Is i5 enough for gaming and recording gameplays?

Hey Thor. Can you give us an idea of your price range, resolution, ideal settings (medium, high, ultra), and refresh rate of your monitor? Also, since you plan on recording I will assume you want to do rendering as well. An i7 or Xeon is definitely in your field of view, if productivity is where you want to go. Though, without a budget or knowing your use, I won't be able to give you a definitive answer.

If you can wait a few more weeks/months, Ryzen may shake CPU pricing down and enable you to get the processing power you need for live transcoding for much cheaper.

Get a Kaby Lake out of the box compatible board and this CPU.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i5-7600K 3.8GHz Quad-Core Processor ($243.07 @ Amazon)
Total: $243.07
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2017-01-27 09:56 EST-0500

Thank you, Thor.
I should have asked, what is your current build? My concern being an upgrade will likely leave you needing a new motherboard, ram and OS, on top of the CPU. I'm feeling lazy this morning so I'm going to copy/paste a post I made to someone else's thread. This will give you an idea of prices you can expect to spend. If your budget is $300 for ONLY the CPU but you can spend more on the motherboard and ram, that changes things and you'd be able to grab an i7 6700 (non-k).

---PASTE---

Depending on your budget and when you plan on upgrading, I can offer you difference recommendations. Motherboard-wise, you do not need anything fancy. A cheap $50 motherboard is as good as a $150 motherboard if all you need is 1 PCIe slot for your GPU and 2 slots for ram. We'll assume that you need the basics. It's super unfortunate that so many people were told they need gaming Z series motherboards for their simple CPUs. It's a huge waste of money.

However! If you plan to go with Skylake (6000 series Intel CPU), you can overclock their normally unoverclockable CPUs very easily. All you need to do is a BIOS flash. If this is something you aren't comfortable with, then ignore the following information: http://overclocking.guide/gigabyte-z170-non-k-overclock...

Here are some example builds for you

1) I've only put 1 stick of ram in here to save money, this is the budget overclock option:
PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i3-6100 3.7GHz Dual-Core Processor ($109.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-Z170X-Gaming 3 ATX LGA1151 Motherboard ($139.89 @ OutletPC)
Memory: Crucial 8GB (1 x 8GB) DDR4-2133 Memory ($46.99 @ Newegg)
Total: $296.87
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2017-01-26 22:29 EST-0500

2) Next step is the i5 overclock option w/ 2 sticks of ram:
PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i5-6400 2.7GHz Quad-Core Processor ($176.49 @ OutletPC)
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-Z170X-Gaming 3 ATX LGA1151 Motherboard ($139.89 @ OutletPC)
Memory: Team Dark 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4-2400 Memory ($84.99 @ Newegg)
Total: $401.37
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2017-01-26 22:30 EST-0500

3) An ultra budget upgrade that will leave you with solid performance gains:
PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i3-6100 3.7GHz Dual-Core Processor ($109.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-H110M-A Micro ATX LGA1151 Motherboard ($53.88 @ OutletPC)
Memory: Crucial 8GB (1 x 8GB) DDR4-2133 Memory ($46.99 @ Newegg)
Total: $210.86
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2017-01-26 22:32 EST-0500

These give you options at $200, $300, and $400.

Expect to pay an additional ~$100 if you go with an i7 6700.

i5 can do pretty much anything you want. A i7 is only if you want a extra boost.

A lot of people are fine with blck overclocking, but I wouldn't really recommend it. Personally I'd rather pay $35 or so to have a K processor if I were planning to overclock. Also, for the most part I'd suggest going with Kaby Lake.

i5 build:
PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i5-7500 3.4GHz Quad-Core Processor ($198.49 @ OutletPC)
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-B250M-DS3H Micro ATX LGA1151 Motherboard ($73.98 @ Newegg)
Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws V Series 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4-2800 Memory ($79.99 @ Newegg)
Total: $352.46
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2017-02-01 11:42 EST-0500

i7 build:
PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i7-7700 3.6GHz Quad-Core Processor ($309.49 @ OutletPC)
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-B250M-DS3H Micro ATX LGA1151 Motherboard ($73.98 @ Newegg)
Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws V Series 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4-2800 Memory ($79.99 @ Newegg)
Total: $463.46
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2017-02-01 11:29 EST-0500

i7 w/ overclocking:
PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i7-7700K 4.2GHz Quad-Core Processor ($343.89 @ OutletPC)
CPU Cooler: CRYORIG H7 49.0 CFM CPU Cooler ($34.88 @ OutletPC)
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-Z270P-D3 ATX LGA1151 Motherboard ($110.98 @ Newegg)
Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws V Series 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4-2800 Memory ($79.99 @ Newegg)
Total: $569.74
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2017-02-01 11:43 EST-0500

Personally, I'd go with a kaby lake i5 and a GTX 780. The GTX 780 can get around 50 to 60 FPS with medium or high settings on GTA 5.

I wouldn't get a GTX 780. I'd go for a 1060, 1070, or 1080 depending on the monitor.

Edit: or RX480

I can game on a FX / gt 640 pretty easy with decent FPS. A kaby lake and a GTX 780 would be way better. A GTX 1060, GTX 1070 or a GTX 1080 is what you need for 4K. A RX 480 can do 4K as well.

Why would anyone buy a card from 4 years ago? Unless he already has a 780 he shouldn't use one.

Unless he can get a GTX 1060,1070, 1080 for a cheap price it isn't worth the money to be honest. And I don't call 300 pounds cheap. He can choose whatever GPU he wants though, Not like it's our choice, we aren't the ones using it after all. And I would buy a GTX 780, I'd rather not pick the most expensive tech on the planet for my machine. I want some extra money for other parts not just my GPU.

I would not suggest buying a 4 year old video card for a new gaming PC. It would be better to go with a 4 year old CPU and a new video card. And 300£? Where do you get that number? If he is in the UK, a 1060 3gb card costs under 200 pounds, and a 1060 6gb card costs under 230.
Video Card: Gigabyte GeForce GTX 1060 3GB 3GB Mini ITX OC Video Card (£184.74 @ Aria PC)
or
Video Card: Zotac GeForce GTX 1060 6GB 6GB Mini Video Card (£228.98 @ Amazon UK)

I was assuming he was in the US because he didn't specify:
Video Card: Gigabyte GeForce GTX 1060 3GB 3GB Mini ITX OC Video Card ($192.86 @ Amazon)
or
Video Card: EVGA GeForce GTX 1060 6GB 6GB GAMING Video Card ($239.99 @ Amazon)

With NVENC(shadowplay) encoder, CPU usage goes down to like 2-5% when recording. So if he has an Nvidia GPU he can use that, but it will sap some GPU power for game performance.

Yes it's perfect, you should try and see the prices of a GTX 980ti is. That's as powerful as a GTX 1070. You could go and see if you can get some cheap amazon GTX with good reviews.

I've found a GTX 1050 with 4 GB of RAM on amazon for a pretty cheap price and with really good reviews - https://www.amazon.co.uk/d/Graphics-Cards/Gigabyte-NVIDIA-GeForce-GDDR5-Memory-Express-Black/B01M6ZANMP/ref=sr_1_12?s=computers&ie=UTF8&qid=1486021912&sr=1-12&keywords=gtx

Any GTX 1050 would be perfect. Just get what you can buy.

Hey Thor, depending on your budget, I would recommend the following:

1060 = 480 > 470 > 1050ti > 1050 > 460.

The sweetspots (for me in Canada) are 1060, 470, 1050. The other's prices aren't competitive enough for me to want to purchase them. This is based on prices in my country.