Separate Streaming PC

[TekkyTG]

Budget (including currency): 500$ starting point, but at the moment I'm really looking at what it would cost to build one.

Country: USA

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: Streaming. It will be part of a dual pc streaming setup. It will only handle OBS and rendering the stream. It will not run any games. It will have a few windows up for my chat and discord, of course.

Other details (existing parts lists, whether any peripherals are needed, what you're upgrading from, when you're going to buy, what resolution and refresh rate you want to play at, etc): 

I'll need a mouse and keyboard. Doesn't have to be anything special. I have no need for RGB goodness, as my primary PC has loads of it, lol. Probably the most I'm willing to pay for a mouse/keyboard is a cheap ReDragon clicky mechanical keyboard a Deathadder. I have two 60hz monitors for it already and a massive desk (I'll be putting the pc under the desk though to reduce sound, unless I decide to spend the extra dollar on some noctua's for the quiet. Since my current pc has an nvme drive I wouldn't mind having one in it to speed things up, but I don't plan on mass speed storage, so a 250gb nvme drive with a few tb's of Seagate barracuda drives will be plenty (I'll want to save recordings, of course).

[Mateyyy]

PCPartPicker Part List

Type	Item	Price
CPU	Intel Core i3-10100 3.6 GHz Quad-Core Processor	$129.99 @ B&H
Motherboard	ASRock B460M Pro4 Micro ATX LGA1200 Motherboard	$89.99 @ Amazon
Memory	G.Skill Aegis 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3000 CL16 Memory	$54.99 @ Newegg
Storage	Kingston A2000 250 GB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive	$43.47 @ Amazon
Storage	Toshiba X300 4 TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive	$117.99 @ Dell
Case	CiT F3 MicroATX Mini Tower Case	$30.76 @ Amazon
Power Supply	SeaSonic S12III 500 W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply	$54.99 @ Best Buy
Keyboard	Logitech MK120 Wired Slim Keyboard With Optical Mouse	$16.99 @ Best Buy
	Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts
	Total	$539.17
	Generated by PCPartPicker 2020-08-06 17:23 EDT-0400

[TekkyTG]

2 minutes ago, Mateyyy said:

PCPartPicker Part List

Type	Item	Price
CPU	Intel Core i3-10100 3.6 GHz Quad-Core Processor	$129.99 @ B&H
Motherboard	ASRock B460M Pro4 Micro ATX LGA1200 Motherboard	$89.99 @ Amazon
Memory	G.Skill Aegis 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3000 CL16 Memory	$54.99 @ Newegg
Storage	Kingston A2000 250 GB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive	$43.47 @ Amazon
Storage	Toshiba X300 4 TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive	$117.99 @ Dell
Case	CiT F3 MicroATX Mini Tower Case	$30.76 @ Amazon
Power Supply	SeaSonic S12III 500 W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply	$54.99 @ Best Buy
Keyboard	Logitech MK120 Wired Slim Keyboard With Optical Mouse	$16.99 @ Best Buy
	Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts
	Total	$539.17
	Generated by PCPartPicker 2020-08-06 17:23 EDT-0400

I didn't realize that a 3.6gHz cpu could handle it. A friend of mine actually has an old amd ryzen 1400 rocking 3.6gHz and four cores, 8 threads. He would let it go for cheap. for the motherboard, no need to overclock I'm assuming, so I could rock a generic A320M. He also has a single 8gb stick of 2666 speed ram. I think I'll spend just a tiny bit more money and get the 16 gig set though, I mean it's not like I'm scraping the bottom of the barrel lol. Thanks for the list!

[TekkyTG]

Just now, TekkyTG said:

I didn't realize that a 3.6gHz cpu could handle it. A friend of mine actually has an old amd ryzen 1400 rocking 3.6gHz and four cores, 8 threads. He would let it go for cheap. for the motherboard, no need to overclock I'm assuming, so I could rock a generic A320M. He also has a single 8gb stick of 2666 speed ram. I think I'll spend just a tiny bit more money and get the 16 gig set though, I mean it's not like I'm scraping the bottom of the barrel lol. Thanks for the list!

Or wait. Are you suggesting I get the i3 and OC to 4.3gHz? Also, I didn't know this CPU existed lol. I would have probably used it in a few other builds I'm doing... Idk I just like ryzen for it's simplicity lol.

[Moonzy]

 

1 minute ago, TekkyTG said:

I didn't realize that a 3.6gHz cpu could handle it. A friend of mine actually has an old amd ryzen 1400 rocking 3.6gHz and four cores, 8 threads. He would let it go for cheap. for the motherboard, no need to overclock I'm assuming, so I could rock a generic A320M. He also has a single 8gb stick of 2666 speed ram. I think I'll spend just a tiny bit more money and get the 16 gig set though, I mean it's not like I'm scraping the bottom of the barrel lol. Thanks for the list!

You'll also need a capture card

 

Why not stream from your main rig?

