I have determined having a dual pc setup for streaming is best to accomplish the best gaming and multi-streaming experience. I am trying to figure out if I can piece together a streaming rig with the hardware I have now or if I need to upgrade my rig and use old rig to stream. I am trying to simulcast to 5 different sites at once at 1080p60. The best cpu I have available is an i7-3770. I have multiple gpus available to choose from: 970, 980ti, 1050ti. I would prefer not to use the 980ti unless it is necessary. The 9xx series have two NVENC chips on them(I do not know if that makes them better or not) and the 1050ti has more encoding support than the 9xx series. The max concurrent sessions for all nvidia gpus is five. I am looking for some guidance on what hardware a streaming computer would need to perform what I require. How much ram will this system require? Can I get away with 8gb total? I may have to buy better ram or a CPU cooler or motherboard to Lego piece this together. That Is why I am considering just upgrading. I have 13 old dell desktops laying around that I am trying to use. So it is all proprietary parts which sucks because it will have issues somewhere whether its amount of dimm slots, psu requirements, pcie slots, etc.
for simulcasting a game stream, the 3770 will be more than enough.
stick in the 1050ti for its nvenc support, 8 gig of ram, and your pretty much good to go as a host server for a single game stream.
then its a case of do you have the bandwidth to allow 4 more connections.
you wanted 5 connections yesterday, so twitch will take anything from 800kbps 600x480 to 8Mbps for 1080p60
so 5x8Mbps do you have upto 40Mb+ upload speed?.
there’s also the bandwidth requirements to play your games on top
addendum.
if your still thinking of hosting a plex.
its a little less demanding for a single stream as its limited to 30fps regardless of resolution.
but there’s also a problem here
internet speed will determine the bitrate you can broadcast at, and plex transcodes on the fly if it needs to.
when does it need to?.
it will start transcoding if your internet bitrate is smaller than the medias native bitrate.
meaning if your internet is 20Mb up and the media your streaming is 40Mb source.
plex will transcode 40Mb to 20Mb on the fly.
as a result you can quickly find your cpu and system bogged down as it tries to transcode the streams to a lower bitrate to fit your internet speed.
add more users, increases limits on internet bandwidth, forces plex to transcode even harder. and becomes a spiral into bottlenecking.
How do you intend to get the video to be streamed into the streaming PC?
Via local network (eg NDI), HDMI/SDI capture (internal/external).
For handling lots of streams, you could offload some I/O and streaming duty to something like an Atem Mini. Keep in mind bitrate and bandwidth limitations as @HEXiT mentioned.
Plex server was for a friend. I like getting everyone’s thoughts here because everyone here is smarter than me. I do have a plex server, but it will be off during these times.
As for internet speed I currently have 41Mb up and willing to upgrade to 200Mb up(the next plan up). Stupid xfinity network is outdated and there upload speeds suck. They are the only provider where I currently live which sucks as well. I used to have verizion with gig up and down which was nice.
Do yourself a favour, & just use one PC to stream. There is not really much need to have a dual PC streaming setup in 2023. The quality of encoding on modern GPUs is pretty decent. Especially on the Nvidia side with NVENC. They have dedicated chips on them just for streaming/recording, so you don’t get much of a performance hit on gaming. Not to mention when AV1 is supported by streaming sites.
A dual PC setup can be a nightmare. You will need to plug in & wire up two computers. You will have cables everywhere. Extra monitors, extra keyboards etc… You will use twice the power. I expect syncing audio from the microphone with the game audio will be problematic, & just a pain in the butt.
With regard to streaming to multiple sites; I don’t think you have to encode the video five times. You can just do it once, & then send it to five different locations. So you don’t need a beefy computer; just hella internet bandwidth. But your best bet is to just use a dedicated service like Restream. They will just stream it to multiple platforms for you.
I would prefer one pc streaming if possible. I tried with my rig and my gpu was at 100% and I was having issues. It definitely could be my internet and I plan on upgrading soon. So I will try it and if it is not able to handle gaming and streaming to five sites I will go to a dual pc setup.
As for Restream or any paid service. I would rather not spend extra money. I already have to pay more to upgrade my internet because xfinitys(comcast) infrastructure sucks and upload speeds are low.
Well streaming shouldn’t really hit the performance of the card much. Like I said, they have dedicated chips for streaming/recording. The 980 is still a half decent card. & will run last gen (PS4 era) games. Maybe you could limit the frame rate, to prevent the card from maxing out.
Think how much it will add to your energy bill, running two computers all the time. Plus streaming to five different platforms is going to require at least 30-40Mbps upload speeds. So you will have to fork out for that each month, too.
My 3080 hits 100% when gaming and trying to stream to those five sites. I do not want to sacrifice my gaming at all. I play at 3440x1440 and I try to get 175hz when ever possible.
I already am paying for 41Mb upload. So if I can get away with it I will not upgrade my internet.
Ever seen how cheap an E5 2667V2 is? Those ‘chinese X79’ boards CPU encode on a slower preset, throw whatever GPU on it.
Or the other hardware you have, 3770 doing only that… do it.
Thank you. I am still open to solutions until I get the two parts I need to finish the build next week. I just was having issues and my 3080 was at 100% and seemed like that was the cause of the issues.