MadalinStroe: Could you please list some of them? I know that the latest Civilization manages to use more than 4 cores/threads, but are there any other?
Even so, unless you use extremely specific tests, or you are going to use it as a round the clock encoding machine, then the benefits are not going to be dramatic, beyond what an i7 7700k offers you. That is the absolute maximum I'd be willing to recommend to even the most enthusiastic buyer.
Ashes of the Singularity and Doom for instance.
For the majority of gams the benefits won't be dramatic, of course. That said, they are still there. For example, my current CPU (an i7 6850K) is outperforming an i7 7700k. Is it a substantial performance gain? Not usually (again, mostly depending on how a given game utilizes multithreading) but it's still there.
Also, as I said earlier, gaming is by far not the only thing we do on our computers.
contra_cultura: For the OP: Have you previously fallen in love with other micro processors or is this your first time? If so, do you think that has something to do with the micro processor belonging to an X-series? I'm really curious, I bet any love would be stronger with 18 cores.
I think I was kinda partial to a 386. It was kinda amazing after all those 286 ones. Pentium II seemed pretty amazing too.
Yea, this is not for the people who are looking to optimize for cost. No argument there. Personally I don't really care what the price is, since I'm looking to optimize for performance.