[Mateyyy]

5 minutes ago, TekkyTG said:

I didn't realize that a 3.6gHz cpu could handle it. A friend of mine actually has an old amd ryzen 1400 rocking 3.6gHz and four cores, 8 threads. He would let it go for cheap. for the motherboard, no need to overclock I'm assuming, so I could rock a generic A320M. He also has a single 8gb stick of 2666 speed ram. I think I'll spend just a tiny bit more money and get the 16 gig set though, I mean it's not like I'm scraping the bottom of the barrel lol. Thanks for the list!

The 10100 boost to around 4ish GHz, but the main reason I went with the 10100 instead of a 3400G is Intel QuickSync, which you can use for encoding with OBS.

The Ryzen 1400 is slower and also doesn't have an iGPU, so you'd need a dedicated GPU to throw in there as well.

 

Also,

3 minutes ago, Moonzy said:

You'll also need a capture card

 

Why not stream from your main rig?

^

If you've got a Turing GPU (except the 1650 non-Super), or even Navi for that matter, you can just use the encoder on your GPU for streaming if your CPU can't keep up with both encoding and gaming.

 

4 minutes ago, TekkyTG said:

Or wait. Are you suggesting I get the i3 and OC to 4.3gHz? Also, I didn't know this CPU existed lol. I would have probably used it in a few other builds I'm doing... Idk I just like ryzen for it's simplicity lol.

The i3-10100 has a locked multiplier since it's not a K SKU (unlike Ryzen where they're all overclockable), so overclocking it isn't really an option, but it wouldn't be really required either.

[TekkyTG]

1 minute ago, Moonzy said:

 

You'll also need a capture card

 

Why not stream from your main rig?

I'll likely get one at some point, but I actually plan to use the NDI plugin for OBS. It uses my modem like an Elgato, essentially.

 

Also, as decent as my main rig is, there are boat loads of problems I have. I'm a very competitive gamer, and so my primary monitor is 240hz. Without streaming, I can average the 180+ on modern warfare and on just about any other game I can rock 240fps+

Streaming obviously gives me a lower framerate, which is why I'd like a separate PC. Obviously, I could just upgrade my CPU, but there are other issues still. There's a problem with NVIDIA graphics cards, unless the game runs on Vulkan or something similar, where if I have other things displaying on my 60hz monitor, it will lock the game on my 240hz monitor at 60hz as well. This means that having my stream chat up or Spotify or OBS or Discord on my other monitors will really ruin my gameplay (I've used 240hz so long that anything below 144 feels like lag). This can be resolved by adding a second card to the pc (must be NVIDIA, DirectX 11+ I believe), in order to counteract this.  At this point, it would make everything much simpler and easier, along with in the long run, as I upgrade my personal rig for the newer, more demanding games, to just have a separate PC that I can also upgrade as I go.

[TekkyTG]

7 minutes ago, Mateyyy said:

The 10100 boost to around 4ish GHz, but the main reason I went with the 10100 instead of a 3400G is Intel QuickSync, which you can use for encoding with OBS.

The Ryzen 1400 is slower and also doesn't have an iGPU, so you'd need a dedicated GPU to throw in there as well.

 

Also,

^

If you've got a Turing GPU (except the 1650 non-Super), or even Navi for that matter, you can just use the encoder on your GPU for streaming if your CPU can't keep up with both encoding and gaming.

 

The i3-10100 has a locked multiplier since it's not a K SKU (unlike Ryzen where they're all overclockable), so overclocking it isn't really an option, but it wouldn't be really required either.

Thanks for all the info. At the moment I've got a 2060 super. It's already struggling on graphically demanding games to get the framerates I want (mainly COD), so I'm not interested in offloading the power to the GPU.

 

Also, as far as the dedicated gpu goes, I have an old AMD gpu from back in the day when they were called ATI. It's the ATI Firepro V4800. As old as it is, it still does the job. Granted it's actually worse than an Intel UHD 630... But hey, it never gave me bottleneck issues. Back when I had an old dell server pc that I bought off eBay for 200 bucks, I had an intel xeon w3505 and the V4800, rocked about 350+ FPS on Minecraft. Granted that was on a much older Minecraft, pre-1.9, but it's still a powerhouse to this day lol. Obviously the framerate was because of the CPU, but at least the GPU didn't hold it back

[Moonzy]

26 minutes ago, Mateyyy said:

If you've got a Turing GPU (except the 1650 non-Super), or even Navi for that matter, you can just use the encoder on your GPU for streaming if your CPU can't keep up with both encoding and gaming.

he has a 2060 super, based on his sig

which has the best encoder, the nvenc turing on it

 

encoder ranking basically works like this:

1) NVENC Turing

2) software x264 (slow and medium)

3) software x264 (fast)

4) NVENC Volta (1650), Pascal, Maxwell

5) software x264 (very fast and faster)

better than nothing) Navi Encoder, and Polaris Encoder

 

these are not absolute ranking, one or two may swap depending on bit rate and footage

but they're approximately how they would perform averagely

 

