ChipFlip
Building a budget gaming machine and stuck between AMD and Intel at the entry tier? The used Ryzen 5 7600 runs $119. The Core i5-14400F runs $139.99. Twenty-one dollars, six cores each, and two completely different upgrade stories behind them.
The platform decision outlives the chip
AM5 is AMD's current socket and will keep receiving new processors for years. LGA1700, which the 14400F uses, is finished. Intel moved on to a new socket with Core Ultra, so a 14400F build is a dead end the day you buy it.
That's the single biggest factor here and it has nothing to do with benchmarks. A 7600 owner can drop in a much faster chip years from now without replacing the motherboard. A 14400F owner replaces everything.
Gaming performance is close, with an edge to AMD
Both are six-core parts that handle modern games without drama. The 7600's Zen 4 cores are generally a little stronger per clock in gaming workloads, and it runs cooler and draws less power doing it. The 14400F answers with more total threads once you count its efficiency cores, which helps in heavily multithreaded work more than in games.
Where the 14400F still makes sense
DDR4. AM5 requires DDR5, and if you already own a decent DDR4 kit, an LGA1700 board lets you keep it. That can swing the real total cost by $60 to $80, which more than erases the sticker gap and then some.
The F suffix also means no integrated graphics on the Intel chip, so a discrete GPU isn't optional. The 7600 keeps basic integrated graphics as a fallback, which is genuinely useful for troubleshooting a build.
Bottom line
Buy the Ryzen 5 7600 if you're starting fresh. Cheaper, slightly faster in games, cooler, and on a socket with a future. Only pick the 14400F if you're reusing DDR4 memory and the savings actually land in your pocket.