The Dream: Dual PC Streaming Setup
Update: Goal Achieved! Thank you guys so much! I like to thank GuyChicago, MiddleAgedSTream, Witbot, Jhordan, Nimbly, Fettup, CapN, Aegon, Tiffanaiya, Nackers, SpeedDemon, 03Termi, BroBQ, DilPickle, Gottsmote, Not_Hanna, Gitm0, Blackwrath, MechaDangerous, MSA, Xacnetwork, KR239, DarkerBlitz, Sonickon, Cleanerwings777, KillerDuster, WRXMarty, Tapramen, Snarky_one, TheArbor, Rhaven, Avidtigerian, MIADolphins, Butterkuhp and WallyTreats for your support. Without you guys, this would have NEVER happened.
I love streaming on Twitch. In fact, I’ve been doing it for just over 3 years now (My anniversary is March 19th). Streaming takes something I love, “gaming”, and pairs it with something else I love, “talking to and entertaining people”. I feel very lucky to be where I am now in the twitch universe. I get to play games and stream 3 times a week while being accompanied by a bunch of super awesome, helpful and nice people. I even get to use my hobby to help raise money for St. Jude & Extra Life. But I feel like to FULLY appreciate where I am now, I have to look back where I started, my roots.
3 years ago I created a twitch channel for my pc gaming community, GSN Gaming. After hours and hours of research and testing, I did my first stream, I loved it and I kept going! The GSN Gaming channel allowed me to stream to and for an audience of people I knew and at the same time allowed me to show outsiders what an awesome community we had. I streamed everything I could: Playing on GSN game servers, community events, the gsn weekly talk show and even some play throughs of single player games. I had so much fun, and learned so much. I wanted to keep going. Eventually I started streaming on my personal channel as well.
Source: https://www.twitch.tv/gsngaming/v/50492914
The Hardware (Gotta Start Somewhere)
I didn’t always have a great computer when I started streaming. In fact I started off with 2 random 1080p 60hz monitors, i7-2600k, GTX 570, 8GB of Ram, 360p lifecam and a logitech G920 headset. Yes, even though my hardware starting out wasn’t that great and it made streaming tough, I loved it and couldn’t quit. I always did my best to put out the best looking and sounding stream and it was something I took pride in.
Over the past few years my viewers have always been so supportive of me and this allowed me to invest back into the audio/video production of my channel with things like a green screen, better webcam, better lighting, a capture card, standalone microphone/mixer, games and even building my last computer. The truth is, I couldn’t have done it alone. And I can’t tell you guys enough how thankful I am. Your support helps me continue to do something I love. Insert the feels (seriously). So what's the next step I can take to improve my channel?
The Future: Dual PC Streaming Setup
As video games get more advanced and resource hungry, it gets harder to play and stream them in high quality at the same time without big performance loss. A dual pc setup is exactly what it sounds like. It’s two PC’s splitting up the workload of streaming. This allows the gaming pc to play the most resource intensive games at the highest quality settings, while allowing the streaming pc to use every % of it’s CPU to capture and encode, resulting in an amazing sounding stream with no performance loss. So, what's my plan?
Stream PC: My current PC will become the streaming PC. The i7 4930K 6-core CPU is made for tasks like H.264 encoding and will allow me to run a medium CPU preset at 720p/60fps @ 2500 bitrate. This computer also has an audio card and capture card ready to go.
Gaming PC: The plan is to build a new gaming PC from the ground up. Last week I streamed us picking out the parts and here is the final part list*: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/kt9NkL It’s going to be powerful enough to play any new games and built to be dependable.
*What about GPU, Keyboard, Mouse, etc. I’m taking the MSI 980 from my stream pc and putting it in the gaming pc. Then putting an old GTX 780 I have laying around in the stream machine. I have extra mice and keyboards laying all over my office.
The estimated cost for this build is around $1,800. So far, I've saved up just under $1,300 from donations and selling my twitchie website template. That leaves a goal of $500. (A special shoutout goes to GuyChicago <3. If it weren’t for him, an idea for a stream PC wouldn’t even exist.) So how the hell do I expect to get the rest of the money?
Tips: https://www.twitchalerts.com/donate/thebadbadrobot
Twitchie website template: http://twitchie.tv
Twitch channel graphic design work (Need channel art? Let me know!)
I don’t expect us to hit this goal overnight or even next week. In fact it could take months, but I thought it was important that I make a goal so I have something to strive towards! Once again, I can’t tell you guys how much it means to me that you guys hang out with me every week. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
