Best Value CPU Right Now? I Tested Every Option

With CPUs, the cheapest chips are often the best value — and a $679 16-core won't game faster than a $449 one. Here's the truth: your graphics card drives your frame rate, and your CPU just has to not bottleneck it. So this video shows exactly how much CPU to buy for your GPU and resolution — at every budget. 🖥️ PC Builder (free, no account): https://www.maxmybuild.com Enter your budget and it balances the CPU against your graphics card and pairs the right board, cooler and memory — no bottlenecks. 📧 CPU prices swing hard on sales — I email the updated pick the week it changes: https://www.maxmybuild.com/newsletter 📄 FREE — The CPU Bottleneck Field Guide: a short PDF on how to avoid CPU bottlenecks, sent straight to your inbox → https://www.maxmybuild.com/free/cpu-b... ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ⏱ TIMESTAMPS ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 0:00 Why CPU value runs backwards 0:29 How much CPU you actually need 1:30 Budget GPU / 1080p — the value pick 2:22 Mid GPU / 1440p — the mainstream pick 3:27 Fast GPU — the X3D sweet spot (1% lows) 4:13 Best pure gaming 4:56 The 16-core trap (game + create) 5:35 The whole guide in one table ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 🛒 MY PICKS (affiliate links — I earn a small commission at no cost to you) ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 💸 BUDGET 1080p Core i3-14100F (~$114) → https://click.linksynergy.com/link?id... Ryzen 5 7500F (AM5 upgrade path, ~$148) → https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0D2RWZ2LK?... 🎯 VALUE Ryzen 5 9600X (~$177) → https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0D6NN6TM7?... Core Ultra 5 250KF Plus (Intel alt, ~$200) → https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GMLFFHS1?... ⭐ THE GAMER'S SWEET SPOT Ryzen 7 7800X3D (~$363) → https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BTZB7F88?... 🔥 BEST PURE GAMING Ryzen 7 9800X3D (~$449) → https://click.linksynergy.com/link?id... 👑 GAMING + CREATION Ryzen 9 9950X3D (~$679) → https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0FLYZCNSL?... ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 📺 MORE ON MAXMYBUILD ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Don't Buy a Gaming CPU Until You Watch This →    • Don't Buy a Gaming CPU Until You Watch This   The Best Graphics Card for Every Budget → [link when published] Your Gaming PC RAM Setup is Probably Wrong →    • Your Gaming PC RAM Setup is Probably Wrong   ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 🔗 LINKS ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ PC Builder (free) → https://www.maxmybuild.com Newsletter → https://www.maxmybuild.com/newsletter Free CPU Bottleneck Field Guide (PDF) → https://www.maxmybuild.com/free/cpu-b...