Son wants to build streaming system on a budget

[chazus]

Our eldest has decided he wants to get into small time streaming. Mostly just for his friends. No monetization or professional work. Probably just WoW and League. We don't have a budget just yet, but 'as cheap as possible' is probably the name of the game.

Currently has a brand new Seasonic GM-550 PSU that could be reused. 500gb SSD could also be re-used for the time being and upgraded later to an NVME. We plan on upgrading the GPU as well eventually but its a RX 560 which is... "not 14 years old" at least.

Other than that, would need a new board, cpu, ram, case, and gpu. Just about everything is ~2008 era so not remotely useful. Unsure if going to DDR5 is worth the cost offset. My first thought was looking at the 12400F, 16gb ram, board, case, and hold off on the GPU for a few more months until prices cool down a bit. I'm not sure if those specs are enough to run something like a game, OBS, and middling stream rates.

[Kagthul]

Our eldest has decided he wants to get into small time streaming. Mostly just for his friends. No monetization or professional work. Probably just WoW and League. We don't have a budget just yet, but 'as cheap as possible' is probably the name of the game.

Currently has a brand new Seasonic GM-550 PSU that could be reused. 500gb SSD could also be re-used for the time being and upgraded later to an NVME. We plan on upgrading the GPU as well eventually but its a RX 560 which is... "not 14 years old" at least.

Other than that, would need a new board, cpu, ram, case, and gpu. Just about everything is ~2008 era so not remotely useful. Unsure if going to DDR5 is worth the cost offset. My first thought was looking at the 12400F, 16gb ram, board, case, and hold off on the GPU for a few more months until prices cool down a bit. I'm not sure if those specs are enough to run something like a game, OBS, and middling stream rates.

If you're on a budget, DDR5 is not worth it right now at all. Itll still be a few years before DDR4 is entirely gone, so you're likely to hit "time to rebuild AGAIN" before DDR5 is truly relevant or a big enough performance boost to matter.

If he wants to stream... dont get the 12400F. Get the 12400. You can use the iGPU to stream via Quicksync. Itll take a lot of overhead off the CPU.

If you can stretch at all, i'd recommend the 12600K anyway - the extra E-cores will add a serious bit of longevity and the MUCH faster base and boost clocks will make things run much more smoothly. You dont even need to bother putting it into a Z-series motherboard - it boosts to 4.9ghz on two cores by itself and 4.7 all core, and B series motherboards will run XMP/RAM Overclocking.

If not, its not like the 12400 is a bad chip or something.

As for GPU prices... they are as cool as they are going to get. They are at MSRP or below. The only way they are going to get cheaper is if you buy used. If there's no money in the budget right now, then it has to wait of course, but waiting for it to get cheaper is fruitless. They are as cheap as they are going to get at retail before they sell out.

I dont recall if you live near enough to a Micro Center to make going there worthwhile, but they have the 12400 for below MSRP + 20$ off a compatible motherboard.

PCPartPicker Part List: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/b3JPQ6

CPU: Intel Core i5-12400 2.5 GHz 6-Core Processor ($193.95 @ Newegg)
Motherboard: ASRock B660M Phantom Gaming 4 Micro ATX LGA1700 Motherboard ($109.99 @ Newegg)
Memory: Silicon Power XPOWER Gaming 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3200 CL16 Memory ($49.97 @ Amazon)
Case: Cooler Master MasterBox Q300L TUF Gaming Edition MicroATX Mini Tower Case ($64.98 @ Amazon)
Total: $418.89
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2022-07-24 17:40 EDT-0400

At MC, the 12400 is 159$, and they have an MSI B660 mATX board for 95$, + 20$ off.
The 12600K is 239$, and the same 20$ off.

While i wouldn't buy GPUs at Micro Center (their prices are still high because they are trying not to lose money on the ones they overpaid for), most GPUs are available at MSRP somewhere, or even below.

Best Buy has been getting reliable restocks of Founders Edition RTX 3000 GPUs every thursday, at MSRP, and they aren't selling out in minutes (usually last half the day or more), though the cheapest of those is the 3060Ti as there is no FE for the 3060 and 3050.

But you can likely find a 3050 for its MSRP these days (remembering that they are all AiB cards and therefore were never the supposed 249$ MSRP - no cards were).

Your best bet for performance/dollar is probably the RX 6600 - they are often near 260$ or so, and performs like a 3050 in basic rasterization (they fall behind in features like their DLSS equivalent, and their equivalent to the nVENC encoder kinda sucks; but if you're using the iGPU in the 12400 for Quicksync this is less relevant). For my money, since a 3050 is around 330$.... i'd save penies for another week or three and get the 3060Ti FE for 400$ from Best Buy. Its WAY more powerful, only marignally more expensive, and gets you access to DLSS, DLDSR, the possibility of enabling RT without utterly crippling performance, and NVENC.

