One of the first things an amateur streamer will look to upgrade is their equipment. It's a highly debated choice, and one that has created quite a few heated debates in the past. Some people feel that equipment upgrades are a waste of money, while others see them as essential to upping the quality of their stream.
Without going to much into that debate, I will say that I believe upgrades to your setup are a viable tool for increasing your stream's quality. I don't believe it's the only way to up the quality of your stream, but it is an option. One that I've taken.
A little backstory
Before we get into my current build, I want to talk briefly about how I started. I began streaming on a laptop back in April 2017. Around the end of 2017, I began accumulating parts that were on sale to build a dedicated streaming/gaming rig.
So there have been big changes to my setup since acquiring that PC. I will however say, that streaming on the laptop worked just fine for a while and didn't hold me back from accumulating a large part of my 930+ subscribers on YouTube. Off the top of my head, the stats for that laptop were as follows:
- i7-7000HQ
- 16GB of Kingston HyperX RAM
- 1TB Hybrid SSD
- Nvidia 960M (forget the VRAM)
My wife still uses that laptop and we game together occasionally with it. If you're going to use a laptop, I highly recommend an i7 as a minimum since laptop cpus are throttled due to heat and energy requirements.
The setup you're all here for
Alright, I know you're all waiting for me to discuss my current setup, and I'll run down everything for you, along with my reasoning for it all.
Let's start with the furniture.
Furniture
- Respawn Gaming Chair
- Ikea Linmon Desk with Adils Legs
The furniture is pretty simple, and the category I'm next looking to upgrade. My desk is an Ikea linmon tabletop with grey adils legs. Nothing fancy, but it's cheap and gets the job done.
The chair is something that I upgraded only recently as the Ikea chair I was previously using began to break under my weight. I'm a pretty heavy guy, and at the time of buying the chair I was 260lbs. A lot of the decision making for the chair was simply finding one that would support my weight for as cheap as possible, and the respawn chair fit the bill.
I've now lost a lot of weight and am down to around 230lbs, and because of that, I'll likely consider getting a different chair. This is because, while the respawn chair looks nice, I have concerns about its durability. I'm already on my second chair as the first one I received broke. Either way, pay attention to the weight your chair supports before buying it. You may end up needed to buy two like I did if you're on the heavier side.
Peripherals
- Walmart Daul Mount Monitor Arm
- Two AOC 21" 1080p 60hz Monitors
- ETRobot Mechanical Gaming Keyboard
- Logitech G502
- ATH M50x
- Pecham XL Mouse Pad
- Grifiti Wrist Pad
- Some Cheap LED Desk Lamp
- A Headphone Holder/Cable Management Hybrid Thing from Amazon
- TrackHat Setup
- Logitech C922
Next, the peripherals. Most of the gear here has no impact on the quality of the stream, but is for comfort. I'll start by covering the things which I feel do have a major impact on the stream.
First, the webcam. I had a nice Logitech one and it's actually what serves as my microphone at the moment. The webcam is perfect for capturing my face, but its microphone has a wide pickup range that captures A LOT of background noise. I've already ordered an Antlion Mod Mic 5 to remedy this issue.
Another feature which impacts streaming is the dual monitor setup. I consider a dual monitor setup a must for streamers as it enables you to manage your chat, make on the fly adjustments to stream settings, and interact with discord without interupting the capture of your game. My setup is on a nice dual monitor mount so I can turn the left screen sideways. I feel this better uses the space for reading chat than 2 landscape screens would. Additionally, it uses less desk space, and my desk isn't that big!
Other than that, I've got this ETRobot mechanical gaming keyboard which I actually got for free in exchange for posting a review on my YouTube channel. The wrist pad and mouse pad are pure comfort choices, as is the logitech mouse. The mouse is actually something that remedied a lot of wrist discomfort I was experiencing. I use a claw grip and my prior mouse just wasn't built for that.
Underneat the desk, I have a headphone holder/cable management thing I got off amazon. I find that it's too common for my headphones to fall off, so I just use it to keep my charging cables nicely tucked under my desk.
Speaking of headphones, I picked up a pair of these limited edition red ATH M50x recently and I love them. ATH produces a great product and has awesome support to boot. My son lost one of the accessories that came with the headphones and they shipped the part out free of charge to me. Definitely made me a customer for life with that move.
I also use a track hat setup when playing games that enable headtracking. It really ups the immersion and in games like War Thunder, gives me a slight edge.
