Upgrading PC for Game Streaming

[Sanji Himura]

Specs (as cited by Speccy) listed in the image below:

Monday night, I was streaming a PC game and I noticed that there were a few frame drops in the stream, and as a result, the stream crashed on me and was forced to end the stream early. Now seeing as I do this for 2 hours a day 6 nights a week at bare minimum, I know that I have to upgrade my PC to meet the stress of streaming. Obviously, an upgrade of the GPU is a must, and I do have upgrade plans for that, but if there is anything else that I have missed, this is why this thread exists.

 

[TB]

I know nothing about AMD so I'll just throw out a few things off the top of my head.

It doesn't look like you can upgrade the CPU enough to be worthwhile without also changing the motherboard. Have you looked at the CPU usage while you're streaming?

Are both computers running through a gigabit network? If not, switches are cheap.

Is that two 4Gb sticks of RAM? If not, a second stick wouldn't hurt.

And yes, the obvious upgrade would be the GPU.

 

[Kryption]

Also, agreeing with @TB , check the temperatures as well for the gpu and cpu, it does affect the speed I noticed especially with streaming.

 

[Pillo-san]

I guess you are an old simracer that buys new sim gear and crap but never ever upgrades the pc, I see this all the time.
I understand why sim racing games looks so outdated when their "customers" never upgrade...

It can be everything from dust on on the cpucooler, or the thermal paste have dried up, 73c at idle seems high. Watch what temps it gets to at load. Can also be that the VRM on the motherboard is going bad, that is if you are experiencing shutdowns and such. Then I would say:
Get more ram, better gpu, and a ssd for a better streaming experience. But to be honest I would buy a new system instead. Like at least an intel i7 for streaming or the new AMD Ryzen.

 

[Nexus]

You might find this useful for monitoring your CPU temps - http://www.tomshardware.com/faq/id-2122665/understanding-temperature-amd-cpus-apus.html

On the topic of GPU upgrades, keep in mind that if you're planning on buying something like an RX 480, you'll be bottlenecked by your CPU quite a bit unless you plan on overclocking.

Source: A friend of mine had an FX 6300 + RX 480. He was originally unable to maintain 60 fps @1080P on BF1, but overclocking his CPU to 4.3 GHz allowed him to do 60 fps @1440P.

 

[Sanji Himura]

It doesn't look like you can upgrade the CPU enough to be worthwhile without also changing the motherboard. Have you looked at the CPU usage while you're streaming?

Yes. I average 73-85% usage on my CPU. The broadcasting software that I use shows the CPU usage numbers while I am streaming.

Are both computers running through a gigabit network?

Not sure what you are referencing. I'm using a wired connection instead of wifi.

Is that two 4Gb sticks of RAM?

Yes, that is 2x4GB RAM.

I guess you are an old simracer that buys new sim gear and crap but never ever upgrades the pc, I see this all the time.

This isn't by choice. If I had my way, I would have had these upgrades done a long time ago.

It can be everything from dust on on the cpucooler, or the thermal paste have dried up, 73c at idle seems high. Watch what temps it gets to at load.

If it is of any relevance, the Speccy program shows that I get extremely hot at load. So it could be the thermal paste has dried up.

 

[sesselpupser]

I think @TB may have misunderstood and thought you meant Steam game streaming rather than video streaming of gameplay. I'm assuming, from your post, that you mean you're streaming to a service like Twitch - especially since I've tried Steam streaming in far from ideal circumstances and it has never actually crashed because of dropping some frames.

I would say it's probably time for an entirely new build. I've put together what I'd buy on a $600, $700 and $1,000 (all ± (mostly plus) 10%) budget and one that represents the most you should spend ($1,500) if you've got a 1080p 60Hz monitor which is admittedly quite decadent (two PCIe SSDs!). Going below $600 will be pointless, I think, and you may have noticed I haven't specified any AMD parts (because I don't know anything about them, I've never had a good experience with AMD (not even their FirePro cards!) so I never recommend them) so there is some room for cost cutting there.

But if an entirely new PC is out of the question I'd start by using MSI Afterburner to watch your CPU and GPU utilisation when your PC is struggling with streaming, then you can figure out where the bigger problem is and upgrade that first, then the other later. Just looking at your specs it's likely that both processors are at their limit, though, so only upgrading one won't really help you which is why I think you need an entirely new PC. As @TwinTurbo LM said you could overclock the CPU to give it a little more ability but at the end of the day, it's still an old CPU that doesn't even compare favourably to a last-generation i3 and it will need to go eventually if you want to keep up. Redo the thermal paste and maybe buy a new cooler before you do, AMD makes (or at least used to) notoriously hot CPUs.

What kinds of games are you streaming?

 

[Sanji Himura]

Mainly low-end PC games.

As a somewhat of an update, because my rig is 3 years old, I called the people who built it for their input as well. It turns out that my rig's power supply may be going out. So I will have to spend some money on at least a 970 (since that is what my CPU can handle) if I want to upgrade my GPU short term.

 

[Dave A]

A short term GPU purchase is throwing money away IMO, just save so you can get a new PC or change everythiing you need to together. GPU's aren't cheap so buying one knowing that you'll need to replace it shortly after doesn't make sense to me.

 

[AOS-]

I agree. Always future proof. Don't let impulse and the urge to buy whatever's available right away win you over.

For the amount of money I spent building my computer, people can build more powerful PCs at a fraction of the cost because they have the patience to find the better prices. At the time, I just grabbed whatever I could find that was compatible with the mobo and just kept going from there.