Question / Help OBS Kills my PC

Goastoid

New Member
These are my PC Specs:
i7-7700k
GTX 1060 6GB SSC
32GB of 3200mhz Ram
1TB SSD
Its all on a great motherboard too
My problem is anytime I start a recording or start a stream my entire computer slows down to an unusable state, no matter what settings I apply in OBS, all I want is to stream in 1080p 60fps, nothing too extravagant. Can someone please tell me what the issue may be?
 

SpectreKid

Member
 

SpectreKid

Member
Your encoder cannot keep up with your video for some reason. I may have two solutions for this:

1. Update to the latest version of OBS and run as administrator. In the latest version, there is a fix in administrator mode that will reduce lag when your FPS fluctuates; this step helped me substantially.

2. Turn down your x264 preset. As in making it faster. Maybe try superfast, and maybe ultrafast, but then you're better off with hardware encoders at that point. Speaking of hardware encoders...

3. Use NVENC. NVENC is noticeably faster than x264 since the NVIDIA GPU has a dedicated spot on the graphics card to encode your frames. This should make your encoding faster.

Hope this helps!
 

Goastoid

New Member
Your encoder cannot keep up with your video for some reason. I may have two solutions for this:

1. Update to the latest version of OBS and run as administrator. In the latest version, there is a fix in administrator mode that will reduce lag when your FPS fluctuates; this step helped me substantially.

2. Turn down your x264 preset. As in making it faster. Maybe try superfast, and maybe ultrafast, but then you're better off with hardware encoders at that point. Speaking of hardware encoders...

3. Use NVENC. NVENC is noticeably faster than x264 since the NVIDIA GPU has a dedicated spot on the graphics card to encode your frames. This should make your encoding faster.

Hope this helps!
Alright so I did what you asked and naturally it reduced my cpu usage but my computer got even slower and obs is now (without even hitting start stream yet) only showing 0.5 fps even with no game open.
 

SpectreKid

Member
Alright so I did what you asked and naturally it reduced my cpu usage but my computer got even slower and obs is now (without even hitting start stream yet) only showing 0.5 fps even with no game open.
Which step did you choose to follow? #1 worked for me, but you might have to use the NVENC encoder.
 

FerretBomb

Active Member
It appears you're using FFMPEG output, which is very much "here there be dragons" territory.
Echoing what SpectreKid said above, swap to NVENC. The Pascal core on your 1060 should be able to keep up with x264 Fast quality-wise.

Unfortunately the logfile you sent appears to be an auto-test (?) rather than a standard streaming attempt, which makes it difficult to analyze. Definitely run OBS as Administrator, it helps out quite a bit with the GPU prioritization workaround in 24.0.3. After making those changes, run a 30s-2m stream or local recording, exit OBS, restart OBS, and Help->Log Files->Upload Last Logfile and paste the new URL here. We'll be able to tell more from that.

As a side note, 1080p60 is still VERY demanding on cpu-based encoding, especially depending on the preset you choose to use. Any machine currently existing can be crushed into paste with the right settings by OBS, on 1080p60. And running through FFMPEG instead of x264 or NVENC can definitely do that.

You may also want to run something like RealTemp or Motherboard Monitor to keep an eye on your CPU temps, to make sure they're not going high and throttling.
 

SpectreKid

Member
TBH, just use the standard NVENC format. FFMPEG is, as @FerretBomb said, "here there be dragons" territory. I recommend doing a recording test to see how you like the quality, and if the problem still persists, then exit, relaunch, and then give us an updated log file. Also make sure that your upload speed is up to the task, as it might be lagging on Twitch as well, and you'll need to turn down the bitrate. If your upload speed is good though, you don't have to worry about this. 1080p60 is definitely taxing on your i7 7700K, so just use NVENC.

Also in your Advanced tab it might help to change priority to High.
 

Goastoid

New Member
TBH, just use the standard NVENC format. FFMPEG is, as @FerretBomb said, "here there be dragons" territory. I recommend doing a recording test to see how you like the quality, and if the problem still persists, then exit, relaunch, and then give us an updated log file. Also make sure that your upload speed is up to the task, as it might be lagging on Twitch as well, and you'll need to turn down the bitrate. If your upload speed is good though, you don't have to worry about this. 1080p60 is definitely taxing on your i7 7700K, so just use NVENC.

Also in your Advanced tab it might help to change priority to High.
alright so a few hours later and now obs crashes on startup, I cant have it open for more than 3 seconds
 

SpectreKid

Member
alright so a few hours later and now obs crashes on startup, I cant have it open for more than 3 seconds
I would try reinstalling OBS and your NVIDIA drivers (although I don't know why you'd have this problem.) I saw in the log that you had a lot of sources, so maybe try the test again without those sources? This will just narrow down the possible solutions for your problem.
 

FerretBomb

Active Member
We need to see your most recent crashlog to see what's going on.
To find the OBS Studio crash logs, follow these steps:
  1. Press Win+R to open the Run dialog
  2. Type in: %APPDATA%\obs-studio\crashes and press Enter
  3. Upload the desired crash log, usually the latest, directly to this thread
They're time/datestamped, so just grab the most recent one.
 
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