Building a High End Streaming PC Choosing Powerful Components for Smooth Performance
Best streaming PC build in 2024
What you get for your money
The budget for a streaming PC can be broken down like any other custom build entry-level, mid-tier, and high-end. If youre looking to get into streaming but dont want to take out a mortgage doing so, it can be done on a tight budget but you need to figure out what games you are likely to be streaming and how intensive they might be on the CPU, GPU, or both. Building the PC we recommend for streaming will be costly, but you can expect to play games in crystal clear 4k and stream to your viewers in 1080p 60FPS. Its often the norm to stream at a lower quality to lessen the demand on your system. Its also very common for streamers to build a separate PC just for streaming, and have their main system play the games, this is also a viable approach. You could build this PC for your main and use the PC you have now as your streaming rig. Do note, however, that you will need a capture card for this.
With this streaming PC build, no longer will you have to worry about running the most demanding games in ultra settings, this build can do it all. Multi-tasking at the highest level becomes a breeze thanks to the hyper-threaded makeup of the CPU and other strong internal components ensuring a high-quality experience for you and your viewers. Building a PC of this nature is likely to be expensive, and a more complex build if you decide to do it yourself, but there are prebuilt PCs on offer if you do not think you are ready to assemble your streaming machine.
If you do decide youre ready its worth mentioning, that Amazon prices do fluctuate regularly. So, this means the builds might not always be under the intended target. Dont worry, though; we check the builds daily to make sure the most up-to-date and best-value products are being selected.
Upgradability And Future-Proofing your $300 build
As with anything, there are many ways you can improve upon it. With this build specifically, you could swap out the RTX 4080 for a 4090, you could upgrade the 7800X3D to a 7900X3D, get more Memory, and a bigger M.2. The trouble is that all of this will cost you, and you need to define your budget before you go diving into the parts. Hell, if youre on a tighter budget, you can downgrade and still get good performance. This build is not the be-all and end-all of streaming PC builds. If youre looking for a build that will do well in streaming workloads, but is a little more budgeted, we have a $1500 build for you.
Streaming PC build vs prebuilt streaming PC
Here at WePC we always recommend you build your computer as it often saves you money and gives you the skills required to maintain and upgrade your PC for the future. A PC for gaming and streaming simultaneously is no different from any other computer but you will find they tend to be very high-end, with the latest CPU and GPU, along with beefed-up RAM and storage capacity.
The reality is that a prebuilt streaming PC will come with a markup (around $100-$300 depending on the build price) to cover the physical building and software of the machine. Just to put it into perspective, the markup of a prebuilt can essentially be the same price as an entire component. So its not economically viable to buy a prebuilt if you do have the skills to build your PC (its not too difficult). If you struggle, we have a guide on building a custom PC you can follow.
Performance
While the performance of a prebuilt streaming PC will be great, when building your own, you could include a better CPU or GPU into your computer without spending more. This means you could get even better performance for your hard-earned cash, get better in-game results, and future-proof your investment for longer.
Convenience
The main selling point behind a prebuilt is it saves you the hassle. We understand that not everyone knows how to build a computer and may not even have the time to learn this new skill, so the convenience of a prebuilt makes a lot of sense. Of course, there are many more benefits to buying a prebuilt gaming PC from manufacturers, obviously, it takes the stress away from finding all the compatible components, while also preventing damage to said components when the time comes to build it.
With a prebuilt streaming PC, you are going to be able to send it back to the manufacturer if anything goes wrong. Furthermore, if you feel you need an upgrade, suppliers will often do this for you or at least insist you send it to them for an upgrade. Manufacturers will also dish out a warranty, usually covering parts and labor for around a year but some companies offer impressive warranties and you can always spend extra on insurance, giving you a lengthy/ lifetime warranty.
A prebuilt from the biggest manufacturers around the world isnt just packaged nicely for you either, they normally stress test the system to ensure the components are working before shipping and that it performs as it should. You will also receive your system with software, usually with Windows and drivers pre-installed, so you can simply plug it in and start downloading games.
