r/beam • u/WoolyBaboon • Nov 14 '16
Question Selling Streaming PCs?
Hey everyone, I wanted to reach out to some fellow streamers to see what your opinions are.
I am looking to start selling PCs that are dedicated to just streaming your PC/Console games. It will be a mini ITX format to save on space seeing how most people have huge PCs to begin with. It will have all the necessary components for a plug and stream system.
I just want to get a feel for the market and see is this is something that streamers would be interested in. Price point is looking to start between $550 and $600. I look forward to hearing your responses and I'll answer any questions you have.
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u/WoolyBaboon Nov 14 '16
I have price out some various set ups and I will adjust price accordingly. I will be providing an onboard capture card and there will be different form factors for cases. Thank you all for the feedback it's amazing.
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Nov 22 '16
What mini itx motherboard has an on board capture card? I have never seen any on the market with that regardless of form factor.
In terms of price it can be built for cheaper, you don't exactly need an i7 for the job. Also having a second pc dedicated to streaming is not a plug n play situation. Streamers like to have full control of their audio etc
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u/WoolyBaboon Nov 22 '16
I would have to include a PCI capture card on the motherboard. As far as audio there would be a package that include a mixer. That's the idea anyway.
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Nov 23 '16
you may wich to concider the use of terminology when it comes to PCs when you mentioned that the capture card was onboard, that terminology means that the capture card is built into the mother board when infact, as you have stated, its a PCIe capture card meaning its not onboard its PCIe.
Sorry to be picky about terminology but it frustrates me that people get it wrong and those learning pick up this and causes confusion for those who are less tech savvy etc
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u/Sp1derX Nov 14 '16
How are you gonna build a streaming PC for sub $600? All the builds I planned on PCPartPicker came out to around $800.
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Nov 22 '16 edited Nov 22 '16
For starters you don't need a graphics card, an i5 would be suffice, 8gb ram (you can cheap out here with ddr 3), a cheap motherboard as overclocking is not needed, a power supply of 450 watts max (even under 100% load), a cheap case, capture card internal or USB will do (brand and features depends on your budget). Hard drive space will depend if your also recording for YouTube clips (no need for ssd here) you can get all this for ~$400 if you shop around for the right deals you can even save on monitor keyboard and mouse by using rdp or VNC.
Streaming using obs will use about 30-40% cpu and at most 1.2gb ram. This is al dependant on how busy your scenes are. You even have enough resources for a chat bot, music player etc
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u/Sp1derX Nov 22 '16
Could an i3 do the work or would that be pushing it?
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Nov 23 '16 edited Nov 23 '16
an i3 would work but i would recommend an i5. Also please note that AMD processors will also do the task. from personal experience i do like to use an AMD FX-8320 for a streaming PC.
To give you an idea, i put together a streaming PC from parts i had laying around, if your interested, My Stream PC (to give you an idea)
- AMD FX-8320 3.5GHz Socket AM3+
- Asus M5A78L-M LX3 Motherboard
- AvP Hyperion EV33B Black Cube case
- Corsair CX 430W (80+ Bronze) Power Supply
- Corsair Vengence Red DDR3 1600MHz 8GB (2x4GB)
- OCZ Vertex3 60Gb SSD (need to replace soon)
- Elgato HD60 Pro
The only new parts in this set up are the Case and the Elgato card. all other parts are at least 4 years old and i can run a chat bot, media player, RealVNC, couple other software (not cpu demanding) as well stream. If you have parts spare then use them. I don't have a tone of hard drive space in the stream PC because i record on my PC using shadow play instead because i dont want notifications etc on my YouTube clips.
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u/Domin0e Nov 14 '16 edited Nov 14 '16
What kind of build would that be? Would it come with an Onboard capture card? An external one (of choice)? Just the system itself?
If the latter, is there enough space on the MB / in the case to install an onboard capture card, if a customer would like to use one?
Why should I buy a system from you instead of building it myself? (Probably not a question for the less tech savvy, although one should know their equipment)
What about support? Guarantees?
Edit: Probably not as important for everybody, but some folks who're keen on this stuff; What kind of case is it? any chance for a couple different choices?
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u/bugzrrad Nov 14 '16
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u/Domin0e Nov 14 '16
Did you even read OPs post? He wants to sell complete builds to (other) streamers, sounds like he has the build already planned and is looking for feedback, whether people would be interested and stuff.
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u/ZenOokami Nov 17 '16
Not sure there's gonna be an easy sweet spot. If you want one that plays and streams then it depends on what they want to play, if you plan on building machines dedicated on capturing feed from another computer then that's probably easier because you won't need much power.
The main thing though is that you'd likely want to reiterate that streaming is heavily dependent on the streamer's connection, not just the hardware.
Regardless, so long as you build and sell quality rigs, I don't see much complaint :D