Question / Help Dedicated streaming PC, can it handle OBS?

[Andrew Pealock]

Hey everyone!

I am currently looking to build/buy a relatively cheap machine just dedicated to livestreaming/encoding in OBS. I've looked far and wide, and the best bang for buck system I can find is a refurbished HP 8300 Elite (http://a.co/76OWskX)

Rough shakedown on specs
Intel i5 3470 (non-k)
8gb DDR3 (not sure what mhz, I would assume 1600)
500gb mechanical drive
Windows 10 Pro 64bit

Do you all think it could handle a 1080p60 stream around 6000kpbs? I'll be using mainly a hardware encoder on my capture card (Black Magic Deck Link Mini Recorder) so the CPU should only have to encode the actual h.264 video stream output.

Thanks!

 

[macharborguy]

Your HDMI capture card's encoder will not be what OBS uses to do its hardware encoding of your stream.

Your i5 is the same processor I use on my main gaming PC, which is just a little better than the i7 860 I was using as my dedicated OBS PC (until i replaced it with a Ryzen 7 1700X).

While the quality I was getting on the i7 860 was fine at times, at 720p60 at 4000kbps on the Very Fast preset, i was running into many moments where the x264 cpu encoder just couldn't keep the quality when there was a lot of fast motion. I would run into quality dips and bitrate spikes in games like Quake Champions where my web camera would get very blurry and muddy, and the game itself looked pixelated and garbled. There were many times where it was just maxing out my CPU, but part of that was also due to the Browser Sources I was running. I eventually had to turn my StreamLabs Bit Cup down to 10fps just to prevent it from eating up all of my remaining CPU.

I was originally going to use the Ryzen as my gaming PC, but after testing out my i5 at 720p60 4000kbps, I felt that keeping the i5 as my gaming system and using the much higher performance of the Ryzen as my streaming PC was the better option. I was able to push to the Fast preset (with a few custom x264 options to get a little bit of the Medium preset quality without going all the way there), adding a lot more flashy designs and videos in some scenes, all browser sources at 60fps, VLC and my web browser running in the background, Discord and or Zoom when I need to do VOIP or video calls, and I have around 1/3rd of my CPU still open for whatever i may need to run.

My best suggestion would be to hold out for awhile if you can. That i5 processor is from 2012 (the i7 i used was from 2009), and while it may be inexpensive, I just cant say honestly that it will have the horse power you need for a 1080p60 6000kbps stream, unless you go a very bare minimum route. At 1080p60 you really want something that can handle the higher CPU presets to push more quality per frame. Resolution and bitrate are not the only factors when it comes to overall quality.

 

[Andrew Pealock]

That was exactly the information I needed. Thank you for the very detailed reply! I think you are right. I can part out a Ryzen build for a few hundred more, and the performance gains would be huge. Plus it would put me on a more recent platform. Thanks again!

 

[macharborguy]

No problem. I wouldn't have replied had it not been for the fact that the i5 in that PC is the exact same CPU in my gaming PC, and I was in roughly the same boat as you about a month ago trying to determine if it would be good to replace my i7 860 as my dedicated OBS system.

What I will eventually do in the short term is replace the i5 with the maximum i7 my motherboard can handle to squeeze out a bit more quality.

As a quick example of the performance difference, I export out Intro Videos for a number of my broadcasts using Sony Vegas 13. I did a quick test on both the Ryzen 7 1700X and i5 3470 systems to see the performance difference. While the i5 took about 15-20 minutes to export out, with 2-pass encoding, a 2 minute intro/hype video, the Ryzen spit it out in just under 2 minutes with the exact same settings. The video is 1080p60 with a number of additional quality settings to make sure there are no weird encoding anomalies.

One big tip I can give for your Ryzen build is to do research into compatible RAM. Not all motherboards seem to like 3200Mhz DDR4 ram. I had a messy time getting the ram to work correctly, even after updating the BIOS. Ive got it stable now, but at the start it was headache after headache.