The PC Build
- DIYPC IllusionII-BR Black Case
- MSI X370 Gaming Plus Motherboard
- EVGA 1050 TI FTW
- 2x8 GB Corsair Vengence Red LED (clockd to 2933 MHz)
- Hitachi-HGST Ultrastar 3TB (Refurbished)
- Ryzen 7 1700 w/ Wraith Cooler (3.7 GHz OC at 1.275 vCPU)
- Corsair CX550
- Corsair ML120 Pro Led Case Fan
Ah, the heart of my streaming setup. This is the PC that I built towards the end of last year, and it has served me remarkably well. There have been a few hiccups with the setup, mostly related to MSI's drivers and sofwtare, but other than that this is my best purchase for streaming in 2017. Out of everything I bought, this is the thing I would most recommend.
I'll walk you through the build, why I chose what I did, and what I'd change. For starters, let's talk the case. I hate this case. It looks amazing but has piss poor cooling. I've removed the front tempered glass panel just to get airflow where my CPU won't overheat, and even though the case was cheap, I'd recommend looking for something else.
Next, the motherboard. Specs wise, and price wise it's really good. The motherboard has run flawlessly, but the drivers and software that MSI provides seem to be riddled with bugs, and nearly always have something broken. Which is a shame because it really is a quality component.
The graphics card was motivated more from an economical standpoint than anything, and is one of my system's few weakpoints. Still it has enough power to run pretty much every game I throw at it, though not always at the highest settings.
The ram and power supply were mostly chosen based on sale prices, and thats it. When building this PC, I made it a point to follow reddits's r/buildapcsales to find components for super cheap. Altogether the build cost me around $800 because I waited for sales and jumped on them.
The CPU is the most important component seeing as this is my streaming and gaming PC. If you're going to be streaming and gaming at the same time, Ryzen beats out Intel, and the 7 1700 is probably the best consumer level CPU you can get for the task. Mine overclocks pretty well, but is limited by the poor cooling ability of my case. I have no doubt I could push this core to 4.0 if I purchased a better case and upgraded cooling.
Speaking of cooling, the corsair case fan was purchased as a replacement for one of the fans that broke in the case. This fan however has served me really well and solved much of the CPU overheating issue thanks to its great performance. If I get a new case setup, I'll likely deck it out entirely with the ML120 fans.
Stream Settings
Lastly, I wanted to discuss my stream settings. Here are the basics. I use OBS to stream and I stream to Youtube, Twitch, and DLive simultaneously with Restream. Here's a rundown of the OBS settings:
- Encoder: x264
- Output: 1280x720 at 30 FPS
- Rate Control: CBR
- Keyframe Interval: 2
- Bitrate: 2000
- CPU Preset: Fast
- Profile: Main
- Audio Sample Rate: 48khz
- Audio Bitrate: 96
- Downscale Filter: Lanczoz
Here's why I chose what I did. Starting with the encoder, x264 is the encoder which using your CPU to encode your stream. This is great for a setup like this one in which we have a good processor, but if your processors isn't up to the task you can choose to encode your stream with your graphics card. Using your graphics card will result in a lower quality however, especially at low bitrates.
Speaking of bitrate, mine is set to 2000 as it is the best bitrate for streaming to DLive without a ton of buffering. (Special thanks to the DUnite discord for pointing that out to me. Join it.)
With such a low bitrate, pushing 1080 or 60 frames will only lower the quality of the stream. So, I've set the output to 1280x720 at 30 fps. This should result in a nice quality at a lower bitrate, especially when combined with a better CPU preset.
My CPU preset at the time of this writing is Fast, but I'll likely bump this up in tonights stream. I'm constantly tweaking settings to see what my system can push as its maximum performance.
Profile, Keyframe interval, audio bitrate, and Rate Control are all set to Twitch's recommended settings. Basically, these settings make the stream easier to load for their servers as well as your viewers.
Lastly, we've got the downscaling filter which I've set to Lanczoz (highest quality). This is pretty resource intensive and if your system can't handle it, don't be afraid to set it a lower setting. Just note this will really impact your quality during fast moving scenes.
Oh, I also use restream chat and stream labels to keep tabs on who follows/donates on YouTube and Twitch. Here's what my screens usually look like when streaming:
Conclusion
And that's all! Let me know what you think in the comments below, and feel free to share how your settings differ. Also, don't hesitate to ask questions. I'll do my best to answer all of them. :)