Building a PC for OBS

[TLF]

Short version: How can I know when building a computer that the machine will work well with OBS? I borrowed two powerful Windows computers and with the same version of Windows on each, on one OBS didn't share desktop windows and on the other OBS didn't embed webpages. I'm concerned about spending on parts and ending up with a machine that isn't compatible somehow.

Full version: I prepared a one-off online conference in January which used OBS.

We did rehearsals months in advance using a Mac, but that laptop was a little underpowered and the music was stuttering at times but functionality wise all was well. So I borrowed two windows PCs that had beefy specs, with the plan to use one for the main show and one as a backup. One had an nVidia card and the other was either ATI or Radeon.

They both had their quirks. One wouldn't show/share windows (blank rectangles instead) - even for basic things like the file manager. The other wouldn't show/embed web pages. These were both parts of the plan and it created a lot of difficulty. Again, these were powerful enough machines; one played Red Dead Redemption 2 smoothly and the other was a powerful / modern developers workstation with savage specs in terms of CPU and Graphics card. (Sorry I don't have details, it was a while ago. But I don't want to trouble shoot these machines.)

My question is, how can I know when building a computer that the machine will work well with OBS? I'm concerned I'll spend on parts and end up with a machine that's no good to me. I have no interest in gaming so there is no plan B other than video editing. Thanks!

 

[qhobbes]

Those are not hardware issues, those are software/configuration issues. I can't duplicate either on my GeForce GTX 660M (iMac) and probably not on sig PC (both 2012 computes). Probably just need to run OBS as Admin.
If you're going to be gaming (or other GPU intensive tasks) and streaming, get a PC with NVIDIA card and use NVENC. If what your doing is CPU intensive, either get Intel CPU and use Quick Sync Video or AMD processor with NVIDIA card to offload video encoding too. If not CPU intensive, then get AMD processor with lots of cores and use x264 for encoder. Need more info about your use case.

 

[SadMonsterParty]

My rig is cobbled together from random mismatched parts my buddy had (it's a 9 year old server with a Xenon e5-2670, & GTX 1060 3gig), OBS runs great; if anybody would have a mismatched hardware issue, it'd probably be me.
qhobbes' windows "run as admin" idea would be my first thought too; some sorta windows security/privacy thing maybe.

If you still want to do your own build, maybe pick one of these builds that say 'streaming' and ask again if that specific one would work (they all *should*)

https://pcpartpicker.com/guide/

 

[Lawrence_SoCal]

The challenge with your question is that a new $500 PC may be plenty, or you may need a $5K powerhouse... it just depends
As noted above, your experience would seem to indicate OS issues, or maybe not being aware enough of the various Window vs Display Capture and related options (which can have different results depending on GPU model, and other details)

Recognize that what some people consider beefy vs what is required for real-time video encoding which is VERY computationally demanding can vary. What helps is monitoring hardware resource (CPU, GPU, RAM, etc) utilization [for ex. in Windows OS using Task manager’s Performance tab and/or Resource Monitor] to see if one or more components of a system is being maxed out with your settings. If yes, then OS and OBS optimizations may be required (almost always a balancing act).

In general, for buying a new PC today and expecting it to last for 3-5 yrs (my PCs last even longer) I'd be looking at a 6c/12t CPU minimum (personally AMD doing a better job, but supply is an issue). Personally, I'd stick with 8c/16t CPU or higher on PCIe v4 for solid performance years down the road. Due to CPU security issues, I'd get an Intel 10xxx CPU, but prefer 11th gen with mitigations baked in. Then looking to optimize CPU availability, using GPU encoding offload to NVENC (Turing) on a GTX 1650 Super or better [and a lower-end RTX 30xx being a solid choice if available at a decent price]. Then a minimum of 16GB RAM and a NVMe SSD for OS/Apps (and maybe a HDD for longer term archive storage). Such a system may well be overkill today, but hopefully be able to handle 4K streaming (maybe with GPU upgrade) in 3+ years?
now... adjust those specs based on your thinking/assumptions and you should be all set
If you look up some of my posts on PC builds, you'll come across more details as to what I did recently for a non-gaming build which I intend to last for years. Hopefully this helps

Oh, and running as admin is a security compromise and a workaround to not having enough horsepower to avoid contention. I have had no need to run OBS as admin on a modern system (again, not gaming)