Single pc or Dual pc for streaming/gaming

kenpachi7

kenpachi7

kenpachi7

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28 May 2011
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Hello all, looking to start streaming at a high quality using cpu for encoding on obs

Was thinking along the lines of i9 9900k or threadripper 2950x for a single pc
Would be for playing most modern games at 1080p, i'm thinking the amd may be better for both streaming and gaming with a loss of maybe 20-30 fps compared to the i9 9900k from benchmarks I've watched.

Also open to a dual pc setup using the i7 8700k or 9700k for gaming pc, and maybe the ryzen 2700x for streaming

Most importantly I want my stream to run smooth and likely stream at 1080p

My heads spinning with possibilities, any help is appreciated on what u guys think is best, thanks.
 
9700k and 2080 main rig.

Second rig ryzen 2600 will do with 4k 60hz - 1080p 144hz capture card .
Can push 2700 if you want , no need for X version . This rig will be hosting your chats and streams and other stuff. Main rig just for gaming . :)

How Pro streamers are set up . Use to be using i5s from a Dell and capture cards for cheap second system for £300/400 all in

If going single rig and wanting the best you can get, 9900k . Want to save some cash or use towards GPU then 2700x. If not streaming ryzen will lose out to intel at 1080p hands down . 1080p it's all about speed
 
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Upto 2k I would say, could always sell the gtx 1080 for a rather good price and get 2080 but looks to be around 25-30 fps difference

Think i may go with dual pc setup just to be safe, the 8 cores 16 threads of the i9 9900k sounds good but with more games becoming intense i wonder down the line that i may get stutter streaming and gaming

So was thinking i7 9700k like u mentioned
 
keep your gtx 1080 get the 9700k and get a second hand / refurb dell i5/i7 as the stream pc. i know a few people that have done the same , works very well.

also have a friend that uses an old fx 8350 as his steam pc that he picked up cheap does very well and he even uses it to encode his videos to you tube.
 
I've actually got a fx 8350 and an intel 6600k but i'd rather something that can defos handle it all, if i'm spending hard then i'm going full on it mate
 
kenpachi7 said:
Budget is around 2000
Click to expand...

sell your 1080 and rig ... all in one power house, , can get £650 for rtx 2080 as this would be overkill for 1080p 144hz... but could upscale to 1440p for better image when streaming

My basket at Overclockers UK:
Total: £2,253.54 (includes shipping: £14.70)​
​

and just go to completely out there. 2 systems in one.... 9700k with your gtx 1080 for gaming, and 8400 core with capture card for streaming .
could just buy an itx board for your CPU and install that . One case... TWO systems...



My basket at Overclockers UK:
Total: £1,939.65 (includes shipping: £15.90)​
​
 
Speaking form experience, dual PC set ups, although not intrinsically complicated, can suffer from multiple issues that can be tricky to troubleshoot. Let alone deciding how you would want to pass through audio (not a big deal if you would only play alone, but if you wanted a VOIP audio being sent through another channel so that you could adjust its levels accordingly could prove tricky - and this is if you'd run comms app i.e. discord on your gaming PC as an example), i've had issues with capture cards (avermedia) where either external usb card or a pcie cap card would produce horrible screen tearing, and no troubleshooting identified the issue hence I decided to move back to single system.
I think managing expectations is the most important thing; if you are set on streaming at certain res/fps/bitrate AND depending if you're ok with sacrificing SOME gaming performance in order to achieve the former, your options will vary.
Rule of thumb is that regardless of how high your encoder is set, if you want a smooth picture @1080p with minimal artifacting you would have to stream at relatively high bitrates; this in turn would impact some people's ability to watch your streams, as (provided you are not a partner on twitch, if you are then ignore this bit :) ) Twitch very rarely gives viewers of smaller channels options for stream resolutions to manage site bandwith better. Practically, someone who has poor connection of a few mbps down only would constantly get buffering if you were to stream at say 4500kbps (even with Twitch's auto stream quality option enabled, it doesn't always seem to work that well).
A good quality 900 or even 720p stream is still a smooth and pleasant experience for the viewer, in addition, as you're literally encoding less pixels, system load goes down dramatically (i.e. i roughly remember with CPU encoding option CPU usage going from around 40-50% on dedicated machine (ryzen 5 2600 @stock) at 720p to 75-80% and even sometimes throttling at 1080p, both "medium" presets).

In the end, you're correct, it's a lot to take in, many factors to consider but since finance is not unlimted (who's is :)) it's the matter of getter best bang for £ with certain level of future proofing, and then just adjusting gaming/streaming settings. A lot of things you can cover/research in forumes and generally online, but the specifics and what works best for you will only become clearer with experience.

Regardless, if you have any more specific questions feel free to ask :)
 
Also just wanted to highlight that i.e. my personal problems experienced with dual PC set up shouldn't be an indication that it is generally this problematic, or that cap cards often tend to act up. As always, the most vocal users will be those who experience issues with the product; for each person like me who couldn't get a cap card to work as intended there are dozens that have never had issues, with literally "plug in, install drivers and cap away" experience. :)
 
Thanks very much to the both of u

A lot to consider for sure here

I think i shall continue more research before i make my mind up on the next step single/dual and with the new Amd 3k series coming out relatively soon i am interested to see the performance of these chips as rumoured to be able to outperform some high end intel cpus

I guess the ideal world cpu would be Amd's core/thread count with Intel's speeds

That dual build u put together in the basket was pretty nice appreciate that orbitalwalsh

Thanks for the technical insight also inte8er
 
There was once talk of a NUC/Brixton style box that would have had Capture input and output built in , ryzen hadn't come out at that point and Intel's chips for these units were only 2 cores 4 threads which were useless... Never got back on its feet after ryzen. Shame, specially for console goers of having the ability to have a PC sat on top of your console to do streaming with Perks of streaming with PC software
 
So I have a ryzen 2700x OC its ballsoff, and a radeon 7, but i have no idea what settings to use on OBS for it, do I need a second pc to stream from, or am I looking at 1080p 60fps with just this setup?
I have 2mb/s upload and set OBS to 4000 on the bit rate, I have a 1080p webcam also which Im thinking doesnt need to be that high in resolution.
Im just lost in a world of googling and need someone that has nailed it to show the ropes.... please?
 
Illuminist said:
So I have a ryzen 2700x OC its ballsoff, and a radeon 7, but i have no idea what settings to use on OBS for it, do I need a second pc to stream from, or am I looking at 1080p 60fps with just this setup?
I have 2mb/s upload and set OBS to 4000 on the bit rate, I have a 1080p webcam also which Im thinking doesnt need to be that high in resolution.
Im just lost in a world of googling and need someone that has nailed it to show the ropes.... please?
Click to expand...

best have a play around with settings and see how the stream/recording quality is .
if your also gaming at 1080p your at a slight disadvantage then intel due to lower clockspeed and IPC.
 
orbitalwalsh said:
best have a play around with settings and see how the stream/recording quality is .
if your also gaming at 1080p your at a slight disadvantage then intel due to lower clockspeed and IPC.
Click to expand...
Thanks for replying,

So I fiddled a lot with obs last night and it streams at 6000 under "faster" preset on x264 decode from 1440p to 720p at 30fps currently and works great, I want to squeeze more from it but i dont understand which things are best to increase for the most gains?
I was getting frame drops ever 2 minutes on my previous settings of 1080p and 60fps, whats the norm for streamers is it 30 or 60fps? I would ideally want to stream at 1080p though not 720 as some games I play at 4k and seems a waste to downscale so much
 
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