- Hoo Hoo Hoo!
I'm looking forward to building this.
Many of you that have been following the channel
for a while now, know that every single month,
I put out three different streaming builds at roughly $1200,
$1600, and $2000.
And these are systems that handle both gaming,
and streaming simultaneously in one PC.
So, the guys over at Nerd or Die,
they came to me with the idea,
they said, "Why don't you actually build one of the
"streaming PC's that you recommend on your website
"every month?
"Test it's performance in a live streaming environment,
"that way your audience can really understand
"how performant these builds are.
"We'll pay for it, and at the end of the video,
"you can give away the system to one of your viewers."
I said "Let's do it."
So in this video we're going to be going through the $1200
AMD build that I recommended this month.
We're going to be putting it together,
testing out exactly how it performs
in a live streaming environment,
so we'll be testing different bitrates,
and resolutions with both the X264,
and the NVIDIA NVENC encoder,
so you can see exactly how it performs.
And at the end of the video, we're going to be giving it away.
So let's start first by thanking the people
that have made this whole thing possible, Nerd or Die.
If you're in need of a stream design upgrade,
Nerd or Die is the place to go.
With dozens of different design styles for overlays, alerts,
stinger transitions, event lists, starting soon scenes,
Twitch panels, chat boxes, you name it, they've got it,
and in a design that you and your viewers are going to love.
Also you can now get a whopping 15% off
anything in store by using the link in the description
with code GAMINGCAREERS at checkout.
(relaxed music)
So $1200 is a decent chunk of money,
it's certainly not a cheap build,
although I name it my budget build,
that is purely because this is a system
that is going to be capable of gaming,
and streaming simultaneously.
And we're talking about playing the latest games
at really quite decent frame rates.
Our CPU of choice is the Ryzen 5 3600X.
A six-core and twelve thread processor,
clocking in at 3.8 gigahertz
with a boost of 4.4 gigahertz.
Now although in this build,
I would recommend that we're going to be using NVENC,
since we've chosen an NVIDIA graphics card,
which we'll get to in just a second,
to handle all of the encoding on the stream.
This CPU, with its core count and thread count,
absolutely could use the x264 encoder,
so we will also be testing
that to see exactly how it performs.
The reason we've chosen
this CPU over an Intel variant at the moment,
is that AMD is just ahead in the value for many game.
You're getting a much better processor for the around $200
that this costs, compared to an Intel offering.
The other nice thing about the 3600X
is it comes included with a cooler,
so we can save a little bit of money
as long as we're not doing a heavy overclock,
we can get away with using the default cooler
that comes as standard.
For the motherboard, we have chosen an
MSI x570 Gaming Plus motherboard.
Now, they're not the most exciting part of the build,
but you do need to ensure you're getting one
that is compatible with your other components.
Now, you could save yourself a bit of money,
and go for a B450 board, which will work with the AMD CPUs.
The reason I've gone for an x570 chipset,
is just purely that you won't have to deal with
anything like updating the BIOS
to get it working with these nice new Ryzen CPUs.
For memory, we're just going to be going with a 16 gigabyte
kit of the recommended DDR4 speeds for Ryzen 3000 series,
which is DDR4-3600.
These are the Corsair Vengeance RAM sticks,
I've used them in countless builds before.
They don't have RGB or anything fancy,
they're just some very fast, affordable, and reliable RAM.
Now for storage,
you'll definitely want to be running Windows,
and some key applications from an SSD in this build.
And with a little more money in our budget,
I'd recommend getting an M.2 Drive.
What's the difference between an M.2 drive
and a traditional SSD, I hear you ask?
Essentially, M.2 drives operate directly
through the PCI express interface,
whereas traditional SSD drives use the SATA connection,
which is a bit slower.
So in short, the M.2 drive will be fast, like, really fast.
Since this is just a small M.2 Drive
that we're going to be using for Windows,
and some key applications,
we've also paired it with a 2 Terrabyte Seagate Barracuda
mechanical hard drive.
For the case, we are going to be using an NZXT H510,
it's a favorite of mine,
it's actually the exact same case
that I'm using in my own system back there,
it's just $70, super easy to build in,
and has a very clean and minimalist look,
with a tempered glass side panel and a bottom shroud,
honestly, I love it.
Now cases are largely personal preference,
so feel free to shop around for something you prefer,
absolutely, it's your own choice and your own PC,
so just make sure you getting something
that fits our ATX motherboard,
and the length of our graphics card.
So, graphics card-wise,
this is where we're going to be spending the
lion's share of our budget,
and rightfully so as the graphics card is
not only going to be doing most of the work
when it comes to running our games,
at nice, high frame rates,
but it's also going to be responsible for encoding our stream,
by utilizing NVIDIA's new NVENC encoder,
which is found on their latest cards.
