I own a Mac, but thinking about building my first own gaming pc

[Ray1010]

I've been thinking about this for a while now, but still not sure.

I own a Macbook pro, I only play like Dota 2 on it and it's really annoying without a PC set but I manage somehow.

Anyhow, my primary device for gaming is my ps4, but I love PC's games and thinking about selling the Macbook and going for a PC build. My budget would be around $1k. Still, not sure if that can give me a pretty decent PC for gaming and some design/programming work.

I'll probably be playing Battlefield 1, Overwatch, Dota 2, Fifa 17, and Mafia III.

This would be the first PC I've ever build so I'm not really sure what this budget offer for PC's performance,

Any help would be appreciated.

 

[hdgaming]

1000$ will give you a very good pc for gaming and programming.
What parts do you already have? Monitor, mouse, keyboard, windows etc?

Something like this is good for gaming/programming, but I need to know what parts you already have so I know if I have to change anything.

http://pcpartpicker.com/list/fDNL7h

 

[Ray1010]

1000$ will give you a very good pc for gaming and programming.
What parts do you already have? Monitor, mouse, keyboard, windows etc?

Something like this is good for gaming/programming, but I need to know what parts you already have so I know if I have to change anything.

http://pcpartpicker.com/list/fDNL7h

Hey hdgaming,

Thanks for setup! I actually don't have any parts, I'm doing the full setup so I'm not sure if it would be worth it to sell the Macbook and get a PC with a full setup or not. I would probably spend half of the budget for monitor, mouse, keyboard and the setup discluding the actual PC parts.

I would say for the actual PC, $600-$700 setup would be ideal for me if it can handle what I do.

I'm wondering if a $700 can match up a bit with an i7 Macbook.

I'm a newbie at this so bare with me. Thanks!

 

[king3pj]

This will be a significant improvement over your MacBook for gaming. I had to go $50 over your budget but the performance difference between a GTX 1050 Ti and a GTX 1060 is well worth the extra $50 in my opinion. This build will do well with any game at 1080p.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i5-6500 3.2GHz Quad-Core Processor ($194.89 @ OutletPC)
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-H110M-A Micro ATX LGA1151 Motherboard ($53.88 @ OutletPC)
Memory: Kingston HyperX Fury Black 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR4-2133 Memory ($48.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($48.89 @ OutletPC)
Video Card: Gigabyte GeForce GTX 1060 3GB 3GB Windforce OC Video Card ($199.99 @ B&H)
Case: Corsair 200R ATX Mid Tower Case ($59.99 @ Newegg)
Power Supply: EVGA SuperNOVA G2 550W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply ($59.99 @ Newegg)
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 10 Home OEM 64-bit ($84.89 @ OutletPC)
Total: $751.51
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2016-11-08 17:03 EST-0500

If the extra $50 puts the first build out of your budget get this instead. It won't be as strong but it will still do well in the games you mentioned. If you can stretch the budget a little I highly recommend the first build though.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i5-6500 3.2GHz Quad-Core Processor ($194.89 @ OutletPC)
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-H110M-A Micro ATX LGA1151 Motherboard ($53.88 @ OutletPC)
Memory: Kingston HyperX Fury Black 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR4-2133 Memory ($48.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($48.89 @ OutletPC)
Video Card: EVGA GeForce GTX 1050 Ti 4GB ACX 2.0 Video Card ($144.99 @ B&H)
Case: Corsair 200R ATX Mid Tower Case ($59.99 @ Newegg)
Power Supply: EVGA SuperNOVA G2 550W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply ($59.99 @ Newegg)
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 10 Home OEM 64-bit ($84.89 @ OutletPC)
Total: $696.51
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2016-11-08 17:05 EST-0500

 

[Ray1010]

