Dedicated Streaming PC Build

[Dataanti]

Hello folks, I'm no stranger to building PCs but what I am a stranger to is streaming and encoding performance. Upon doing a lot of research over the past month as I crunch out all the details, I have decided to go with X264 rather the nvenc, or quick sync encoding. This if for a couple different reasons, mainly encoding quality however, but as well as taking a load off my gaming PC, as well as future uses for this PC. The information that I can't seem to find is encoding preference for dedicated encoding computers, It seems most people encode on the computer that is doing the gaming, and the advice I have seen for dedicated machines is all over the board from the best from AMD being required all the way to a gen 2 or 3 i5.

 

I'm looking for some advice on what direction I should go with this, I currently have 2 options in mind right now for how I can do it, one being an Intel method, the other being AMD

 

My needs are pretty simple, I Just need to be able to stream in 1080p, 60fps and a reasonable bit rate. As well as record 4k 60fps (I already have a capture card that can do this. (I won't be editing 4K on this machine, just capturing it))

 

Option one:

I have an intel I7 6700k, socketed in a z170 board, This CPU has an integrated GPU which from my understanding OBS needs some sort of GPU. when I add up all the other parts that I don't have extra of, like Ram, a cooler, a case and a case fan, power supply, it comes out to around $500 CAD

 

Option two:

I get a ryzen 7 1800x (i believe this is the most bang for my buck at the moment, $320 on amazon.ca) for its superior encoding capabilities. but this will require me to also get a new mother board as well, adding about 450$ to my 500$ for all the extra bits and bobs any computer requires.

 

Now since this is a dedicated streaming/encoding PC, it won't be playing games at all. will an I7 6700K be enough for my needs? or will I need to shell out more for an AMD CPU for that higher thread count. and maybe a ryzen 7 1800x is more than what I need, and I can go lower?

 

 

 

 

If any of you guys are wondering what my setup is going to be, I have a 65 inch 4k hdr TV, this will be my main gaming display. that is being fed by a Yamaha receiver. i have an Xbox one X, Nintendo switch, a gaming PC, and a RCA to HDMI scalier (For N64, OG Xbox, PS2, GameCube). The capture card is in-between my Yamaha and the TV, capturing any console, or my PC at what ever resolution my source devices are providing it. I already have all of these things, I have just accumulated them over the years. I want to get into streaming simply because I have all these games, just sitting there... i want to play them all again and this is kind of motivation to do so  It's also fun to play with people there contributing via chat and stuff. Depending on how it goes, i may get more serious into it but I'm not expecting to be the next ninja or anything.

 

I intend to move the capture card to the streaming PC and have it also function as a recording station, and I'll just share the files over the network to my main computer for what ever editing I will do, it won’t be much.

 

Thanks for your help

[Mr. PC]

Option one would totally suffice!

However I would recommend getting a dedicated GPU... it doesn't have to be to powerful a 1050 or 950 would totally suffice but it just gives you much better performance than the iGPU.

[Streetguru]

24 minutes ago, Dataanti said:

 

8 cores will give you a higher quality stream than a 6700K. Could also go the used Xeon option.

 

12 minutes ago, Mr. PC said:

Option one would totally suffice!

However I would recommend getting a dedicated GPU... it doesn't have to be to powerful a 1050 or 950 would totally suffice but it just gives you much better performance than the iGPU.

GPU doesn't matter if it's not using it to stream.

[t4ils]

From my experience, the 6700k was not able to do 1080p60 streaming. A CPU with more cores would have better chances, so I'd recommend option two.

You could also go the good ol' pre-owned route. The Xeon X5650 (6 cores, 12 threads) sell for around $20 on eBay right now. You can get two, put it in a dual socket LGA1366 motherboard (think those sell for around $30), get DDR3 RAM, a cheap GPU with minimum OpenGL 2.1 support (iirc, that's what OBS requires), and you've got yourself a streaming setup for around $100. The two Xeons also perform better than a 6700k in Cinebench Multi-Core.

[Dataanti]

1 hour ago, Streetguru said:

8 cores will give you a higher quality stream than a 6700K. Could also go the used Xeon option.

