What specs should i be looking for?

[Tony_Rex_]

I'm sorry to ask such a stupid question but I stream directly from my PS4 and I want to buy a PC just to run OBS to improve the look and feel of the stream. I'm a complete novice/newbie when it comes to PC's and the only info i can find is to do with gaming PC's which i don't need.

If you were to describe to someone who has no idea where to start about the basic specs they need to be looking for when buying a PC what would you suggest?

Again i know it's probably a dumb question but i can't find the info i need anywhere and i just need a starting point.

Thank you

 

[carlmmii]

It really depends on a lot of things.

- What's your budget?
- Are you planning on building your own, or going for something pre-built?
- Are you looking to use a laptop?
- Are you looking for a small-form factor PC?
- Are you looking for potential expandability?
- Are you looking to upgrade down the line and just need something that works right now?
- What capture device will you be using?

For a dedicated streaming rig, there are a few key points to keep in mind:
- Unless you're looking to brute-force quality with x264 slow, you will get the best quality from Turing Nvenc encoding
- The cheapest card with this is the GTX 1650 super (not the regular 1650 or 1650 ti), which is usually more than enough for most capture-only setups
- The CPU requirement will depend on how complex your scenes are, but the requirement is relatively low

My personal recommendation for a relatively budget rig that will do anything you need to get started a Ryzen 3600 (or possibly even a 3300) on a B550 board (just released, so availability and pricing may be questionable), paired with a GTX 1650 super. This will give you baseline quality, with upgrade paths for GPU/CPU/PCIe capture/USB/etc, without breaking the bank to start.