20 minutes ago, TekkyTG said:

There's a problem with NVIDIA graphics cards, unless the game runs on Vulkan or something similar, where if I have other things displaying on my 60hz monitor, it will lock the game on my 240hz monitor at 60hz as well.

huh... i've been streaming every game on my 240hz and monitor my stream + chat on my 60hz

never had this issue on any of my gpu (970 1070 2070S)

20 minutes ago, TekkyTG said:

This can be resolved by adding a second card to the pc (must be NVIDIA, DirectX 11+ I believe), in order to counteract this.

hmm, im not sure why adding a second card would solve this, but if you want to encode a game with NVENC, the card have to be the one rendering the game AFAIK (or maybe it's to use Game capture feature, not sure if screen capture works)

20 minutes ago, TekkyTG said:

At this point, it would make everything much simpler and easier, along with in the long run, as I upgrade my personal rig for the newer, more demanding games, to just have a separate PC that I can also upgrade as I go.

true, it's sometimes less hassle to have 2 separate machine

but considering you need to spend more, and getting lower quality encodes, i really dont see the point

spend the money in your current rig to make it better makes more sense imo

20 minutes ago, TekkyTG said:

Streaming obviously gives me a lower framerate

12 minutes ago, TekkyTG said:

I've got a 2060 super. It's already struggling on graphically demanding games to get the framerates I want

yea FPS will drop, by 1-5%

but you can use the $500 to boost your gpu horsepower to something like a 2070super (or rtx3000 cards maybe?) and boost your fps way more (considering if you sold your 2060)

 

im not saying you absolutely shouldn't build a 2nd pc, it's just unnecessary, but if you wish to go forward, just know you're not getting the best for your money

[TekkyTG]

2 minutes ago, Moonzy said:

he has a 2060 super, based on his sig

which has the best encoder, the nvenc turing on it

 

encoder ranking basically works like this:

1) NVENC Turing

2) software x264 (medium)

3) software x264 (fast)

4) NVENC Volta (1650), Pascal, Maxwell

5) software x264 (very fast and faster)

better than nothing) Navi Encoder, and Polaris Encoder

 

these are not absolute ranking, one or two may swap depending on bit rate and footage

but they're approximately how they would perform averagely

 

huh... i've been streaming every game on my 240hz and monitor my stream + chat on my 60hz

never had this issue on any of my gpu (970 1070 2070S)

hmm, im not sure why adding a second card would solve this, but if you want to encode a game with NVENC, the card have to be the one rendering the game AFAIK (or maybe it's to use Game capture feature, not sure if screen capture works)

true, it's sometimes less hassle to have 2 separate machine

but considering you need to spend more, and getting lower quality encodes, i really dont see the point

spend the money in your current rig to make it better makes more sense imo

yea FPS will drop, by 1-5%

but you can use the $500 to boost your gpu horsepower to something like a 2070super (or rtx3000 cards maybe?) and boost your fps way more (considering if you sold your 2060)

 

im not saying you absolutely shouldn't build a 2nd pc, it's just unnecessary, but if you wish to go forward, just know you're not getting the best for your money

Yeah, I'm already saving up for a new 3000 series GPU, along with waiting for the 4000 series ryzen to come out (I thought about buying a prebuilt machine just to get ahold of one of the OEM's, but then I found out that they're still rocking the zen2 architecture, and zen3 won't be released until the consumer versions come out).

 

Also, yeah it took a lottt of research to find that information out. I have definitely heard that some people don't experience this issue. Some games, like R6 Siege, use Vulkan and those won't cause it to happen for me. Others, like Fortnite and COD do. It's really weird. Anyway, the reason having a second GPU affects this is because I can have my primary GPU running only the 240hz monitor, and the secondary running my other monitors. Also, a strange fact I found out is if both cards are DirectX12 (12, earlier I said 11, oops), it doesn't matter what GPU they are. They don't have to run in SLI, they can run independently of eachother. I've seen people with a 1070 and a 1060 in one PC.

[Moonzy]

1 minute ago, TekkyTG said:

I have definitely heard that some people don't experience this issue. Some games, like R6 Siege, use Vulkan and those won't cause it to happen for me. Others, like Fortnite and COD do.

then you should find a solution for this, imo.

2 minutes ago, TekkyTG said:

Anyway, the reason having a second GPU affects this is because I can have my primary GPU running only the 240hz monitor, and the secondary running my other monitors.

ah, gotcha

2 minutes ago, TekkyTG said:

Also, a strange fact I found out is if both cards are DirectX12 (12, earlier I said 11, oops), it doesn't matter what GPU they are.

what do you mean?

3 minutes ago, TekkyTG said:

They don't have to run in SLI, they can run independently of eachother. I've seen people with a 1070 and a 1060 in one PC.

yea i know not SLI, and im one of those people that run multiple different GPU in a single system

[Mateyyy]

13 minutes ago, Moonzy said:

he has a 2060 super, based on his sig

Should've probably actually checked, thanks for pointing it out