Well - that's what I am: in search of someone running OBS on one of the new 2020 iMacs.
My current OBS Platform: iMac (Retina 5K, 27-inch, Late 2015, 4 GHz Intel Core i7, 32 GB 1867 MHz DDR3, Graphics: AMD Radeon R9 M390 2 GB.
My current OBS Config: OBS Studio, 4 cams (1080/60fps), which I often stream into Zoom with Github Virtual Camera Plug-In (https://github.com/johnboiles/obs-mac-virtualcam).
My OBS use case: music studio; multi-camera recording and live streaming (YouTube, Facebook, Zoom for music instruction)
I thought this iMac was nowhere near needing to be upgraded until OBS came along. Actually it can run OBS fine with 4 cams, but if I try to record, live stream, or run the virtual cam into Zoom, CPU usage goes way up (how high depends on whether you're looking at Activity Monitor (~150%) or OBS itself (~20%). The iMac's fan starts to run hard enough to be distracting. I've tried every conceivable OBS setting people talk about on YouTube and some of them have helped, but my conclusion is it's time for a hardware upgrade.
I understand that my CPU is working so hard because it is handling too much encoding burden because it can't offload that burden to the GPU because the original 2015 2GB graphics card is nowhere near enough. But upgrading the iMac's OE graphics card is not really an option.
There is a lot of web chatter that OBS was really designed around NVidia (and therefore Windows), but the OBS hardware specifications (https://obsproject.com/wiki/System-Requirements) lists
And I don't want to go to Windows. And I don't want to drop back to 30fps.
First I was researching ways to do an eGPU with iMac, but this would mean abandoning the iMac's display, which made me think Mac Mini. But now we have some new cowboys in town: the new all-SSD 2020 iMac and iMac Pro, which have been substantially beefed.
Maxxed out 2020 iMac
3.6GHz 10-core 10th-generation Intel Core i9 processor, Turbo Boost up to 5.0GHz
Radeon Pro 5700 XT with 16GB of GDDR6 memory
Maxxed out 2020 iMac Pro
2.3GHz 18-core Intel Xeon W processor, Turbo Boost up to 4.3GHz
Radeon Pro Vega 64X with 16GB of HBM2 memory
It seems to me that these new iMacs should be be able to handle a high-burden OBS configuration on a 2020 iMac or iMac Pro rather well, but I would sure love to hear someone who's actually doing this talk about it. Anyone?
My current OBS Platform: iMac (Retina 5K, 27-inch, Late 2015, 4 GHz Intel Core i7, 32 GB 1867 MHz DDR3, Graphics: AMD Radeon R9 M390 2 GB.
My current OBS Config: OBS Studio, 4 cams (1080/60fps), which I often stream into Zoom with Github Virtual Camera Plug-In (https://github.com/johnboiles/obs-mac-virtualcam).
My OBS use case: music studio; multi-camera recording and live streaming (YouTube, Facebook, Zoom for music instruction)
I thought this iMac was nowhere near needing to be upgraded until OBS came along. Actually it can run OBS fine with 4 cams, but if I try to record, live stream, or run the virtual cam into Zoom, CPU usage goes way up (how high depends on whether you're looking at Activity Monitor (~150%) or OBS itself (~20%). The iMac's fan starts to run hard enough to be distracting. I've tried every conceivable OBS setting people talk about on YouTube and some of them have helped, but my conclusion is it's time for a hardware upgrade.
I understand that my CPU is working so hard because it is handling too much encoding burden because it can't offload that burden to the GPU because the original 2015 2GB graphics card is nowhere near enough. But upgrading the iMac's OE graphics card is not really an option.
There is a lot of web chatter that OBS was really designed around NVidia (and therefore Windows), but the OBS hardware specifications (https://obsproject.com/wiki/System-Requirements) lists
And I don't want to go to Windows. And I don't want to drop back to 30fps.
First I was researching ways to do an eGPU with iMac, but this would mean abandoning the iMac's display, which made me think Mac Mini. But now we have some new cowboys in town: the new all-SSD 2020 iMac and iMac Pro, which have been substantially beefed.
Maxxed out 2020 iMac
3.6GHz 10-core 10th-generation Intel Core i9 processor, Turbo Boost up to 5.0GHz
Radeon Pro 5700 XT with 16GB of GDDR6 memory
Maxxed out 2020 iMac Pro
2.3GHz 18-core Intel Xeon W processor, Turbo Boost up to 4.3GHz
Radeon Pro Vega 64X with 16GB of HBM2 memory
It seems to me that these new iMacs should be be able to handle a high-burden OBS configuration on a 2020 iMac or iMac Pro rather well, but I would sure love to hear someone who's actually doing this talk about it. Anyone?
