Complete builds at three budgets for each resolution, with the measured Performance Index on every chip so you can see what the extra money actually buys. GPU picks are matched to the resolution they sit under; every part is priced, so the totals are whole machines rather than a chip and a card. The benchmark data behind the index lives on the main page.
How it picks. It composes every CPU × GPU × memory combination that fits — board, PSU, cooler and case included by the same rules as the builds below — and scores each one, then returns the cheapest build that comes within a point of the best score your budget can reach, so the last euros are not spent on noise. Anything left over goes on storage. Country switches to that country's own price list — seven separate captures, never converted, so a budget is not comparable across them and the slider rescales when you switch. The hand-picked builds below stay in EUR. A part that country never priced simply cannot be offered there, which is why the answer sometimes changes shape rather than just price. The score is a weighted blend of the two indices, weighted per resolution. That weighting is judgement, not measurement: the CPU and GPU indices are separate fits, each normalised to its own leader, so no arithmetic across them is a frame rate. It ranks builds; it does not predict FPS.
The question that always follows the table. Index at 1440p, so the figures compare with each other and with the 1440p builds above — never across resolutions.
Memory decides the entry platform in 2026. 32 GB of DDR5 costs — against — for DDR4, so entry stays on AM4 and LGA1700 deliberately — nobody puts that much memory in an entry build. Mid and high move to DDR5 where the platform earns it. Nothing takes 64 GB: that kit now costs more than a 9800X3D.
Radeon is better value at every tier right now. An RX 9070 XT is both cheaper and faster than an RTX 5070 Ti (81 against 70 at 1440p), which is why the XT tops the 1440p and 4K blocks while the Nvidia column spends more for less.
8 GB is a 1080p-only compromise, and only on the Nvidia side. An RTX 5060 saves real money over a 5060 Ti 16 GB and the penalty at 1080p is the mildest it gets (+29%, against +59% at 1440p). On AMD it is a trap: the 8 GB 9060 XT is — against — for the 16 GB, and that gap buys +66% at 1080p — so AMD's floor stays at 16 GB.
The two columns are alternatives, not packages — mix them. A ✔ marks the better index per euro in that row, counting memory with the CPU because the socket drags the RAM cost along. Nothing stops an Intel chip driving a Radeon card, and at these prices that is repeatedly the cheaper build: the DDR4 Intel platforms win most of the CPU rows while Radeon wins nearly every GPU row. Read across, not down.
Intel's ladder is flat for this game. A 285K scores 78, two points over a 250K Plus, so the flagship appears nowhere here. The 14600K on DDR4 is the sleeper: with a DDR4 kit it is a far cheaper platform than a 250K Plus on DDR5, for an index of 68 against 77 — so it wins wherever the GPU is the limit, which is why it takes 1440p and 4K mid but not 1080p, where the CPU is. AMD's ladder is not flat: a 9800X3D reaches 97.
1080p tops out deliberately low. The GPU field compresses to a 5.5× spread there and the CPU becomes the limit, so the 1080p high build pairs the best CPU with an RX 9070 / 5070 Ti rather than a 9070 XT or a 5080 — a flagship card at 1080p is money that buys almost nothing. On the AMD side mid and high even share the 9070 and differ by CPU alone. At 4K the spread opens to 17× and the same money decides everything, which is why only that block reaches a 5090.
Everything in the price list, including parts no build above uses — so you can re-total a build you have changed. Hand-maintained, EUR, Netherlands.
For pasting into Discord and the like. The detail cards carry the full prose and are meant to be opened; the compact ones are sized for Discord's inline preview.