Finance and purchase options
Buying computer parts in 2024 can be done in different ways, even if you dont have the money yourself right now. We dont think its a good idea to go into debt just to get parts for a streaming PC build, because you can end up paying interest. But dont worry, there are options like ClearPay and Klarna that let you pay in 3 and offer 0% interest. These can come in handy if your computer suddenly breaks, and you need a new one for work fast. If you dont want to borrow money, you can always look for used parts, which can save you a lot of money.
We dont suggest buying certain parts like hard drives and PSUs secondhand. But everything else is usually fine if you make sure theyve been taken care of. Before buying, ask the seller to prove the part works. If you can, test it out yourself to avoid any tricks or funny business.
Build a gaming PC by price
Check out some of our price-focused custom PC build guides below.
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Related Prebuilt Gaming PC Guides
Check out some of our related guides below.
Best PC Builds for Gaming 2024: From $500 Budgets to $4,000+
If you want a computer that meets your exact needs and budget, you need to put it together yourself. When you build a gaming PC, you get total control of the parts, choosing the exact make and model of motherboard, a case with the look you like and even the layout of RGB (or non-RGB fans). You could save time by purchasing one of the best pre-built gaming PCs, but you'll give up control and spend more.
By constructing your own PC from components, you will likely save hundreds of dollars over the cost of buying a prebuilt system. For example, right now, getting a desktop with specs similar to those in our best $1,000 PC build will cost you $1,439 or more at Best Buy.
To help you assemble the best PC build for gaming or productivity that you can get, we've created recommended parts lists for every budget: from a super-cheap sub-$500 system to an affordable sub-$1,000 build to a $4,000+ dream machine for those with deep pockets.
Picking and Pricing the Best PC Builds
Why you can trust Tom's Hardware Our expert reviewers spend hours testing and comparing products and services so you can choose the best for you. Find out more about how we test.
Note that our best PC build recommendations are based on our component expertise, market research and testing we've done of the key components in each build, namely the CPU, GPU and SSD. However, because we are trying to hit price points and frequently changing these lists (as prices change), we have not tested all of the parts in each build together and some of the less performance-centric parts such as the case, motherboard and PSU may be ones that we have not reviewed.
We are also going to recommend GPUs rather than specific makes and models of graphics cards. For example, we'd recommend an RTX 4070 Ti and link to a list of available cards rather than, for example, the Zotac RTX 4070 Ti. Given frequent price and stock changes in the space, you should get whichever third or first-party card is available with the GPU you want for the best price at the time you read this.
Also note that we don't include the cost of an operating system, because you can get Windows for Free or Cheap. Nor do we include the price of peripherals such as the best gaming monitors, best gaming keyboards or best gaming mouse. And if you've never made a computer before, see our article on how to build a PC.
Best $500 PC Build for Gaming
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For around $500, you can build a PC that has a discrete graphics card. You won't get the fastest GPU around, but you will be able to play games at 1080p with modest settings. That's a big improvement over relying on integrated graphics.
For the graphics card in this system, we're going with Intel's Arc A380. We didn't love the card at launch, but it's readily available at Newegg and has been for a long time. Besides that, it's faster than AMD's competing RX 6400, comes with more VRAM, and most importantly it has full video encoding/decoding acceleration including AV1 support for the future.
The card averaged 54.7 fps in our benchmarks at 1080p medium, though updated drivers may have improved things another 510 percent. If you want something a little faster and can expand your budget by just a few dollars, your best bet is this RX 6500 XT card, which goes for around $139 and can take you up to 65.8 fps in 1080p medium.For our CPU, we're going with Intel's Core i3-14100F which is just over $100 but delivers plenty of pep for the price. This CPU has four cores, all of them performance cores, and a solid boost clock of 4.7 GHz. It comes with a cooler in the box so there's no need for a third-party one. We found that the 13100F was about on par with AMD's Ryzen 5 5600, which costs about $30 more.
To work with our 14100F, we need an Intel 700 series motherboard and the best price we've seen on one is $89 for the ASRock B760M-HDV. The microATX board uses DDR4 RAM (cheaper than DDR5) and provides support for M.2 PCIe 3.0 or 4.0 SSDs.
