Desktop will be more powerful for a given budget. And real-time video encoding is computationally demanding. So a laptop will run warm to hot
I chose a desktop for our House of Worship live stream, as I don't want it used for anything else (that would compromise stability of system to support streaming). Permanent setup is coming, but for last 5+ months, I've taken the Tower to/from church each Sunday. I'm looking forward to PC being left at church in secure location
In terms of specs..... well, that can depend .. on a lot of factors.
My driving consideration were
- couldn't count on me always being around to support system, so I wanted a Tier 1 Business class system, with next business day on-site support, and local support (not overseas non-native language). So we did pay a little bit extra for that support and peace of mind
- We stream to Facebook as that is where are users already were, for the most part, and encouraged interactivity/participation vs convenient consumption of a service. By using a Facebook Live Scheduled event, you get a consistent URL that anyone can watch, no need to log in/be a FB user. To me, the only downside (sort of) is limit to 720p and that really hasn't been an issue as it still looks good for folks watching on large screen TV
- as for PC specs:
- GPU first - the strong consensus is to target a nVidia GTX 1650 Super (with its Turing NVENC) or better
- CPU - I wanted something that would last five years (hooked up to an auto voltage regulating power supply (UPS), so 5 years is very reasonable), so spending a little extra now made sense
- I consider a 6-core/21-thread CPU to be a minimum (overkill for today, but recall I'm looking forward years), with a strong preference for 8c/16t. I'd strongly prefer an AMD Ryzen 7 5xxx but the manufacturers I was looking at didn't have such, so I compromised and went with intel i7-10700K (8c/16t)
- During a livestream with 1 NDI PTZ camera, a PowerPoint windowed slide show (portrait orientation) for service bulletin, and inter-mixing live video and pre-recorded 1080p and 4K videos (re-scaled to fit available space alongside service bulletin), plus an analog audio input from sound system (soon to be connected via USB), my CPU and GPU utilization is 12-13%.. so specs are overkill today.
- BUT.. now that I also record locally (at 1080p), we have need/desire to edit the video clips for various uses, and video editing can be demanding as well (if not more so if you don't want to wait forever for rendering).. so I'm comfortable I didn't over-spend significantly
- I paid $1,500 for the tower and support last October, and a comparable PC can be had for around $1,000 today (+ for the support, so about same price).
For a laptop, avoid any of the low power CPU (long battery life models). Look instead to gaming or workstation class laptops, again with a Turing NVENC or better. You could get away (maybe) with 8GBs of RAM, but don't. Start with 16GB, at least. I go with a good NVMe SSD, and then have a larger HDD for storing the recorded videos and any other content (I save each week's source materials, the recorded service, along with exporting OBS Scene Collection and Advanced Scene Switcher settings - altogether about 10Gb/week)
Side comment
- the USB webcams are an okay punt. Long term, you are going to want a better camera setup (if you can afford). We love our NDI PTZ camera. for long USB runs, beware quality of the cables. And good luck
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