This will be a significant improvement over your MacBook for gaming. I had to go $50 over your budget but the performance difference between a GTX 1050 Ti and a GTX 1060 is well worth the extra $50 in my opinion. This build will do well with any game at 1080p.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i5-6500 3.2GHz Quad-Core Processor ($194.89 @ OutletPC)
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-H110M-A Micro ATX LGA1151 Motherboard ($53.88 @ OutletPC)
Memory: Kingston HyperX Fury Black 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR4-2133 Memory ($48.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($48.89 @ OutletPC)
Video Card: Gigabyte GeForce GTX 1060 3GB 3GB Windforce OC Video Card ($199.99 @ B&H)
Case: Corsair 200R ATX Mid Tower Case ($59.99 @ Newegg)
Power Supply: EVGA SuperNOVA G2 550W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply ($59.99 @ Newegg)
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 10 Home OEM 64-bit ($84.89 @ OutletPC)
Total: $751.51
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2016-11-08 17:03 EST-0500

If the extra $50 puts the first build out of your budget get this instead. It won't be as strong but it will still do well in the games you mentioned. If you can stretch the budget a little I highly recommend the first build though.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i5-6500 3.2GHz Quad-Core Processor ($194.89 @ OutletPC)
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-H110M-A Micro ATX LGA1151 Motherboard ($53.88 @ OutletPC)
Memory: Kingston HyperX Fury Black 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR4-2133 Memory ($48.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($48.89 @ OutletPC)
Video Card: EVGA GeForce GTX 1050 Ti 4GB ACX 2.0 Video Card ($144.99 @ B&H)
Case: Corsair 200R ATX Mid Tower Case ($59.99 @ Newegg)
Power Supply: EVGA SuperNOVA G2 550W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply ($59.99 @ Newegg)
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 10 Home OEM 64-bit ($84.89 @ OutletPC)
Total: $696.51
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2016-11-08 17:05 EST-0500

if $50 make that big difference, I definitely will go for the first build.

How is this build do with Adobe Premiere software? Not a very heavy use as I do use them from time to time for college classes. if not that good, what would you change?

Also, can this build handle streaming? And if not, what upgrades would be ideal for that (just for the future when I can handle upgrading the build)

Thank you king3pj! I appreciate it.

 

[king3pj]

I don't use Adobe Premiere but I think I remember reading that it uses CPU power to speed up rendering. The i5 should work fine for that and it will probably be faster than the i7 in your MacBook since it is a full power chip instead of a low power mobile chip. If you wanted to improve rendering speeds a high end i7 would probably be your best bet. Remember that an i5 will do the job fine though. It just might be a little slower in rendering.

For streaming it all depends on how you want to do it. If you use Nvidia Shadowplay all of the modern Nvidia GPUs can stream with no performance decrease. If you are fine with a more basic stream (gameplay and webcam only) and willing to use Nvidia Shadowplay the i5 will be fine for streaming any game.

If you want to use software encoding with a program like OBS to do a fancier broadcast with overlays and green screens your CPU handles the streaming. An i5 can do this in games that aren't CPU resource hogs like Overwatch and Dota. For your Battlefield 1 streaming with OBS you would want an i7 to prevent performance dips.

You have to weigh what you are doing this for. For gaming an i5 paired with a GTX 1060 will be a much better build. If rendering times and more complex streaming setups are your main priority you might be better off with an i7 and 1050. In an ideal situation you would have a 1060 and an i7 but that will put you pretty far over your planned budget.

 

[jaguarskx]

It should be fine for Adobe Premier. Video editing / encoding is a pretty CPU intensive task. That applies to all video editing / encoding programs. While I do not use AP, I do know the Pro version can benefit from CUDA cores in nVidia GPUs to accelerate the process.

[b[king3pj[/b]'s first build of roughly ~$750 is better because the GTX 1060 is significantly more powerful than the GTX 1050 Ti making the extra ~$55 worth spending on it.


If you do not need the MacBook Pro, then sure sell it. However, a laptop can come in handy as a college student so I would hold off on selling it unless you absolutely know you will not be needing it. I don't know how old your MacBook Pro is, but waiting a month or two should not affect it's potential resale value especially since the new MacBooks have already been released... with a nice price bump.