Budget PC for OBS - Dell OptiPlex 7010 SFF 3rd Gen Quad Core i5-3470 8GB?

M

Martin_H

New Member
I am trying to get our local church set up for streaming religious services to YouTube and Facebook using OBS and Restream. Video will be from a POE camera, sound will be from the church's existing amplifier. Have tried this out using my own high spec latop, it works great, now I need to set the church up with its own hardware and budget is very tight.

I'm looking at a refurbished Dell OptiPlex 7010 SFF 3rd Gen Quad Core i5-3470 8GB, will that do the job? Bear in mind that this is a religious service stream so top notch performance is not required; for example, I imagine 30 FPS will be more than adequate and that video resolutuion could be turned down.
 
That is a 7 generation old CPU (Intel on 10th gen now), and the Optiplexes are now at x080 models. For reference, I tried to Facebook Live stream 720p on a 5yr old Inspiron 15 7559 with an i5-6300HQ @2.3 GHz [4c no HT] 8GB RAM, SSD, and a GTX 960M GPU [CPU is circa Fall 2015] and it failed miserably. But I'm new to OBS, so I'm sure I could have optimized things...
I was using a Logitech webcam USB, with a PowerPoint window capture (for service bulletin) and a variety of pre-recorded video segments (super simple transforms, most being a 90deg rotation and a resize to fit screen) interspersed with live video.
The CPU was completely overwhelmed and couldn't maintain a 3000kbs stream.
An workstation class laptop (Xeon E-2176M 2.7GHz (6c/12t) 64GB RAM, NVMe and Quadra P2000 [CPU is circa Spring 2018]) can handle the same workload without breaking a sweat... and it isn't really using the GPU much ...

now.. if I edited the videos in advance (rotate,resize, low CPU decoding codec, etc) added some RAM, stopped using USB camera, a lower CPU impact option that PowerPoint window capture... probably... but not worth it for me

So, that is an even older system, and video encoding is not a small task and you didn't mention the GPU. You could try with that old system but be prepared to spend time researching and optimizing everything to work on a CPU lacking modern performance
 
I'm able to stream 1080 at 29.97 FPS on i7 ivy bridge 2.9 Ghz which is third-generation (8 GB RAM, SSD). It's just video (pool/billiards) and text overlays (no audio due to background music) with no issues (no hardware overload errors). I just use Quicksync as the encoder. OBS reports CPU usage around 10-15% (less if i disable the preview) and CPU stays around 60-70 C (with Turbo off). Here's a sample https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qiUXTY53MVw streamed at 3072 kbps.

The only issue I had was trying to record the stream locally while streaming at a different bitrate than the stream.
 
Last edited:
I spent a long time using a i7-3770k as my main streaming rig for pretty complex stuff. The most taxing things were multiple full 1080p and 720p60 captures, but considering the use case here, that shouldn't be an issue.

The biggest thing is making sure to use an encoding method other than x264 -- QuickSync should be available from the CPU, and if that's not enough, you can throw in a fairly cheap nvidia graphics card for nvenc (a 1050 would do the job just fine, and should be available in low-profile for your case).
 
qhobbes said:
[...]
So, that is an even older system, and video encoding is not a small task and you didn't mention the GPU. You could try with that old system but be prepared to spend time researching and optimizing everything to work on a CPU lacking modern performance
Click to expand...
It has worked fine for my needs, Lawrence, I suspect that your demands are much higher.

I think one thing to be careful of is that your potential audience have the resources to stream your video - it is easy to fall into the trap of just using the highest standards available. In my case, I expect that most users will be watching on phones or tablets and it is an event with low levels of action, so I have reduced the bitrate, resolution and FPS to levels that are acceptable rather than what is potentially achievable.
 
My "GPU" is onboard Intel HD Graphics 4000. This is why I use QuickSync.

Facebook and YouTube both re-encode your video. This is why there is a 30 second delay and it's available in multiple resolutions. You should supply the highest quality video to them and they will take care of your audience.
 
Martin_H said:
It has worked fine for my needs, Lawrence, I suspect that your demands are much higher.

I think one thing to be careful of is that your potential audience have the resources to stream your video - it is easy to fall into the trap of just using the highest standards available. In my case, I expect that most users will be watching on phones or tablets and it is an event with low levels of action, so I have reduced the bitrate, resolution and FPS to levels that are acceptable rather than what is potentially achievable.
Click to expand...
Yes, that crash was 2 months ago... and my understanding of OBS has come along since then... our audience is a mix of mobile and desktop/laptop, one thing I was doing (and shouldn't have) was a canvas at 1080 and streaming at 720 attempting 4000+ kbps (which our Internet circuit isn't handling). Some of our pre-recorded videos are 4K (and I wasn't closing file when done playing)... and we have 6+ videos combined with live video.... So I've made a number of changes in last few months, and have a new PC on its way... but I am going to try a get the older laptop working again, as I suspect I can get it to work fine now (if I wasn't struggling with MS patches constantly screwing things up... whole other issue)
 
Hi Martin,
I ran across this post while looking to see if anyone had tried an Optiplex 7010 with OBS and wanted to follow up with how it's doing for you. Are you using Windows 7 or 10? Onboard video or one of the Radeon low profile video cards? Any issues you've run into since you started streaming with it?

I use a well-spec'd iMac at church, but am looking to upgrade my old Dell Latitude laptop at home for streaming our family band. There's a local guy selling a 7010 Small Form Factor with an i5 processor for $50 that I'm considering (awaiting a reply on which i5). No RAM or HDD so I plan to max it out at 16GB, get one of the Radeon video cards and I already have an SSD drive and Windows 7 and 10 install disks. We currently stream 720p/59.94 with OBS on the Latitude using a single Canon R600 HD camera via an HDMI/USB adapter with audio from our USB audio mixer. Pretty minimal needs I think, so if your 7010 is doing good with 1080p/29.97 with 8GBRAM and the onboard video card, we shouldn't have any problem and it should even handle doing some more stuff with it, like dual streaming and maybe a second camera if we want to get crazy ;)

Thanks for any input,
Jeff
 
Hi Jeff

This is running reasonably well for me but with some limitations. I've just posted a message asking about possible upgrades, see here

Is see that in my original feedback, the CPU usage was more like 30%; the reason for the big increase to 70-90% CPU that is that I have added a second POE camera in a separate chapel within the main church building. The two cameras don't really need to be running at the same time but I don't want to have to switch them in and out as I want the streaming to be managed by other people who have minimal IT experience.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top