Your hardware should be plenty. Normally, we like to see an nVidia GPU, but I'm pretty sure that i7 has its own hardware encoder. Mine does, and it's older than yours! Use it! That's one of the places where the default might not necessarily be good.
Generally, defaults are the way they are to prove functionality without knowing anything about the system at all or its capabilities. So they tend to be conservative, or assume more limitations than your system has, or are based on decisions that would be counter-productive outside of that proof.
For example of a counter-productive one, the audio connections default to "Default", which defers the choice of device to the operating system, with the idea of being the one that you're most likely to be using at the time already. But once you've set up your rig, a subsequent hardware change could cause your OS to switch to a different device, and suddenly OBS stops working because it followed the OS and is now looking at that different device too. Always change the audio connections away from Default! Disable what you won't use, and set the rest to a specific device. Never Default.
And, generally, it's a good idea to look through ALL of your settings - OBS, operating system, any special drivers you might have, etc. - try to figure out what every one of them does, and set them all to work for you, and not the other way around. Keeping the screen on, for example of a system setting that I pretty much always need to change.
