Question / Help Specs for streaming PC

[Kaeseschachtel]

Hello everybody,

I'm new to the spheres of streaming and would like to do so from time to time. I already streamed on twitch with 720p/30fps settings and it worked fine while playing Heroes of the Storm, CS:GO and Sims 4.
Today i was exited to play and stream Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Wildlands just to realise that my CPU is not powerful enough to play and stream at the same time, as the game takes up to 80% of my CPUs capability while OBS needs around 30% while streaming. Besides, here are my specs:

Intel Core i5-2500k @3.3GHz (no overclock yet)
8GB DDR3-1333MHz RAM
Sapphire Radeon R9 290 Tri-X OC
Windows 10

As the CPU seems to be the bottleneck (please correct me if i missunderstood something) my first thought was to overclock the i5, which i am going to do. I guess about 4.0 or 4.2GHz should be possible without a doubt, giving a nice boost to that.
My next idea was to set up a second PC for OBS only. I've read about it and need a capture card for it, which i would get if my idea works.
I got an old PC with the following specs:
Intel Core 2 Quad 9300
4GB DDR2-800MHz RAM
Nvidia GeForce 9500 GT
Windows Vista

I know thats not much but will it be enough to receive video and audio via capture card and stream it on twitch?
If it isn't, whats the minimum specs i need? Is there a better way to get it to work? 720p/30fps is enough for me.
I tried to find some hints in the interwebs, but the opinions spread wide, from "i7-7000 is the minimum!" to "and i3 is enough."

Help please! Thank you for your attention :D

Greetings
Kaeseschachtel

 

[Harold]

Generally you'd need to go at BARE MINIMUM a duplicate of your current main machine, although I'd recommend something a little more current like a 4690k i5 based system.

 

[Kaeseschachtel]

Can you explain why? Sorry, I'm a noob in these things. e.g. I can stream and play Sims 4 without a problem, but a more CPU hungry game overkills it. OBS takes about 30% of my CPU, so why do I need an even better one with a second PC? My thought was "hey, 30% of an i5, my Q9300 should be able to handle that". I guess thats wrong.

 

[Harold]

my q6600 was struggling when I finally upgraded to my 4770k rig, even when OBS was the only thing it was doing.

Video encoding is the single most cpu intensive process of streaming, and you generally need to go with a newer rig to keep up nowadays. In your case, if you're going for streaming games, you'll probably just be better off long-term to get a current/recent i7 and be done with it.

 

[Kaeseschachtel]

Well my plan was to use the second pc until i can afford an i7 (or maybe ryzen) for my main build. but as i have to spend money for a capture card and can't expect good results i won't do that i guess. So you're saying I should simply save for a current i7 and stream from that?

 

[Harold]

Yep.

 

[Kaeseschachtel]

Thank you very much! :)