A little help with new PC build

[dtodorov7]

Hello, I've been searching around the web how powerful rig I need and I couldn't answer my question.

I have Xbox Series X and I'm about to buy a 4k LG TV for gaming in the next few days. I'll get a 4k capture card and I wanna record gameplay in smooth and quality 4k resolution.

I couldn't find how powerful PC exactly do I need to be able to record from my console without any lags or glitches. I heard NVENC is the best way to go but my budget is getting tight and buying a video card in my country is not that cheap, even if it's second hand. Is x264 having much lower quality or it's not that different?

I was planning on using Ryzen 5 5600G cpu with the built in GPU but I now I don't think it would be powerful enough to do the job. I'd like to hear your opinion.

Thank you.

 

[hildegain]

Nvenc is not the best way to go until you get into the higher bit counts and then the overall ease of use and low power requirements of that encoder kick in. x264 on the CPU is actually the best possible quality you can get at all bit counts with quicksync doing respectable at low bitrates.

Don't worry about the specs too much. If you're not concerned with squeezing the highest amount of quality per bit budget then that CPU is probably fine. x264 on a fast preset is pretty much on par with NVENC at any rate and with higher bitrates you can even drop that preset a bit more. Also the 5600G supports AMD AMF (I think that's what they call it now?) I reckon? Quick search reveals it has the capability to encode but at what efficiency? Well... The AMD Encoder is still far behind X264, NVenc, and QuickSync but that requires you to consider a slightly beefier CPU, an NVidia GPU (Good luck with that... GPUs don't exist right now and their prices are insane), or an Intel CPU.

In my opinion? (Take it with a grain of salt. You're not me.) I'd go with the final option as the cost of a beefier CPU likely outweighs the cost of the opposite team. But still. COULD you record with that APU? Sure. It's pretty much just the difference of recording at 100mbps vs recording at 60mbps. If you're fine with your recorded video being a few gigs bigger. You can go with whatever encoder you like as long as it's quick enough.

I know where I live the Intel line was cheaper than going AMD but it could be very different where you are. My £1200 encoder build would have cost over £1600 to go with AMD equivalents... so...

Summary.

Ask yourself what priorities you have. Which is higher on your list?

Cost of CPU/APU.
Cost of Encoder Efficiency.
Cost of GPU?
Edit: Also consider the possibility of using that system for more than just recording videos. That APU could do pretty modest in some modern games but the Intel Equivalent could not. That might be a concern for you? Perhaps.

I'd say efficiency and quality is only a problem for streaming but i'll leave you with this as food for thought.