Question / Help Specs for Dedicated 1080p60 Streaming PC?

The_Wanderer

New Member
I'm looking to invest in a dedicated streaming PC so that I can do 1080p60 streams. I can upload at about 10 mb/s upload (finally, yay internet ugprades), so I should be able to push maximum qualtiy 1080p60 to YouTube, and thankfully YouTube is OK with that, unlike Twitch. Problem is that my single computer setup just can't keep up, even with NVENC encoding instead of h.264 CPU encoding. I drop frames like crazy in more dense areas of Fallout 4, even with very low settings.

Sooo, it's time for a dedicated streaming PC! From what I've read, the setup will look like this:
  1. Main gaming PC + monitor plays game.
  2. Second HDMI cable on main computer graphics card duplicates the gaming monitor, pushing the video signal out to the streaming PC.
  3. Streaming PC with a 1080p60 video capture card receives this output.
  4. Streaming PC has OBS running and has all the chat overlays and other stuff set up, using the Capture Card as the "display source" for game capture. I'm also told that since it's HDMI, it should pick up the main computer game audio as well.
  5. Dedicated microphone is attached to the streaming PC, used to push commentary to OBS.
  6. Streaming PC encodes 1080p60 with H.264 CPU encoding and pushes it out @ 10 mb/s to YouTube.
So first, am I understanding all of this correctly? I already have the gaming PC ready to go.

And final question, what specs would I need for the dedicated streaming PC? I've been told a 4th gen i7 should do the trick, so I'd just need a cheap 4th gen i7 refurb that has a PCIe slot to spare, and add a capture card to it. I think I can accomplish that for $650 or less, assuming I use the Elgator 1080p60 Pro (or is there a better option close to or under $200?). Or do I need more power?
 

sam686

Member
X264 encoder: CPU speed is very important.
https://www.cpubenchmark.net/high_end_cpus.html (ctrl+f for quick find)
http://www.userbenchmark.com/

NVENC: a slower CPU might do, but need a good NVidia graphics card that supports NVENC.
Look up code name: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Nvidia_graphics_processing_units
Then look up NVENC matrix: https://developer.nvidia.com/video-encode-decode-gpu-support-matrix

AMD Ryzen 5 1600X have a good speed per price ratio at the time of this reply, and may be fast enough for x264 1080p60.
 

JohnnyOmaha

Member
You nailed the 2 PC streaming setup description Wanderer.

I've got a 6700k, Elgato 4k60 Pro Capture card, and 1080 and was having reasonable success with NVEC, but me and you share that "need for MAXIMUM QUALITY!" drive... a blessing and a curse.

NVEC vs. 264 is now the struggle I'm trying to plow through with a goal of 1080 60fps 5800mbps upload (to stay under twitch 6000 limit) and getting the best image I can out of that.

I will say thought that my current setup is rock solid and if I wasn't a freak about trying to push the envelope it would be perfectly fine and meets or exceeds the quality of 90% of streams that I've seen on twitch. So if you're looking at the either the 6700k for 264 you can get 1080x60fps on the first two CPU presets. But I start to choke on anything slower than that. On the NVEC front, I have zero problems, but there's just a little more pixelation on fast moving shots than I'd like...

Hope this helps, you can checkout my archived twitch videos to have a visual for the quality. Just search for JohnnyOmaha on twitch (I'm new and don't know about "self-promotion" rules on the board yet, so didn't want to post a direct link until I figure that out).
 
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