Quick reply while I have a sec. I went through this last year when I was trying to decide if the i9 price tag was actually worth it for my Resolve setup. TBH, the power draw on these chips is no joke and it really impacts the total build cost once you factor in the cooling and PSU.

Here is what I found when comparing the options for a 4K workflow:

1. Intel Core i9-14900K Desktop Processor: This thing is a beast for raw exports, but ngl, it’s a furnace. I saw it pulling over 300W during heavy renders. Unless you're doing massive 8K projects or heavy VFX, the extra cost for the chip and a high-end Corsair iCUE H150i Elite Capellix XT Liquid CPU Cooler makes the value proposition kinda shaky.
2. Intel Core i7-14700K Desktop Processor: This ended up being my choice. It’s the sweet spot because Intel added more E-cores this gen, so it performs almost like last year's i9 but for way less money. The QuickSync performance is identical to the i9, so timeline scrubbing is butter smooth.
3. Intel Core i9-13900K Desktop Processor: If you can find this on sale, it’s basically the same performance as the 14900K. I almost went this route to save $100, which is basically the cost of a 2TB Samsung 990 Pro SSD 2TB PCIe 4.0 NVMe.

I basically realized that the i7 handles multi-cam 4K without proxies just fine. I used the money I saved to jump to 64GB of RAM, which honestly helped my heavy color grading sessions in Resolve more than those few extra megahertz would have. gl!

yo, i feel u on the heat stuff. i recently upgraded and honestly, it was not as good as i expected... it gets realy hot!! but if you need quicksync for 4k, basically just go with the newest high-end intel chips. i think the top-tier performance jump is worth it for multi-cam? but unfortunately you're definately gonna need a massive cooler to avoid throttling. gl!!

+1