Moving on

[RobMee]

I have been using OBS for 12 months with a low end PC (optiplex 3010 i3 gpu gtx650 )to make YouTube art tutorials and more recently livestreams. I recently hit 10k subscribers and now I want to up the quality of the videos as I now understand that my PC is not up to it. I am not going to be using it for gaming, however my question is...do I need a modern gaming laptop/pc to successfully film/edit and stream/record. I understand the stream quality is also down to internet upload speed. (Using starlink).
Any tips on buying enough, and not buying to much would be greatly appreciated!
Thank you
Rob

 

[koala]

Depends on your budget. You don't need a gaming machine just for streaming, however the GPU is important nonetheless. I recommend something with a not too expensive Nvidia GPU because of nvenc, the Nvidia hardware encoder with its very good quality AMD GPUs cannot deliver. Having some GPU computing power is also important for OBS itself, since most of its graphics processing is running on the GPU.

 

[RobMee]

Thank you. I am looking at the following laptop

ASUS TUF F15-TUF507ZV4-LP121W Gaming Laptop PC 15" Full HD 144Hz (Intel Core i7-12700H, GeForce RTX 4060, 16G RAM, 512GB PCIe SSD) Windows 11​

The reason I need a laptop is that I paint in two locations, so it doesn't need to be light/easy portable but needs to be moveable.
So I am researching to see if something like this will cope with editing long format videos and streaming. I will only be recording at 1080p.
I appreciate your help, I am new to pc specifications.
Rob

 

[koala]

May be a bit overkill according to your description, however it will certainly do the job. SSD is much too small, if you intend video processing. RAM is ok, but if you can get something with 32 GB, prefer 32 over 16 GB.

 

[RobMee]

Thanks again. That's good advice regards memory of 512GB being a little bit low. So I will look for above spec with 1TB. I think 32GB of Ram will probably be over my budget, but 16GB sounds like it should cope for my use. The extra memory will be good for editing, I have been looking a Davinci resolve for this. I will keep looking for a suitable laptop, there are so many!

 

[Lawrence_SoCal]

A couple of things to consider
- a mobile GPU does NOT have same specs as desktop GPU (so be careful any assumptions you make based on desktop GPU model specs and reviews). I have NOT looked in detail at the mobile RTX 4060, and for simple H.264 streams it will be plenty (overkill), BUT, if you want this laptop to have a long life, then you may want to see look into AV1 compatibility ... just something to be aware of. If you are only thinking a 3+ yr life, then probably not that important. If your computers tend to last a lot longer (as mine do) then a little future-proofing may be warranted...
- Another thing to be aware of is the real-time video encoding (be that OBS Studio or Resolve) is computationally demanding (which means heat). All but the beefiest workstation laptops will tend to thermally throttle at some point (with that happening much sooner, on average, with consumer models, a little later on gaming rigs, and much later on the well-made, much more expensive workstation models). For short videos, probably not an issue. But, if you spend hours recording multiple takes, then hours more editing... learning how to monitor for thermal throttling (make and model specific) and how it will impact your specific workflow is probably a worthwhile thing for you to do.

Depending on your level of computer sophistication, I tend to get the smaller SSD from the OEM, and then upgrade on my own for MUCH less (but I know how to image drives, use original drive as an external backup device or better yet laptop with 2 drive slots where is keep original drive as OS drive, and add larger data drive, etc)

Hopefully you are getting a great deal on that laptop as it is 2 generations old at this point (and known for being power inefficient, which impacts battery life and heat issue mentioned above.. both of which may be non-issues for you)

 

[RobMee]

A couple of things to consider
- a mobile GPU does NOT have same specs as desktop GPU (so be careful any assumptions you make based on desktop GPU model specs and reviews). I have NOT looked in detail at the mobile RTX 4060, and for simple H.264 streams it will be plenty (overkill), BUT, if you want this laptop to have a long life, then you may want to see look into AV1 compatibility ... just something to be aware of. If you are only thinking a 3+ yr life, then probably not that important. If your computers tend to last a lot longer (as mine do) then a little future-proofing may be warranted...
- Another thing to be aware of is the real-time video encoding (be that OBS Studio or Resolve) is computationally demanding (which means heat). All but the beefiest workstation laptops will tend to thermally throttle at some point (with that happening much sooner, on average, with consumer models, a little later on gaming rigs, and much later on the well-made, much more expensive workstation models). For short videos, probably not an issue. But, if you spend hours recording multiple takes, then hours more editing... learning how to monitor for thermal throttling (make and model specific) and how it will impact your specific workflow is probably a worthwhile thing for you to do.

Depending on your level of computer sophistication, I tend to get the smaller SSD from the OEM, and then upgrade on my own for MUCH less (but I know how to image drives, use original drive as an external backup device or better yet laptop with 2 drive slots where is keep original drive as OS drive, and add larger data drive, etc)

Hopefully you are getting a great deal on that laptop as it is 2 generations old at this point (and known for being power inefficient, which impacts battery life and heat issue mentioned above.. both of which may be non-issues for you)

Thanks for your advice. I decided on a Dell G16 i9 32GB with RTX 4070 1TB. It was on sale from Dell direct so seemed a reasonable price. My videos are fairly short and the laptop is important as using it in different locations. So far it seem good.
Rob

A couple of things to consider
- a mobile GPU does NOT have same specs as desktop GPU (so be careful any assumptions you make based on desktop GPU model specs and reviews). I have NOT looked in detail at the mobile RTX 4060, and for simple H.264 streams it will be plenty (overkill), BUT, if you want this laptop to have a long life, then you may want to see look into AV1 compatibility ... just something to be aware of. If you are only thinking a 3+ yr life, then probably not that important. If your computers tend to last a lot longer (as mine do) then a little future-proofing may be warranted...
- Another thing to be aware of is the real-time video encoding (be that OBS Studio or Resolve) is computationally demanding (which means heat). All but the beefiest workstation laptops will tend to thermally throttle at some point (with that happening much sooner, on average, with consumer models, a little later on gaming rigs, and much later on the well-made, much more expensive workstation models). For short videos, probably not an issue. But, if you spend hours recording multiple takes, then hours more editing... learning how to monitor for thermal throttling (make and model specific) and how it will impact your specific workflow is probably a worthwhile thing for you to do.

Depending on your level of computer sophistication, I tend to get the smaller SSD from the OEM, and then upgrade on my own for MUCH less (but I know how to image drives, use original drive as an external backup device or better yet laptop with 2 drive slots where is keep original drive as OS drive, and add larger data drive, etc)

Hopefully you are getting a great deal on that laptop as it is 2 generations old at this point (and known for being power inefficient, which impacts battery life and heat issue mentioned above.. both of which may be non-issues for you)

Thanks for your advice. I decided on a Dell G16 i9 32GB with RTX 4070 1TB. It was on sale from Dell direct so seemed a reasonable price. My videos are fairly short and the laptop is important as using it in different locations. So far it seem good.

Rob