So I've chosen the RTX 2070 Super.
This is the gigabyte windforce edition,
which comes in just shy of $500,
and should be able to absolutely breeze through
the latest games, even at high resolutions, like 1440p.
Talking about boring parts of the build,
the power supply I went for is a 600 watt,
80+ Gold PSU from EVGA.
Unfortunately, over here in the UK,
no stores have the one I chose for this build in stock,
so I had to get a 650 watt one, again from EVGA instead.
But really, the most important thing with a power supply,
is that it's a well-reviewed product from a trusted brand.
This 650 watt one and the 600 watt one
that I've actually recommended in this build,
are both semi-modulus, so you don't have to tidy up
all of those extra cables you don't need.
And the cables are all black, so you don't have any of
that horrible ketchup and mustard colored cables
ruining the look of your lovely new PC.
(tearing)
Okay, so PC build is done,
you can probably hear the fans running in the background.
So the next thing we need to do is head into the BIOS,
and make sure our memory is running at the right speed,
and install Windows and things like that.
So what I'm going to do is I'm going to swap
this one out with an actual computer
so I can use the screens, mouse, and keyboard,
and get everything set up and installed.
Okay, Windows is now installed,
we've got all the drivers up to date,
and all the programs
that we're going to need to actually test the system,
and for that, I really want to simulate what a realistic
streaming environment looks like.
So not just running some benchmarking software,
'cause that doesn't really help you guys decide
if it's the right kind of system for you, for your streams.
So we're going to be using OBS studio
to stream five different games to Twitch.
These five games have been specifically chosen to cover
some different genres and some different struggles
that computers has with streaming.
So some are more CPU intensive, some are more GPU intensive,
so hopefully covering a wide range.
Now obviously if I just used OBS Studio's game capture
to stream these games to Twitch,
that's still not really a very realistic
streaming environment,
so we have added a webcam, you can see it behind me,
the Logitech stream cam, I've got plugged in there,
we a got webcam boarder,
as well as a WebM transparent transition
that we're going to be using to really spike our CPU usage
whilst we're in game and in the tasks.
Now in terms of actual test
that we'll be running for each of these games,
we'll be streaming to Twitch at 720p, 60 FPS,
at both 3,000 kilobits per second,
and 6,000 kilobits per second,
and then at 1080p, 60 FPS, at 6,000 kilobits per second,
and 8,000 kilobits per second.
We'll also be performing all of these tests
on both the x264, and the NVIDIA NVENC encoder
so you can really see the differences
for the system in using the different encoder options.
We'll be testing for the average FPS, the 1% lows,
and the .1% lows that we are achieving in-game
at these various different resolutions and bitrates.
And also what percentage, if any,
of frames are being missed or skipped due to rendering,
or encoding lag from OBS Studio.
Remember our aim here is to have 0% frames
missed or skipped due to OBS Studio, render or encoding lag,
while still being able to achieve a high frame rate in game
for you actually to play on.
All the games that we'll be testing are going to be running
at 1080p, and the maximum quality settings in-game.
- [Spongebob] 6 and a half hours later
- Okay so I have now finished running the test stream
to Twitch, and in over 100 tests,
over six hours of streaming to Twitch,
we didn't get a single frame of encoding,
or rendering lag in OBS Studio,
which kind of shocked me actually.
So I actually ended up running some bonus tests in
1440p as well, just to push our system to the limits.
So let's actually dive in to the results,
and we're going to start with Rocket League.
So, at 720p you can see the average FPS for both encoders
and bitrates is sitting at around 250 FPS,
with the only real difference being that NVENC doesn't
suffer quite as low frame rates at the 0.1% lows.
Still though, in general, very high frame rates
while streaming with either encoder at 720p.
At 1080p, 60,
we can see the x264 fast suffers at both bitrates,
with low average FPS and 1% lows.
Whereas really, there isn't a huge difference for NVENC
between the 720p and 1080p streaming.
Overall though, Rocket League streaming with either encoder
at 1080p performs very well on this machine
and you should be seeing some seriously high frame rates
in game.
Next we have League of Legends,
typically a game that suffers from big CPU spikes
in those hectic team fights.
And this is reflected in both the 720p and 1080p tests
when we're using the x264 fast encoder.
Again, NVENC performs significantly better,
especially when we're streaming at 1080p resolutions,
where we average over 50 FPS high frame rates
when compared to x264 fast.
For DOTA 2, we are using the Vulcan API like I mentioned,
it's recently been added as a supported game capture mode
in OBS studio, and DOTA 2 seems to be the game
that has the biggest discrepancy between
average FPS and 1% lows.
Again, probably due to those hectic team fights
where lots of action is happening on screen.
