Steam Link Alternative?

[Raginryuu]

Gonna be moving and so my PC in my room and the living room will be on the opposite side of the house. The router/modem will also be with my pc. The only plus is that I can get a ethernet cable across the house.

 

I also have a Vive VR headset so also debating how to get that set up in the living room (due to more space), but won't be the end of the world if I set it up in my room with my PC in my room.

 

Note: my tv is 4K 55"

 

Option 1: ("free")
My old laptop (2017 hp 15 pavilion laptop: intel i7, GTX1050, 32gb, 1TB SSD) into a Steam link. But would this be too old to decode the streaming to my 4K TV?

 

Option 2: ($)
Buy a used Steam Link. But I won't be able to get to 4K cause I'm capped out at 1080p

 

Option 3: ($$$)
Upgrade TV to Smart TV that can use Steam Link. How is the performance of those 4K smart TV's with Steam Link software? (I'm biased toward Sonys so how are the Bravia Smart TV systems with the application?)

 

Option 4: ($$)
Buy a NUC or mini PC that can stream from my main pc (moonlight/sunshine?) What is the minimum spec/cost I would need to stream 4K? Could this also stream vr games to my headset from my main PC as the horse power?

 

Anyone that has experience with any of these would be very much helpful!

 

 

[Brando212]

another option that should land between options 2 and 3 price wise. you could get a Fire Stick or another Android TV box to hook to your TV for Steam Link functionality; I'd say that's preferred over baked in smart functions on a TV anyway, because then you can just swap that piece when needed/wanted instead of having to upgrade the whole TV.

 

edit: also just to add, any of the mentioned setups, android or windows based, would be capable of running Steam Link or Moonlight. Moonlight has some nice extra features if you like them, but it's really not needed these days, as Steam Link has become rather efficient on its codecs.

 

edit 2: and just keep in mind, no matter which setup you choose, you'll probably want to go Ethernet on everything. WiFi might not cut it for 4K game streaming.

[adm0n]

55 minutes ago, Raginryuu said:

Option 1: ("free")
My old laptop (2017 hp 15 pavilion laptop: intel i7, GTX1050, 32gb, 1TB SSD) into a Steam link. But would this be too old to decode the streaming to my 4K TV?

I can't 100% confirm this right now, but I'm 99% sure a GTX 1050 (mobile) should have no problem to decode 4k h265. Not sure at what bitrate, but I also think that 100Mbit/s won't be a problem. As long as you set it up to use the nvidia decoder and the laptop isn't throttling, you are fine.

 

I haven't played around with streaming VR games, so can't tell you how good that works, but if it's just the video signal, your laptop should still be fine for that. Maybe just throw some lightweigh linux distro on there, so it doesn't have to do anything in the background (at least if the nvidia encoder works well in that setup)

 

[OddOod]

I have an intel compute stick from 2017 in my front hall that does nothing but run moonlight remoting into one of my servers and that thing can decode 1080p 60 no problem. I'd give that old laptop a shot and see what it can do. Even a mobile 6/7th gen i7 should be able to *handily* decode a 4k60 stream