Opinions on desktop cable for live streaming

[Rizzledizzle45711]

Hello all. I’m looking to get a used desktop to live stream playing Nintendo Switch through YouTube using OBS. I will be using a capture card, webcam and a microphone. Here are the computer’s specs.


PROCESSOR / CHIPSET

CPU Intel Core i7 (3rd Gen) 3770 / 3.4 GHz

Max Turbo Speed 3.9 GHz

Number of Cores Quad-Core
RAM

Memory Speed 1600 MHz

Memory Specification Compliance PC3-12800

Features dual channel memory architecture

Technology DDR3 SDRAM

Installed Size 16 GB

Data Integrity Check non-ECC

Rated Memory Speed 1600 MHz


PROCESSOR

Installed Qty 1

Max Supported Qty 1

Type Core i7

Processor Number i7-3770

Generation 3

Manufacturer Intel

Clock Speed 3.4 GHz

Thank you.

 

[Rizzledizzle45711]

Windows 10 Pro operating system as well

 

[Rizzledizzle45711]

show that you become a NVIDA GTX 750 and up to encode and it will work

Ok thank you. I found a computer with similar specs with a Intel® HD Graphics 4600 GPU which seems like it would do the job.

 

[Grzegorz Bieniek]

Ok thank you. I found a computer with similar specs with a Intel® HD Graphics 4600 GPU which seems like it would do the job.

I would suggest to get a graphic card for encoding. QuickSync is not that good for streaming, with recordings it is okish, but i would not recommend it for strreaming.

 

[FerretBomb]

Strongly recommend something with an nVidia 10-series or higher for Pascal NVENC, even if you won't be gaming on the system. Preferably something with a GTX 1660 or higher, which includes Turing or Ampere NVENC, which are equivalent to x264 Slow encoding (which is very, very good).

QSV can help offload the encoding load, but is extremely poor quality... usually around x264 Ultrafast, which will not look great at the limited bitrates needed while livestreaming. Even worse, it loads the GPU to handle the task (NVENC does not) which can result in GPU overload, rendering lag, and encoder skipped frames.

 

[Lawrence_SoCal]

Intel is on 11th gen Core CPUs. real-time video encoding can be very demanding, which makes a 3rd gen CPU - ancient
- My Primary PC has a 3 generation older CPU and can run 4 Win10 VMs simultaneously without breaking a sweat.. but video editing/encoding... no way. My OBS system is an i7-10700K and I'd have much referred an AMD Ryzen 3800x... but oh well

Can you get such an old, under-powered CPU to work, probably .... BUT... you'll need to learn to optimize Win10 OS & OBS to run on an under-powered PC for what you are asking it to do, and you are likely to need to limit some of the power of OBS like not using chroma keying, advanced audio filters/effects, etc.
So if you are prepared to (possibly) constantly fiddle with your PC setup to keep from overwhelming it, and lower you expectations of fancy overlays, plugins, etc.... then sure, go for giving it a try...
on the other hand, if you want confidence of streaming working, and to focus on your stream presentation vs PC's technical resource management (ie CPU, GPU, RAM, disk i/o, etc) then a much newer CPU would be advisable.
and side note- and if you pay careful attention, you can get Turing NVENC in GTX 1650 Super (not Ti), but if I was looking at paying almost $200 new for a 1650Super, I'd be inclined to try and get my hands on a RTX3060 12gb for $325 (yes, I know hard they it is expected to be to get next week...)

 

[Rizzledizzle45711]

Thank you everyone for your detailed opinions. A lot more goes into it then expected! Haha. Doing some research on all the suggestions now. I appreciate your feedback.