We're starting to see a bit of a trend here
that NVENC is definitely the way to go, as we expected,
as once again we get better average frame rates,
1% and .1% lows, when compared to x264 fast.
Next we have Apex Legends,
probably one of the more challenging games to stream
on a single PC setup.
Here we can see some really impressive results
from our $1200 build, and this is one test where
the difference between x264 and NVENC encoding is minimal.
I'd assume this is probably due to how GPU hungry Apex is,
and the fact that we're using an uncut frame rate.
My usual suggestion for those wanting to stream games
like Apex Legends, is to cut the frame rate,
and run OBS studio as administrator
to ensure that there is some GPU resources left over
for OBS.
But still we have no frames missed or skipped by OBS,
so a very playable game while streaming at even 1080p,
maybe just lower a few in-game settings
if you want to ensure
that you're always playing at over 144 FPS.
Finally, we have Valorant, a game that has been optimized,
and built from the ground up to be a very
high performing Esports title.
And wow, the frame rates we get here while streaming
sure do reflect that.
Averaging nearly 400 FPS at 720p, 6,000 Kilobits per second,
with NVENC is just crazy and you can see even at 1080p
when using NVENC, we're averaging nearly 300 FPS,
with the 1% lows at 170 FPS.
So again, NVENC would definitely be my recommendation
here for streaming Valorant at either resolution.
Right, so as I mentioned, I was super impressed with
just how well this system was performing
while streaming games at 1080p and running them at 1080p.
So I decided I would try and run some bonus tests,
pushing the system a little bit harder,
by running the games at 1440p, while streaming at 1080p,
using the NVENC encoder.
But even at 1440p, we still couldn't get a single frame
skipped or missed due to rendering or encoding lag
in OBS Studio.
You can see that we definitely took a hit
on some of the frame rates that we were achieving in game,
but still, really some impressive frame rates
by streaming at 1080p and running the game at 1440p.
You can see that for games like Apex and DOTA,
you can definitely do
with fine tuning some of the in-game settings so
that they're not all maxed-out,
and bringing some more frames in-game.
But even then, we're still getting a really stable 1080p,
60 FPS, 6,000 Kilobits per second stream to Twitch.
So my overall impressions are, wow, this $1200 build
is performing so much better than my expectations.
I kind of thought it would be able to do most of the
1080p, 60 FPS games,
but I thought it would struggle in games like Apex Legends,
to really achieve those high frame rates,
but it absolutely hasn't.
So it's kind of making me rethink how I price these builds.
'Cause originally, this $1200 build
was the cheapest one that I recommended.
But it's performing at kind of the level that I expected the
middle build, which was the $1600 build, to perform at.
So it's making me think,
maybe this should be the middle build,
and I should do an even cheaper,
maybe $800 budget build,
utilizing some of those new AMD processors like the 3300X.
In terms of encoder choice, kind of exactly as I expected
when I was first designing the system,
you really want to be using the NVENC encoder.
You get better frame rates in game,
your CPU isn't going to be working as hard,
so fan noises are likely to be lower, and really,
we were comparing x264 fast with NVENC here.
And in tests really,
we've actually seen that NVENC compares more to x264 Medium,
so you're probably getting better results as well.
If you are following along and wanting to build
this system yourself, a couple of points are
that if you wanted to squeeze even more performance
out of the price,
you could probably spend between $30 and $60,
on an after market cooler,
and then actually overclock the system
because these CPUs are overclockable and you probably will
be able to get between 5% and 10% higher frame rates
in game with a decent overclock.
Also I realized that there are some of you out there
that love the RGB look of a system,
and I didn't really take too much into account
in terms of how this system looks.
I just wanted to get as much performance
out of the $1200 budget as I could.
So if you do want to have some RGB fans inside,
or RGB memory,
you can definitely spend an extra $50 to $100
to get some RGB-ness on your components inside,
and make this system look more aesthetically pleasing.
But like I said,
I just wanted the most performance for the price.
Right, so for the part that you've all been waiting for,
how can you actually win this system
in part of the giveaway?
I've included a link at the top of the description,
as well as in the pinned comments
that goes across to a tweet
that I've just made of exactly how you can enter
this competition.
It is super simple, just follow the instructions.
It's open world-wide, so any one of you guys can win it.
And again, a massive thank you to the Nerd or Die guys
for helping arrange this sponsored video and the giveaway.
Thanks as always for watching,
it was a bit of a long video to create,
especially with all those tests of streaming to Twitch,
but hopefully you've found it useful.
If you've reached this point in the video,
I'd really appreciate it if you gave the video a thumbs up,
and as always, I'll catch you guys in the next video.
Peace!
My days I need a haircut badly.
When are the hairdressers going to open?
- [Video Game] Last player standing.
(shots being fired)
One enemy remaining.
30 seconds left.
Clutch!