Henry Cavill explains why he's waiting on the RTX 4090

Henry Cavill had a viral moment early in the pandemic when a video showing The Witcher and Man of Steel actor building his own gaming PC started making the rounds. Digital Trends recently sat down with Cavill to talk about his upcoming film Enola Holmes 2, as well as get a status update on his gaming rig — and the actor is eyeing some big upgrades in the near future.

In particular, Cavill is looking at the RTX 4090, but he hasn’t quite settled on Nvidia’s new GPU yet. “I’m also waiting for the AMD cards to come out to see what they’re like in comparison to the Nvidia RTX 4090 … time will tell with the specs,” Cavill said.

Henry Cavill lifting a gaming PC off a table.

AMD is set to announce its new graphics cards on November 3, and with reports of melting RTX 4090 connectors, it’s safe to assume Cavill isn’t alone in waiting on a GPU upgrade for now. Nvidia is also gearing up to release the RTX 4080 on November 16, which could end up being a sweet spot for high-end PC gamers.

Cavill’s CPU is up in the air at the moment, as well. “I think at the moment I’m probably going to go with the AMD chip still, but we’ll see,” he said. AMD recently released its Ryzen 7000 processors, including the flagship Ryzen 9 7950X, which it seems Cavill is looking at for the next era of his gaming rig. It’s not a straightforward upgrade, though.

On the upgrade, the actor said he “was slightly disappointed to learn I had to buy a new motherboard as well as everything else,” echoing a sentiment that many builders have felt with AMD’s most recent generation. Intel’s latest processors, including the Core i9-13900K and Core i5-13600K, support the same motherboard from the previous generation. And Ryzen 7000 represents the first time AMD has changed motherboard sockets in six years.

Although Cavill is still deciding the best components for a future PC upgrade, his rig hasn’t been waiting idly. “It’s still a top-end PC, but it’s all going to shift as soon as all the new gear comes in,” Cavil said. “I just bought a new PSU and that was a challenge, because it was a far larger PSU than the previous one. It’s a 1600 [watt], this one … Turns out I had to unplug every single cable and cord, because they needed to be both larger gauge and better cables, so it turned into a bit of a fiddle, but it was a nice warmup to the complete breakdown and reconstruction of my rig to come.”

The actor recently shared photos of him upgrading the all-in-one liquid cooler in his PC, as well, fit with some (properly colored) Noctua fans.

Hopefully, we’ll get another update on Cavill’s gaming PC once all the new hardware is out. For now, fans have Enola Holmes 2 to look forward to, as well as the long-awaited return of Cavill as the Man of Steel.