 

GPU doesn't matter if it's not using it to stream.

 

1 hour ago, t4ils said:

From my experience, the 6700k was not able to do 1080p60 streaming. A CPU with more cores would have better chances, so I'd recommend option two.

You could also go the good ol' pre-owned route. The Xeon X5650 (6 cores, 12 threads) sell for around $20 on eBay right now. You can get two, put it in a dual socket LGA1366 motherboard (think those sell for around $30), get DDR3 RAM, a cheap GPU with minimum OpenGL 2.1 support (iirc, that's what OBS requires), and you've got yourself a streaming setup for around $100. The two Xeons also perform better than a 6700k in Cinebench Multi-Core.

I had never thought about going the used route, I normally don't buy used electronics because I don't know what they have been through but those are some mighty cheap prices, I'll certainly look into that.

 

I do have questions about that route however, The DDR3 in particularly concerns me when it comes to its ability to encode live. I was under the impression you require higher speed ram because when encoding live, you need to be constantly loading and unloading information, you don't need to have a lot of ram, it just needs to be fast.

[Streetguru]

6 hours ago, Dataanti said:

 

Pretty sure that's entirely wrong for encoding, you don't need more than 16GBs though.

Xeon X5000s are what people usually go for I think, or newer. I don't usually bother with used hardware myself though. Also probably want all the clock speed you can get in the older machines.

I think Ryzen invalidated a lot of their value though.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Lenovo-S20-Thinkcentre-Desktop-XEON-X5650-Six-Core-2-66-Ghz-6-GB-RAM-160gb-HDD/172126826204?hash=item28138eeedc%3Ag%3AboAAAOSwh-1W3h1r&_sacat=179&_nkw=Lenovo+Xeon+6+core&_from=R40&rt=nc&LH_TitleDesc=0|0

[Ailfawka]

On 7/29/2018 at 4:40 AM, t4ils said:

From my experience, the 6700k was not able to do 1080p60 streaming. A CPU with more cores would have better chances, so I'd recommend option two.

You could also go the good ol' pre-owned route. The Xeon X5650 (6 cores, 12 threads) sell for around $20 on eBay right now. You can get two, put it in a dual socket LGA1366 motherboard (think those sell for around $30), get DDR3 RAM, a cheap GPU with minimum OpenGL 2.1 support (iirc, that's what OBS requires), and you've got yourself a streaming setup for around $100. The two Xeons also perform better than a 6700k in Cinebench Multi-Core.

 

I found this really interesting, but if I recall...the integrated GPU on this APU is seriously weak and wouldn't be capable of supporting OBS requirements, hense the failure to be able to output 1080p 60ps stream as you said.  I reckon this CPU will be more then enough as long as it has a dedicated GPU to support the OBS hardware requirements.

The 6700k in theory should be more then enough for a dedicated streaming setup....so the bottleneck shouldn't be the CPU itself but probably its GPU instead. can you test?

[t4ils]

On 9/3/2019 at 5:35 PM, Ailfawka said:

I found this really interesting, but if I recall...the integrated GPU on this APU is seriously weak and wouldn't be capable of supporting OBS requirements, hense the failure to be able to output 1080p 60ps stream as you said.  I reckon this CPU will be more then enough as long as it has a dedicated GPU to support the OBS hardware requirements.

The 6700k in theory should be more then enough for a dedicated streaming setup....so the bottleneck shouldn't be the CPU itself but probably its GPU instead. can you test?

I should've mentioned that I was using a GTX 950. Though, if you are using x264 to stream (like OP was planning on doing), GPU doesn't matter too much.

 

I can't recall what settings I was using since this post is from last year, but I remember testing 720p60 at medium preset and 1080p60 around the veryfast to fast preset. I used an RTMP server to stream to the computer w/ the 6700k and outputting that stream to Twitch and it would drop frames (nginx + mpv w/ NVENC decoding used less than 5% CPU usage combined, mpv was used instead of the OBS VLC source because of higher CPU usage). I tested on both Linux and Windows.