PC for streaming only?

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mnewxcv

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I am looking into live streaming and have a PC capable of gaming just fine. I was wondering if it would make sense to have a second PC (which I can get cheap) just to handle video input and streaming from the gaming PC. Would a machine with a 6 core x58 xeon and 12GB of ram be good enough for this purpose? Would the GPU do anything at all or am I better off with an old low end card just for monitor? Looking to stream in 1080p.
 
I'm all for not having to rely on your gaming PC to do encoding and streaming in the background so yeah, sounds good to me. Which encoding method you used in, for example, OBS would determine if you're using the GPU at all. On a dedicated streaming box I would suggest software/x264 encoding so the GPU wouldn't really matter.

Now, if that older X58 Xeon is beefy enough for 1080p streams i'm not sure. Hopefully others can chime in.
 
thanks for the feedback. I can get a 4gb rx570 and a 120gb ssd for $100 together, just not sure if either would be worth getting for a stream only machine.
 
well I am getting a z400 and ordered 18GB of ram, a w3680 6 core CPU, 850w power supply and atx cable adapter. Altogether, in it for under $200.
 
I know X58 is triple channel platform, but 18G is a curious amount of RAM
 
For streaming memory isn't all that important, you just want lots n' lots of CPU. The more CPU you can throw at x264, the better quality per bit you get. Videocard isn't relevant as you'll have the CPU doing the encoding. I mean you can get a videocard to do the encoding, but the SIP chip on GPUs just doesn't do as good a job as software, at this point.
 
Sycraft said:
For streaming memory isn't all that important, you just want lots n' lots of CPU. The more CPU you can throw at x264, the better quality per bit you get. Videocard isn't relevant as you'll have the CPU doing the encoding. I mean you can get a videocard to do the encoding, but the SIP chip on GPUs just doesn't do as good a job as software, at this point.
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Do you think a w3680 at like 3.7ghz all 6 cores would suffice? I can throw an old quadro in there if it doesn't matter either way.
 
mnewxcv said:
Do you think a w3680 at like 3.7ghz all 6 cores would suffice? I can throw an old quadro in there if it doesn't matter either way.
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Should do fine. You have to remember that basically anything will work, it is just a matter of how good the end result is. As you throw more CPU at it, the result is better per bit. It is also something that is real incremental, like at the high level of throw a lot more CPU and get barely any improvement. Only thing about it is that as old as it is, it doesn't support AVX which I believe x264 can use. However it still should be plenty fast.
 
Sycraft said:
Should do fine. You have to remember that basically anything will work, it is just a matter of how good the end result is. As you throw more CPU at it, the result is better per bit. It is also something that is real incremental, like at the high level of throw a lot more CPU and get barely any improvement. Only thing about it is that as old as it is, it doesn't support AVX which I believe x264 can use. However it still should be plenty fast.
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Thanks, I will have the computer built this week. Here is what I have so far:

HP z400 w/ xeon e5620, 6gb, 250gb hdd, windows 10 pro - $60
Xeon w3680 (unlocked multi) - $58
12gb DDR3 - $21
240gb ssd - $38
Rx570 4gb - $80 (will probably sell or trade for an Nvidia gpu)
Total: $257, or $177 without gpu.

Just need a capture card and potentially a USB 3.0 card.
 
Another tip for streaming: depending on the game, you can disable film grain or run NLMeans (or another denoiser) in ReShade to make the video more compressible before feeding it to your encoding rig.


You could theoretically do this on your streaming rig too. In fact, AMD cards tend to be better at it than Nvidia ones... I've never actually tried that in OBS, but I'd be happy to mess with it if you want.
 
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AlphaAtlas said:
Another tip for streaming: depending on the game, you can disable film grain or run NLMeans (or another denoiser) in ReShade to make the video more compressible before feeding it to your encoding rig.


You could theoretically do this on your streaming rig too. In fact, AMD cards tend to be better at it than Nvidia ones... I've never actually tried that in OBS, but I'd be happy to mess with it if you want.
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amd better specifically at denoising to reduce compression artifacts? And are you saying you can turn that stuff down on the console itself?
 
mnewxcv said:
amd better specifically at denoising to reduce compression artifacts? And are you saying you can turn that stuff down on the console itself?
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So let me back up. In a nutshell, film grain effects in games make streams harder to compress, and there's other types of noise too. Some games have a setting to turn it on/off, but many don't, which means other programs have to remove it. x264 (which OBS uses to turn the game into a video) already has a built in denoiser to do it, but it's CPU only. To save CPU power and increase quality, you can get a GPU to do it instead, but you have to use external programs to do it. The one that could possibly run on your encoding box is OpenCL, and in my experience, AMD cards tend to be faster than Nvidia gaming equivalents at that specific type of work.
 
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