intel’s naming changes mean that the previous enthusiast i7 branding is now the mid-range. That’s okay, as you only have to pay mid-range prices to pick one up, giving you superb performance at productivity tasks and capable gaming performance to boot. This chip has eight E-cores, eight P-cores, and 24 threads, which can handle any workload thrown at it. It won’t quite match the performance of the 13900K, but it can be overclocked easily to gain some extra speed.

With a base 3.4GHz clock speed on the P-cores and a boost clock speed of 5.40GHz, the 13700K excels at lightly threaded tasks like word processing, photo editing, and gaming loads. It manages this with a relatively easy-to-cool 125W TDP, so you won’t have to spend large amounts on an oversized cooler to keep its thermals in check.

What’s more, you can use DDR4 or DDR5 with this CPU, depending on the motherboard you’re putting it in. That can save you more money, as the chances are your current build already has DDR4 to reuse. The high peak performance on CPU-intensive tasks means that your RTX 4090 won’t be waiting around for data either, so your overall system performance will be great.

There’s nothing that says you have to use current-generation processors with the latest in graphics cards. Any processor from the last few years can handle the RTX 4090, as all it needs is an x16 PCIe 4.0 slot all to its own. That’s why I’m picking a last-gen champion, the Ryzen 7 5800X3D, as my last choice. This powerful CPU chews up games like nobody’s business, has 8 cores, 16 threads, plenty of L3 cache at 96MB, and a relatively sedate 105W TDP, which should be easy to keep cool.

The AM4 socket is retired now in favor of AM5, but it’s still got enough moxie for the biggest graphics card around. You can use up to 128GB of DDR4 with this CPU, and with RAM prices dropping like they have, you can fill up all four slots for a relatively low price.

This chip is currently in the perfect price range, as the last-gen is still readily available, and before prices rebound upwards as scarcity sets in. The only potentially bad thing that we can say about the 5800X3D is that it doesn’t offer any overclocking, a side effect of the first-generation 3D V-cache. This might be a deal-breaker for some, but with Ryzen running near its operational peaks straight out of the box, it is less of a concern than you’d think.

What you need to know about picking a CPU to pair with the RTX 4090

It’s no secret that this list of the best processors to use with the powerful Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 has a big overlap with the best CPUs, period. We’re at a point of processing power that both AMD and Intel options are viable for almost any budget. Any of the CPUs on this list will be more than enough for the RTX 4090, so pick the one that appeals the most to you.

The RTX 4090 is already an enthusiast’s GPU, so it stands to reason that pairing it with an enthusiast-level CPU is the best option. On the AMD side, that’s the Ryzen 9 7950X3D, which chews through any task before it. For Intel fans, that’s the Core i9-13900K, with its big.LITTLE architecture using a mix of efficiency and performance cores. Both CPUs also support PCIe 5.0 for the fastest NVMe SSDs and future-proofing for the next generation of GPUs.

However, this generation of CPUs and motherboards are significantly more expensive than the last generation’s. To get enthusiast performance on a budget, I recommend the AMD Ryzen 7 5800X3D, which is often under $300, so you can get a CPU, RAM, and a motherboard for less than the other enthusiast chips on this list.