“and with that…i think this build is…done?”

After many months of planning, saving, and countless messages exchanged with my PC sherpa fakeghostpiraterobot, I’d arrived at a place I never thought I’d reach. The money was ready. The parts were picked. All I had to do now was go shopping.

A few pickups and deliveries later, I finally was in possession of everything I needed to build a new PC.

“that’s going to be an awesome computer for a long time.”

For those that might be interested, here’s the thinking behind my new PC build.

What I need it to do

• Stream 1080p, 60 fps, 6,000 mb/s
• Record at 1080p, 60fps, at about 15,000 mb/s
• Support for capture cards as old as the Elgato Game Capture HD60 S
• Improved speed for video editing and exporting

My old computer has some serious limitations. Can’t stream in 1080p 30 fps or 720p 60 fps without it melting. It also can’t support any capture cards newer than the Elgato Game Capture HD. Because this capture card is a USB 2.0 device, I have to adjust all of my sources to match the 900ms delay inherent to my gameplay. Having to delay my cameras, microphones, and browser sources that much causes weird hitches in my cameras when I shift scenes. Also, since browser sources cap out at 500ms, I can’t seamlessly switch from playing a video game to reacting to a YouTube video without being out of sync with at least one of the two sources.

What I don’t need it to do

• Stream and play games at the same time*
• Stream or record in 4K

Streaming and playing games at the same time is incredibly demanding on any PC. However, I haven’t actively played games on PC in decades and have little ambition of doing so going forward. Maybe it’ll be good enough for certain Humble Bundle indies or even Xbox exclusive games in the future. But right now, my primary focus is streaming, which doesn’t require me to have the beefiest PC.

As of right now, 4K isn’t a priority, either. I don’t have monitors to display in 4K. Building a PC to handle 4K video would drive the price up considerably. The max upload speed offered by my ISP wouldn’t handle recommended bitrates for uploading 4K video. Finally, Twitch doesn’t even support 4K video right now. I can revisit this aspect down the road.

Parts I already have

• ASUS GEForce GTX 1060
• EVGA 600 watt power supply
• 500GB SSD

New parts I just bought

AMD Ryzen 7 3700X Processor

The biggest bottleneck in my old PC is the processor. My Intel i5-3470 is a processor from 2012, which is a dinosaur at this point. It’s so old that the oldest Elgato capture card that’s still widely available isn’t compatible. This creates a cascading effect where I’m stuck using my old USB 2.0 capture card that adds a lot of input delay.

Over the course of many months, the scope of my build crept up with regards to which processor I was going to get. Originally aiming for a Ryzen 2700X, that processor was out of circulation by the time I was ready to move. From there, I debated the merits of getting a 3600 or a 3600X before finally locking in on the 3700X.

Asus TUF Gaming X570-PLUS (WI-FI)

Shopping for a motherboard was the worst. With the B550 series motherboards on the brink of release, fakeghostpiraterobot recommended that I purchase one of those as an economical alternative to the performance-centric X570 motherboards. However, upon release, the B550 motherboards weren’t competitively priced. They were essentially worse motherboards that were the same price – if not more expensive than – their X570 counterparts.

Beyond that, there still came the matter of finding the right motherboard with the combination of features I was looking for. With over 30 B550 models I looked into and more X570s on top of that, it was tough to find the exact feature set I was looking for that was also in stock. Ended up going with this Asus TUF Gaming X57-PLUS (WI-FI), of which there was a total of one in the entire province across all local and online retailers. Unfortunately, I had to cancel Wednesday’s stream in order to drive out of town to get it before my in-store reservation was cancelled, but I’m glad to have the right motherboard for me!

G.Skill Trident Z RGB Series 16 GB DDR4 3600 MHz CL16 Memory Kit

My old machine runs on 8GB of DDR3 RAM. Though it doesn’t impact my stream as much, I really feel the shortage when I edit video. My software routinely crashes when trying to edit lengthy video files, presumably because I don’t have enough space to keep the video files loaded in RAM. 16GB of DDR4 should be enough for what I’m doing, especially since serious PC gaming is not in my plans at this juncture. On top of that, these sticks glow in rainbow colours!

Crucial P2 500GB 3D NAND NVMe Drive

Very late in the process, I began thinking through the logistics of how to move all of my stuff to the new PC. I thought it would be as simple as plugging in my current SSD, but doing so could create issues with drivers and software tied to new hardware.

fakeghostpiraterobot recommended we make the transition with an NVMe drive. Though I was reluctant to spend extra money on another drive, he said this would be the safest way to transfer everything over. This also gives me the added benefit of NVMe drives being even faster than solid state drives, which should further improve performance.

Seagate BarraCuda 8TB Internal Hard Drive

Leading up to this build, I was planning on getting another external drive to store my video files. Instead, I’ve opted to go with an internal solution instead. Doing so frees up a USB port while minimizing the amount of things hanging off the back of the computer. Maybe we’ll plug in another camera with the free port?

DeepCool Matrexx 50

Housing all of this new stuff is a new case! The DeepCool Matrexx 50 is a cool-looking case that fakeghostpiraterobot gave me the blessing to move forward with. He’s built a PC using this case before and was very impressed with its ability to keep things cool. Bonus points for the case coming with fans!

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I never thought I’d see the day where I’d have a modern PC. But here we are. Will check back in later on with a post about the building process! Having never built a PC before, this was quite the experience!

Before wrapping up, I wanted to send you a special thank you. All of your support is truly appreciated. Your presence in the chat, being a part of our conversations, subscribing to the channel, and supporting through Bits and tips has helped to make this investment possible. Will do my best to use all of this equipment to create a better stream for all of us!

❤

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