If your budget will stretch, my "ideal" setup here is:

PCPartPicker Part List: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/yKrLFg

CPU: Intel Core i5-12600K 3.7 GHz 10-Core Processor ($264.99 @ Newegg)
CPU Cooler: be quiet! Pure Rock 2 Black CPU Cooler ($44.90 @ Amazon)
Motherboard: ASRock B660M Phantom Gaming 4 Micro ATX LGA1700 Motherboard ($109.99 @ Newegg)
Memory: Silicon Power XPOWER Gaming 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3200 CL16 Memory ($49.97 @ Amazon)
Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Ti 8 GB Founders Edition Video Card ($400.00)
Case: Cooler Master MasterBox Q300L TUF Gaming Edition MicroATX Mini Tower Case ($64.98 @ Amazon)
Total: $934.83
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2022-07-24 17:57 EDT-0400

To get that price on the 3060Ti youll have to hit Best Buy's site on Thursday, early-ish in the day. (I checked last thursday at around 11am and they were still in stock)

This is a few hundred more than "cheapest", but i think itll get at least an extra 18 months of effective life over the cheapest option, so that may or may not be worth it to you. Its particularly worthwhile if you can get to a Micro Center affordably - its 55$ cheaper right off.

Or, depending on your own GPU, maybe get yourself the 3060Ti and hand him down whatever you're currently using. Give yourself a gift =)

the "Cheapest" option:

PCPartPicker Part List: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/wx3BGL

CPU: Intel Core i5-12400 2.5 GHz 6-Core Processor ($193.95 @ Newegg)
Motherboard: ASRock B660M Phantom Gaming 4 Micro ATX LGA1700 Motherboard ($109.99 @ Newegg)
Memory: Silicon Power XPOWER Gaming 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3200 CL16 Memory ($49.97 @ Amazon)
Video Card: XFX Radeon RX 6600 8 GB Speedster SWFT 210 Video Card ($279.99 @ Amazon)
Case: Cooler Master MasterBox Q300L TUF Gaming Edition MicroATX Mini Tower Case ($64.98 @ Amazon)
Total: $698.88
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2022-07-24 18:01 EDT-0400

If you dont care about it being a "dead platform" - though even with the Intel setup you really are only going to have about 30 months to do in-place upgrades - you can get cheaper with Ryzen and B450:

PCPartPicker Part List: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/PBKM4s

CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 5600G 3.9 GHz 6-Core Processor ($144.00 @ Newegg)
Motherboard: MSI B450M PRO-M2 MAX Micro ATX AM4 Motherboard ($68.98 @ Amazon)
Memory: Silicon Power XPOWER Gaming 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3200 CL16 Memory ($49.97 @ Amazon)
Video Card: XFX Radeon RX 6600 8 GB Speedster SWFT 210 Video Card ($279.99 @ Amazon)
Case: Cooler Master MasterBox Q300L TUF Gaming Edition MicroATX Mini Tower Case ($64.98 @ Amazon)
Total: $607.92
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2022-07-24 18:07 EDT-0400

The 5600G performs like the recently released non-X 5600 and is the same price, so might as well get the APU. There may even be a way to use the iGPU to stream similar to Quicksync, but im not sure. The 12400 will outperform it (slightly outperforms the 5600X) but its not like... 20% or anything. For near the same price as the "cheapest" Intel setup, you could step up to the 5700G - the two extra cores will help with Streaming, im sure.

PCPartPicker Part List: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/vtZH78

CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 5700G 3.8 GHz 8-Core Processor ($232.00 @ Amazon)
Motherboard: MSI B450M PRO-M2 MAX Micro ATX AM4 Motherboard ($68.98 @ Amazon)
Memory: Silicon Power XPOWER Gaming 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3200 CL16 Memory ($49.97 @ Amazon)
Video Card: XFX Radeon RX 6600 8 GB Speedster SWFT 210 Video Card ($279.99 @ Amazon)
Case: Cooler Master MasterBox Q300L TUF Gaming Edition MicroATX Mini Tower Case ($64.98 @ Amazon)
Total: $695.92
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2022-07-24 18:11 EDT-0400

Mix and match as your budget allows.

Edited to add:
Microcenter changes the equation a bit, if you can get to one:
Non-X 5600 - 149$ includes cooler
5600X is 179$ - includes cooler
5700X is 249$ (and is only 5% slower than the 5800X) but youll need a cooler.
Same 20$ off paired with a motherboard.

[chazus]

FWIW right now there is no 'budget'. He's literally got like $200 right now, and is trying to figure out how much to save so if we need to stretch the budget, it's just a matter of waiting longer. We'd certainly like to go as cheap as possible, while still accomplishing the task.

I think the last option with the 5700G may be our best bet without the GPU (For now until he can afford it). He doesn't need a beast of a system (I think he's running an i5-750 right now. As in Nehalem/Lynnfield) so any upgrade is going to be miles ahead. Honestly the streaming thing may be just a passing fancy that he wants to attempt to do. He doesn't have the room, equipment, or anything for it.

[chazus]

Looking into it further, I think the 5600G + 6600 is our best bet. Unless I buy something in the US and bring it to canada, the Intel platform is going to be about $400 more, and the 3060ti is ~800-900 where the 6600 is ~400. Either way I've got a target for him to start saving for and go from there.

[Souichirou]

A bit late, but if you are considering the 3060ti might as well look at the base 3070 as the prices are near identical OR cheaper and the 3070 offers more performance to boot.

I would say keep an eye out at memoryexpress its Canada's version of Microcenter basically and they have sales on stuff fairly often and the 3070 can be gotten in the $700 CAD range.

[HotSauce]

i wonder how my life would have turned out if my parents promoted my interests. well done dad points from one paps to another