E-GPU or Ryzen Gaming PC

[The Right Honourable Jimmy]

Hello,

 

I'm new here, been a fan of Linus for a while. I currently own a 2016 13" MacBook Pro with a touchbar. I use that mostly for video editing and browsing.

I've been looking for something to game on at 4K in September, I'm  not really fussed about having all the settings at Max. I currently have an Xbox One and I was planning on buying the upcoming Xbox One X but most of my friends were telling me that would have been a stupid idea and I should build a PC instead because upgradability and customisability.

 

I crunched up the numbers and this was what I was comfortable with to start with

 

A GTX 1060 6GB GDDR5 - £250

AM4 Micro ATX - £80

8GB DDR4 RAM - £70

1TB HDD 6Gb/s - £40

Midtower - £32

Cheap Heatsink - £20

Power supply (don't know what wattage yet)- £45

+ other costs

£750 (967$) all of that not including a monitor. (I have a 4K 50 inch TV though)

 

When those numbers came up I was sort of annoyed because everyone says that consoles are horrible but at the end of the day they are cheaper. I could spend £450 on an Xbox One X or get the equivalent of that or better as I indicated above (other than the ram) in a much higher price.

 

That was till I realised I have 4x thunder port 3 ports on my MAC.  The upcoming high Sierra update will support an RX 580 E-GPU and before people shout you can't game on a Mac, well there's bootcamp which I use occasionally. The reason why I bought a Mac is because the equipment I use at university are running OS X and because I video edit I didn't want to format my external storage into exFAT, my teacher specifically said it's a no no. Hence I didn't spend my hard cash on a killer PC. So why not take advantage of what I have, my Mac with bootcamp if I feel like gaming. If I get an RX 580 at 8GB and an e-gpu dock, I can satisfy all my gaming needs and I could plug all of that to my 4K TV and game on bootcamp. While I'm satisfying my gaming needs I could start slowly buying parts and then eventually I'll have what I need.

 

So E-GPU or lots and lots of money on a gaming PC console killer?

 

[DrMacintosh]

2 minutes ago, The Right Honourable Jimmy said:

So E-GPU or lots and lots of money on a gaming PC console killer?

You could get the eGPU but I would wait until High Sierra is released and we see just how it works with external GPUs. 

 

The PC would perform better for sure, but it would also be a lot more expensive. 

 

You cant build a PC right now anyway, all the GPUs are way overpriced so I would just wait until High Sierra launches or until GPUs come back in stock.  

[The Right Honourable Jimmy]

Just now, DrMacintosh said:

You could get the eGPU but I would wait until High Sierra is released and we see just how it works with external GPUs. 

 

The PC would perform better for sure, but it would also be a lot more expensive. 

 

You cant build a PC right now anyway, all the GPUs are way overpriced so I would just wait until High Sierra launches or until GPUs come back in stock.  

If I'm going to go down the E-GPU route, I'm going to buy the GPU before high Sierra because when High Sierra hits, IT WILL BE EXPENSIVE like hell I bet. Supply and demand, that economy A level helps with stuff like that. Apparently I'll be able to use it on bootcamp before high Sierra apparently, I think.

[DrMacintosh]

1 minute ago, The Right Honourable Jimmy said:

IT WILL BE EXPENSIVE like hell

Not really, the Mac market isnt very big. 

 

All GPUs are like $200+ above MSRP right now so buying one doesn't make any sense. 

[Terryv]

A RX 560 would be a good pairing I think. (Those you can actually buy) It would provide good performance considering the limitations of Thunderbolt.

 

Doesn't mac OS currently support Pascal natively now? If so then a 1050ti or a 1060 may be a better choice.

[The Right Honourable Jimmy]

Just now, Terryv said:

A RX 560 would be a good pairing I think. (Those you can actually buy) It would provide good performance considering the limitations of Thunderbolt.

 

Doesn't mac OS currently support Pascal natively now? If so then a 1050ti or a 1060 may be a better choice.

Not according to most websites I've visited. They don't support any for the MacBook Pro 2016, I could disable the system integrity protection and mess with some coding and do it that way but I'd rather not do that. On most websites it says RX 580 only. Now on bootcamp I can even use a 1080 if I want

[W-L]

-Moved to New Builds and Planning- 

[argyle]

The High Sierra beta supports any graphics card with current mac drivers. The nvidia 10 series cards do work, but Apple is working with AMD currently so that's what they advertised in the WWDC keynote. I know some people who have tested a few different cards. That being said, I would probably wait until High Sierra is released and see what eGPU enclosure is best for the price.

 

7 hours ago, The Right Honourable Jimmy said:

because I video edit I didn't want to format my external storage into exFAT, my teacher specifically said it's a no no.

 I use exFAT for all my externals because I frequently go between mac and windows, and use them for video editing. Every so often I hear someone say "exFAT is bad!" but I can't ever find any real proof. Anecdotally, it's been working fine for me for like.. 8 years or so? One of my hobbies is editing video, and another is testing encoding/transcoding settings between systems so i regularly write decent sized files to them.