Two PC Streaming Setup - Would this hardware work?

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1

Greetings all!

Ive been looking into getting into streaming for abit, but due to funds and moving around alot my computers have mostly been laptops and never been able to handle streaming and playing games at the same time that well... or even doing local recordings while playing.

Since my main PC is a laptop... I tend to play at 720p on most newer games (overwatch/MWO/fractured space). Although it handles older games at 1080p with no issue. However the CPU gets taxed alot when i try to record, either via streaming (game becomes choppy) or via local recording (the recording itself becomes choppy)

However... I have accumulated a collection of discarded and old pieces of tech from family/dumpsters, and after watching the NGINX video and having learnt some linux before... and literally falling asleep on the bus and realising i had enough parts to do this while dreaming.., I hope to try a 2 PC streaming setup.

Id like to be able to stabling and reliably stream games either live, or if needbe just "locally" record it then separately upload it later after editing.

This is what I have at my disposal:

Lenovo Laptop (My main computer right now, recently outfitted with an SSD after its HDD died)
- Haswell i5, 2.5GHz
- Nvidia GT740m with Optimus
- 12GB 1600MHz RAM

Acer Laptop (Broken laptop that I got working again, no screen/keyboard. Had planned it using it as some sort of server)
- 1st Gen i7-720QM 1.6GHz
- ATI Mobility HD5850 1gb DDR3
- 16GB 1066MHz RAM
- Two 2.5" HDD bays (and i got myself sata+power cable extenders)

Lenovo Laptop #2 (Given to me with failed HDD after a relative upgraded to new system)
- 1st Gen i5 2.5-ish GHz
- ATI Mobility HD56XX 1GB DDR3
- 4/8 GB 1066 MHz RAM

Junkheap Samba Server (My proud amalgamation of dumpster dived desktop PC parts that I got working and am using for random server related purposes)
- Pentium Dual Core E5200
- GeForce 9600GT (not used right now, but available and working if any form of GPU encoding is possible)
- 2GB RAM
- 750GB (Ubuntu) and 2TB (Samba share) HDDs installed (only 2 sata port on mobo)
- Has both inbuilt NIC and a PCI(not E) NIC expansion card

Super Old former Desktop (Still works! Just gotta stick the northbridge heatsink back on again...)
- Pentium 4 2.26GHz
- Geforce MX440
- 2GB RAM
- 80GB HDD

Now my current plan:
- Lenovo laptop obviously is going to be handling the games.
- I'm iffy between the Acer's slower i7 or 2nd Lenovo's faster i5 as the streaming server (or are they both too slow?)
- I have some discarded and working 100mbit switches to connect this all together with and 100mbit fibre broadband which is quite stable. (my whole home network is currently 100mbit due to the laptops'/server inbuilt NICs)

I wont be able to attempt this till these next few weekends but I wanted to have you guys' and gals' opinions on this setup and if you think it would work (or any minimal/no cost changes could be made)

Thanks much!
-Cole

2

I have no experience streaming with two machines, but I did want to drop in and let you know what you have as far as hardware goes.

Your daily driver Lenovo SHOULD be able to handle 720p streaming on its own, assuming that there are no thermal/power limits. The hardware certainly isn't cutting edge, but it's no slouch. I'm seeing that a lot of brand new games throttle hard however.

That said, the beheaded Acer is a proper powerhouse, albeit an old one. If you were up for the task, you can pack a slightly quicker CPU into there and flash the GPU firmware up to a faster model. The i7 being a proper quad-core gives it a bit of a boost in streaming capabilities, but the GPU will be the bottleneck here.

Your last Lenovo is not going to be much help at all, really. Might be best to sell it off and put some money in your pocket.

In fact, I would honestly recommend you sell the laptops for what you can and push for a proper PC for streaming. If you absolutely need to stay mobile, then get a gaming laptop with reasonable specs from the 2011 - 2013 time period. There are a few models that frequently resell for around $500 and are what I would consider the minimum spec for streaming at 720p.

Those models would be:

Sager NP8150 / NP9150
Alienware M15X-R2 / M17X
Or even a later Toshiba Qosmio (such as this X775-Q7380)

Important to note that if you CAN cobble together a desktop, it can be done for under $500 with careful selection of used parts.

Editing in a clarification: I am NOT suggesting you cannot pull this off with the machines you currently have, but I am suggesting you can convert those machines into a single capable machine if you were inclined to do so.

3

To be honest 2 PC streaming introduces far more hurdles to jump over than is worth dealing with in some cases. Personal case, 2 different i7 systems (6700k, 980ti for gaming) (5820k, 960) for the streaming/local recording. Audio refused to go between the two unless I had the audio played out loud and not through my headphones which then caused my microphone to also be played out loud like talkback and then when the tv played sound it looped itself over and over because of the mic hearing itself. So audio alone was a bitch. Video was a bit finicky but I managed to get it working within about an hour or so at full 1080p 60fps thanks to my streaming cpu handling ONLY the streaming and none of the gaming. The obvious plus side to dual pc setups. In the end I never got the audio to cooperate with me. Scrapped the idea when I moved and sold the "streaming" pc for some spare cash to a buddy when my truck blew the trans.

4

Well without a capture card sounds difficult. What you might want to do is setup Steam in home streaming, start streaming locally the game from your Lenovo laptop to the Acer one. Then start broadcasting with the Acer but play the game from the Lenovo one. You could even set the transmission quality to the max because what matters when you stream is not the delay but the quality. You can add a webcam even and use OBS to capture everything from the Acer laptop.

P.S. Steam in home streaming won't use more than 100Mbit so you're good with a 100Mbit NICs and switch.

5

Thanks for the comments

The 2nd hand market here doesn't really exist for DIY or fiddly bits so selling the old laptops wouldn't get very far.... and the acer im quite proud of fixing after all the stuff i had to do to it.

Also part of the fun of this is solving any issues, such as the mentioned audio problems that could occur.

Steam stream is something i'll check out and see