Gaming/Streaming & Looking for some advice on what I'd need Please

[sum_old_lame_gamer]

Hi Guys,

I'm new here, not new to gaming but new'ish to Streaming. I'm currently just Console Streaming because my PC (not a gaming PC) doesn't meet the Specs.

So I want to stream via OBS to Twitch, maybe TikTok and YouTube (Not necessarily at the same time) at 1080p 60 with no drop or lag and was wondering about specs because I am completely clueless on this subject.

A friend online mentioned (I think this is what he said) but again, this is foreign language to me...

"Assuming the games run on 4-6 cores, 2-4 cores probably ain't enough for 1080p60 slow. It'd get in the way of stable gaming due to competition for resource. If ya wanna play it safe, go 5950x 12 cores"?

I've done a Gaming/Streaming Pc search on Google and I can't find Anything that matches what he said so I don't know if I misunderstood him or he's wrong?

Can anyone offer any advice

Cheers

P.s. I'm 53 so go easy on the jargon

 

[sum_old_lame_gamer]

If you're playing on the console, and the pc is just for the stream, using a capture card on the pc, you need very little in the way of power on the pc. Any modern chip will likely encode 1080p60 easily. But you can use the encoder (h. 264) in the capture card, or you can use the cpu (x. 264) for encoding. Or if you have a gpu in the system, you can use that for encoding, or you can use Intel qsv (quick sync video) if you have an Intel chip.

For YouTube you can use HEVC/h.265, or Av1 instead of .264, which are both better quality at the same bit rate but use more resources to encode if using the cpu, or need newer hardware to have a built in encoder.

I have a 5950x, I use my gpu for encoding, with a few overlays and stuff obs uses 1-3% cpu. Simply having obs open does lower my fps by like 20-40 though.

You can get a multi stream plugin for obs to output to multiple places at once. No extra overhead if it's the exact same stream, or you can output at different settings/resolutions etc but then you need to encode multiple streams at once, which most hardware encoders can do 2 easily enough, but might struggle with more depending on settings.

I don't understand Any of that not would I know how to choose which one to use lol

 

[sum_old_lame_gamer]

Are you actually planning to play on console and stream using the PC? Or are you planning to switch to PC gaming and stream too?

Planning on streaming Console via OBS on the pc, to Twitch etc..

 

[sum_old_lame_gamer]

The point is: the demand on your PC is different depending on what you do/want to do.

There's a lot of different ways to configure the software and depending on config and codecs used, you will place higher or lower demands on your PC.

The use of the CPU or GPU can have an impact on the quality of the output and the framerate hit.

Watching some videos like this might help:

Gotcha, thanks for the info..Yeah, probably need to watch a Ton of stuff..I guess thinking about it I would probably be better off getting a custom build based on what I want it for, then the 'builder' knows, rather than me just taking a chance and buying a PC thinking it'll be fine.

Planning on streaming Console via OBS on the pc, to Twitch etc..

A fairly basic PC should do then. Or even a laptop although that's not always the best value

As mentioned above, newer Intel CPUs will have QuickSync for hardware encode.

I've already tried streaming with my extremely Basic PC and it was unplayable, couldn't even get 1 second of gameplay.