HARDWARE REQUIREMENTS
WHEN TWITCH FIRST BLOSSOMED onto the world stage, gaming PCs were in a very different place. Screen recording required some serious hardware to pull off, and programs like Fraps ate up frame rates and system resources incredibly quickly. In fact, it was very common for dedicated Twitch streamers to run not one, but two separate systems: one for the heavy-lifting video encoding and uploading (acting primarily as a passthrough system), and the other for the actual game they wanted to, you know, play. Crazy, right?
For many, the barriers to entry were just too great. Fortunately, a lot has changed since those early days, and with GPUs and CPUs now coming with dedicated streaming and video encoding componentry embedded directly, the actual system requirements to get going are starting to become fairly average. Take Twitch’s own Studio recommended specs listed here—that’s a GPU almost as old as this journalist’s career, at this point.
That aside, Twitch does point out that a lot of the system requirements come from what video encoder you decide to use as standard for your stream. OBS takes that one step further, providing a list of encoders to be used in order, depending on what you’re doing, and how greatly it impacts performance.
The TL;DR is effectively to run the highest possible encoder for local recording (if you’re planning on just uploading the content to YouTube, TikTok, or wherever after the fact), with high-bitrate top-quality audio. OBS ranks the encoders from best to ‘worse’, AV1—HEVC—H.264. ‘Worse’ is a highly subjective term there, as H.264 will be your go-to for live streaming.
GAMING TAKES ITS TOLL
Realistically, a lot of the system requirements are going to be dependent on what exactly it is you want to stream. If you’re just chatting with fans, or running a podcast or a watch party, then the hardware requirements are going to be significantly less than, say, grinding out EldenRing, or jumping into competitive TotalWar:WarhammerIII.
At a minimum though, you’re going to want something along the lines of an Intel Core i5 10 series or Ryzen 5 5600X and above to really get a smooth experience. Along with a GPU in a similar bracket, an RTX 2070 or 5800 XT should do the trick, along with 16-32GB of DDR4 to get you started (and a suitable SSD—you don’t want to keep your fans waiting on loading screens, after all).
STREAM QUALITY
Aside from generating presentable frame rates for your audience, you’re also going to want to consider your stream upload quality. This is going to be affected by your video encoding settings we discussed earlier, including bitrate, display resolution, and of course, network stability.
Streaming at 1080p is the preferred resolution, even today. First and foremost, it’s a convenient file size that will help keep both your upload traffic and your audience’s download size low. Similarly, you’ll also need to bear in mind what exactly your audience will be watching you game on so far as screens are concerned, particularly when it comes to aspect ratios. Ultrawides are great, and the 3440x1440 experience, particularly in RPGs and RTS titles, is dreamy, but for the majority still using 16:9 displays, it’s not going to present an enjoyable watching experience on their device.
All of these are things that you’ll need to consider when setting up your stream. Of course, you can game at 2560x1440 or 4K and downscale to 1080p, or even stream at those scales, but this will require some minor tweaking to ensure that the level of quality remains consistent. Typically, professional streamers will opt to have a multi-monitor setup. Many will be using a portrait monitor to keep an eye on Twitch chat or Discord, a 1440p or 1080p screen for their main ‘streaming’ gameplay, and an ultrawide or similar 16:9 panel for everything else. Of course, it’s worth bearing in mind d that this is highly dependent on each ach streamer’s preference—for instance, e, we’ve seen some with upwards of five ve screens on at any given time.
A big part of streaming ming is the testing process. It’s advisable that you run na a few test streams first. Play around with encoders, see what works, what doesn’t, sn’t, what has an impact on n your frame rates, and what hat the quality is like. Do this before efore you even begin to advertise the fact that you’re going g live—the last thing g you want is to spend d two hours tinkering ng with settings during a live stream, as that’s never r fun.