How to Find the Best Desktop Computer for Live Streaming

Live streaming is a multi-billion-dollar industry. Arguably the most important factor in delivering a rich and silky experience when watching a live stream is the hardware powering it. In this article, we’re looking at the finest machines for live streaming, whether you’re an expert professional or your brand new to the industry.

You will need a PC with top-of-the-line processors, lots of RAM and storage space, and fast internet connections.

Features

PC streaming requires serious hardware to be effective. A top CPU, graphics card and RAM are a must. The CPU is the breadwinner, having to perform most of the work required to process a gaming feed. At all costs, you need a high-core count with ideally a 3.0 GHz+ clock speed to deliver.

With storage, with data transfer speeds that help cut down load times and eliminate Black Lotus that frustrating pause when you’re streaming a show, with the added reliability that ensures your files and apps are functioning properly should a mechanical failure occur with a traditional hard drive.

For gaming, you need powerful GPU with its own memory to provide for a smooth and buttery game play. An amazing GPU would not only help you to reduce lost frames in the video game but also to cut the long time for the processing of 3D rendering video during a stream.

Processor

The processor (or CPU) is one of the most valuable components of a gaming PC, but it’s even more important in a streamer’s workstation. It’s the core count/threads and clock speed of your processor that determine how well the computer streams and games, so it’s important to invest in a high-end CPU as any cutbacks here will affect both gaming and stream quality.

Intel’s Core i5 13600K processor, a great pick for streamers, boasts a hybrid architecture of eight performance cores and eight efficiency cores, rendering multitasking easy; with these upgrades, you can encode videos much faster than before.

If you’ll be streaming large amounts of footage or storing a great deal of game files, seek out a PC with a large SSD. An MSI SPATIUM 1TB M450 PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD offers explosive read/write speeds for easy access to your content, and it has a five-year warranty too.

Graphics Card

For PC gaming and streaming, a good PC setup must comprise a powerful graphics card to deliver seamless gameplay and visualise your content in HD quality.

A speedy Internet connection is also recommended for a gaming and streaming PC, so that you can play games and stream them without any lags or interruptions. Perhaps you may even favour a model with more RAM and storage space.

GPU-wise: for gaming and streaming, Nvidia’s 40-series RTX reigns supreme, especially the latest models, which have strong ray tracing and DLSS (a deep-learning super sampling technique to upscale games) onboard, and upscaling at very fast speeds. Where there is a higher barrier to entry versus AMD’s cards in the same league, you’ll enjoy superior performance. They additionally support more potent ‘NVENC’ encoders (for video compression) compared to Intel or AMD’s hardware encoding, and are compatible with a new graphics API known as DirectX 12, bringing more bells and whistles to games in the form of new features, such as a more realistic virtual reality experience, and improved frame rates, jacking up the enjoyment of gaming sessions.

Inputs & Outputs

Moreover, if you have a camera plus two microphones to plug in, you will probably have more USB ports to spare by getting a desktop computer, which can easily accommodate a keyboard, a mouse, an audio mixer, and still leave extra ports available (unlike a laptop).

A streaming rig’s most important requirement is the ability to handle large files quickly and efficiently, which necessitates a blog fast and powerful processor. Encode your audio and screen into a digital file that’s ready to go online with tunes, games and video, and a lot of a CPU’s capability will be tied up.

You should get a computer with 4-16 cores, depending on how you are planning on using it and the quality of the stream you are trying to achieve. At a bare minimum, you will need 8 GB of RAM for your stream, but if you want to multitask plenty during your streams, you may need more than 8 GB. lastly, you should definitely get a solid graphics card for your streaming and gaming PC. You will get the most performance per dollar with an extreme graphics card, but you can have great success with a mid-range graphic card as well.