Don’t Blow Your Money on Overly Expensive Gear

I know what you are thinking. You are watching your favorite streamer with over 10,000 viewers, and you see their fancy stream with a $2000 DSLR, green screen, dual PC streaming setup and expensive headset, keyboard and mouse. You are thinking “The only way they got that big is because their stream looks amazing! Let me go buy some new stuff!”. And let me tell you, you couldn’t be any more wrong.

Don’t get me wrong. Having a decent enough computer to stream your game is really important. Viewers don’t like watching a stream that drops 50% of the frames, cheap microphone, 480p. So it’s important to invest your money into gear that will actually improve your stream.

Here are a few tips where you should actually invest your money:

• A decent microphone: Audio is such an important factor for your stream. Having a microphone that’s crackling and quieter than the game is a no-go, and will turn off any viewer. You can get good sounding microphones for under $100 these days.
• A decent webcam: While you see a lot of big streamers use an expensive DSLR, there is really no need. Twitch encoding will decrease the quality significant, and no viewer will turn off your stream because your facecam doesn’t look good enough. I would recommend something like the Logitech C920.
• Elgato’s streamdeck: Please don’t. It’s just a few fancy macro keys. You can achieve the same thing with macro keys on your keyboard.
• Want to capture console games? Get a good 1080p/60fps capture card. While there some cheap chinese capture cards, I really don’t recommend them. I tried one a while ago, and it was just unreliable and painful to use. I personally have been using the Avermedia LGP lite for 5 years, and it worked perfectly. It’s just 720p/60fps, but if you PC is not powerful enough for 1080p/60fps anyway, it’s a good, cheaper alternative. I recently just upgraded to the Razer Ripsaw HD. While I am using a lot of Razer gear, I am not a big fan of their unreliable software. But so far the Ripsaw HD has been working great. It does 1080p/60fps and looks amazing. I got it on sale for around $120. Another good alternative is the Elgato HD60 S+, it’s a little more expensive, but still pretty good. If you don’t want an external capture card, I would recommend the Elgato HD60 Pro. In my opinion there is no need for the 4K60 Pro if you are just streaming on Twitch. Twitch doesn’t support 4k, and probably won’t be supporting it for a while. Streaming 4k also requires a beefy PC and a beefy internet connection. So don’t waste your money on that. I wouldn’t pay more than around $150 for a good capture card.
• Dual-PC or single-PC streaming setup: I don’t really see the point of using a Dual-PC streaming setup. If your PC is decent enough, it should handle gaming and streaming with no problems. I have been using a Single-PC setup for years, and I never had any issues. So rather than spending $2000 on 2 decent PCs, I would recommend using all the budget on one good PC. If you are dropping frames due to encoding issues, check which part is the culprit. Is your GPU at 100% load constantly? Buy a new GPU. Don’t waste your money on hardware you don’t need.
• Greenscreen: Personally, I am not a fan of these. I would rather make the gamefeed a little bit smaller, putting your facecam into one of the corners, rather than blocking the gameplay. But if you really want to use one, please don’t buy unnecessarily expensive greenscreens. You can achieve the same with a roll of green cardboard.
• Lighting: If you want to use a webcam and want it to look professional, you want to buy some good lighting. But there is no need to buy expensive lights from big companies. Looking at Amazon, you can buy a pack of 2 lights for around $70. I would recommend using one key light to light up your face, and one back light to separate you from the background.

So those are some basic recommendations. If you have any money left over from not buying unnecessary stuff, the first thing you should always think about first is upgrading your streaming PC. It’s the center piece of your stream. If it doesn’t run well, your stream will not look good and turn off any new potential viewers. Lower the load on your CPU and GPU by buying a better one, so you can stream with a higher resolution, higher FPS and higher bitrate.