In this video I answer the big question: is Intel even worth buying in 2026 for gaming? Surprisingly, yes—and in a lot of the low to mid-range it’s actually more worth it than AMD right now. The main reason is simple: LGA1700 still gives you that sweet value combo of cheap boards (B760/H610/Z790) plus DDR4 support, and DDR5 pricing is still a mess because of shortages. For gaming, DDR5 is faster, but it’s not “pay double” faster, and with proper tuning you can do some stupid-good results on DDR4. I break my picks down from budget to high-end. For value gaming builds, I’m still looking at locked 14th gen like the i5-14400F on a DDR4 B760, and I also talk about used-market options like a cheap 14600K/14700K if you can snag them at the right price. Then I cover my “weird but amazing” option: the AliExpress mystery CPUs (HX laptop chips adapted for desktop) if you’re willing to do a bit more work. Finally, if you’re going DDR5, I call out the Core Ultra 5 225F as an insane value CPU (if RAM wasn’t the bottleneck), and for top-end Intel gaming I recommend the Core Ultra 9 285KF—but only if you pair it with very fast memory (like 8000 MT/s) and actually tune it. That’s how you get Core Ultra to punch way above its weight.