Question / Help Before I Buy Is This A Good PC To Begin With

9

99Carnies

New Member
First off I've started streaming directly from PS4 about two weeks ago and got a decent fanbase going with my affiliate acquired. I am now looking into getting a PC to capture my PS4 and stream. I know nearly nothing about PCs but I've googled a little bit and it seems the graphics card could possibly be holding me back in this PC. Would like to get community feedback before I buy in a couple weeks.

Link To Intended PC

My Plan:
- HD camcoder (no specifics yet)
- Blue Snowball Microphone
- 720p @30 fps
- PS4 Gameplay capture from El Gato (2013)
- No recording; only streaming
- 2500 bitrate
- PC Hardwired to internet

EDIT: I'm not necessarily on a budget but I am definitely a penny pincher. I stream maybe every other day give or take a day and a PC maybe a step above the bare minimum would be nice to start out with.
 
R

R1CH

Forum Admin
Developer
AMD GPU encoding is very poor quality at streaming bitrates, and with a seven year old CPU, I would not recommend that system at all.
 
A

Agamemnus

Member
Hey mate, I'm on board with @R1CH on this, I don't think that PC is a good solution.

See this:
https://unrealaussies.com/tech/nvenc-x264-obs/

A 1660 is the cheapest Turing card you can get at the moment, they're still not CHEAP though.

If you are extremely clever with OBS custom output settings, you can use the recording tab to actually stream with FFMPEG (OBS is just operating as a compositor in this situation) and get QuickSync hardware encoding. The link above shows 2 QuickSync curves, the light-blue one (the worst one) is the current "quality" preset implemented straight into OBS. The orange one is if you use it with custom settings to it's maximum potential. You can get the best QuickSync V6 on some Kaby Lake CPUs, maybe an i5-7400 which is pretty cheap, but you'll need to double check that. If you get a SUPER cheap CPU with the required QSV version but terrible processing power, you might need to adjust the lookahead and whatnot to keep under 85% CPU usage or you'll get skipped frames on encode. Basically, the "veryslow" preset of QuickSync uses both the internal GPU hardware encoder AND some CPU cycles together for a captain planet style powers combined kind of thing.

Please be aware that if you go the "penny pinching" route of custom FFMPEG output to stream with QuickSync presets that aren't available in OBS by default, you will likely get no help setting it up. In my experience, the people who are adept at doing it don't like trying to teach somebody all the knowledge they should have had before trying to accomplish it in the first place. If you want the most straightforward best solution, just get a Turing GPU.
 
9

99Carnies

New Member
Agamemnus said:
Hey mate, I'm on board with @R1CH on this, I don't think that PC is a good solution.

See this:
https://unrealaussies.com/tech/nvenc-x264-obs/

A 1660 is the cheapest Turing card you can get at the moment, they're still not CHEAP though.

If you are extremely clever with OBS custom output settings, you can use the recording tab to actually stream with FFMPEG (OBS is just operating as a compositor in this situation) and get QuickSync hardware encoding. The link above shows 2 QuickSync curves, the light-blue one (the worst one) is the current "quality" preset implemented straight into OBS. The orange one is if you use it with custom settings to it's maximum potential. You can get the best QuickSync V6 on some Kaby Lake CPUs, maybe an i5-7400 which is pretty cheap, but you'll need to double check that. If you get a SUPER cheap CPU with the required QSV version but terrible processing power, you might need to adjust the lookahead and whatnot to keep under 85% CPU usage or you'll get skipped frames on encode. Basically, the "veryslow" preset of QuickSync uses both the internal GPU hardware encoder AND some CPU cycles together for a captain planet style powers combined kind of thing.

Please be aware that if you go the "penny pinching" route of custom FFMPEG output to stream with QuickSync presets that aren't available in OBS by default, you will likely get no help setting it up. In my experience, the people who are adept at doing it don't like trying to teach somebody all the knowledge they should have had before trying to accomplish it in the first place. If you want the most straightforward best solution, just get a Turing GPU.
Click to expand...
Thank you for the detailed response. I don't have to penny pinch so I guess will have to raise my standards. Is there a good pre-built PC? If not then what individual units would you recommend?
 
A

Agamemnus

Member
If this is literally all it's for, just get a 1660:
https://www.nvidia.com/en-au/geforce/news/nvidia-geforce-gtx-1660-ti/

The rest doesn't really matter so much. Ryzen 2600 is fine, you might even be great with a 2400G. If you literally use OBS to stream and NOTHING else, then the rest of the system honestly doesn't matter so much. You could go super efficient and install absolutely nothing else and I suspect it will run like a dream, although I don't know for sure cause I've never tried it on a low-end system. As long as you have the GTX1660 or an RTX2060 you're probably going to be golden. Brand doesn't matter.

I'm Australian and I shop at MSY or pccasegear usually. MWave also has good deals.
 
9

99Carnies

New Member
Agamemnus said:
If this is literally all it's for, just get a 1660:
https://www.nvidia.com/en-au/geforce/news/nvidia-geforce-gtx-1660-ti/

The rest doesn't really matter so much. Ryzen 2600 is fine, you might even be great with a 2400G. If you literally use OBS to stream and NOTHING else, then the rest of the system honestly doesn't matter so much. You could go super efficient and install absolutely nothing else and I suspect it will run like a dream, although I don't know for sure cause I've never tried it on a low-end system. As long as you have the GTX1660 or an RTX2060 you're probably going to be golden. Brand doesn't matter.

I'm Australian and I shop at MSY or pccasegear usually. MWave also has good deals.
Click to expand...

Correct im using OBS for overlay stream and the PC only to stream. I found some other options with the Ryzen 2400g. What graphics card would be good?

set up would be
PS4 -> El Gato -> OBS to Stream 720 @ 30fps
 
A

Agamemnus

Member
A GTX 1660 is the cheapest one that does Turing encoding. An RTX 2060 will last you a little longer as overlays get more and more complicated and if you start customising things to the nth degree. But if things stay simple for a while, a GTX 1660 is what I recommend based on what I understand of your situation.
 
koala

koala

Active Member
Agamemnus said:
A GTX 1660 is the cheapest one that does Turing encoding.
Click to expand...
Well, "cheap" is not really an adequate description of this (or any other current Nvidia) card. It's the least expensive one.
If there is one thing to complain about these cards, it is they are vastly overpriced. The previous generation (GTX 10x0) was already very expensive, but the Turing generation is just overpriced.
The best deal you can get currently is to get one of the remains of the GTX 10x0, if you want Nvidia.
 
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