Our SSD is the Crucial P3 Plus, a very affordable PCIe 4.0 SSD that is rated for 5,000 MBps sequential reads and 3,600 MBps sequential writes. When we tested the 2TB capacity of the P3 Plus, we noted its good value but middling performance. That's because, like many budget drives, it uses QLC NAND and has no DRAM cache. If you can stretch your budget a few dollars more, grab the Crucial P5 Plus, which has DRAM cache and TLC NAND.
We got 16GB of DDR4 PC-3200 RAM in a 2 x 8GB configuration. The Silicon Power Value RAM we chose isn't the flashiest, but it's inexpensive and from a reputable brand. Whatever you do, don't build or buy a gaming PC with less than 16GB of RAM.
Our case is the Cooler Master MasterBox Q300L. Available in black or white, the chassis has solid build quality for the price, including built-in dust filters, support for up to a 240mm AIO cooler on the top, and plenty of mesh to allow airflow in. It even has a modular I/O panel you can place in six different locations. One small trade-off is that its clear side panel is acrylic rather than tempered glass.While there are cheaper power supplies, we don't like to compromise on this important component, and have opted for the Thermaltake Toughpower GX2 600W. It's an 80 Plus Gold certified PSU, from a reputable brand. You could save perhaps $10 buy picking up a Bronze PSU instead, but then you'll just be paying more in the long run, and the power supply has to run your whole PC cutting corners is not recommended!
Best $800 PC Build for Gaming
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If you can stretch your budget up from $500 to $800, you can enter a whole new world of gaming performance and productivity that will be good enough for some serious 1080p gaming (without ray tracing). Here we're stepping up from a Core i3 to the Core i5-14400F, which has 6 performance cores, 4 efficiency cores and 16 total threads, along with a boost clock of 4.7 GHz.
We haven't tested the 14400F yet, but it's the drop-in successor to the Core i5-13400F, using the same Raptor Lake architecture but with slightly faster clocks. The Core i5-13400 (13400F but with integrated graphics) provided 152 fps on our 1080p test suite, so the 14400F should provided similar to slightly better performance. Like the 13400, the 14400F also comes with a capable cooler in the box so you don't need to buy one separately.
To go with this Intel processor, we're using an ASRock B760M-HDV motherboard because it supports 14th Gen CPUs without a BIOS update. It's a DDR4 board so we can save money by using DDR4 memory. It also features two M.2 slots for SSDs, with one of them supporting PCIe 4.0 drives.
Our graphics card at this price point is the Nvidia RTX 4060, which comes in just under $300. The 4060 has strong performance at 1080p, ultra settings, having averaged 84.9 fps on our suite of tests. It ranks just above the RTX 2080 and below the Raden RX 6700 on our GPU benchmarks hierarchy.
The card can also do some ray tracing as it averaged 41.7 fps on 1080p ultra with ray tracing enabled. Forget about playing in 2K with ray tracing as that only gave us 25.8 fps.
For our storage, we're going with the 1TB Silicon Power UD90. This budget-oriented PCIe 4.0 SSD can't beat the top-of-the-line drives like the Samsung 990 Pro or WD Black SN850X, but it has really strong performance for the money, promising sequential reads and writes of 4,800 and 4,200 MBps.
We're going with 32GB of TeamGroup T-Force Zeus DDR4 RAM and we're stepping up to a 700W version of the Thermaltake Smart power supply so we can support our higher wattage CPU and GPU.
Our case is the DeepCool Matrexx 40 3FS. This microATX chassis has a sleek design with an attractive front grill and three RGB case fans in the box. It has a tempered glass side panel, along with dual USB type-A ports on the front to make it easy to plug in USB flash drives.
Best $1,000 PC Build for Gaming
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If you can stretch your budget up to around $1,000, you can build a PC with the ability to play games really well at 1080p and competently at 1440p. The best GPU option in this price range right now is the Nvidia RTX 4060 Ti, which goes for as little as $369. While the Radeon RX 6750 XT, which has 12GB of VRAM to the 4060 Ti's 8GB, is in the same price range, Nvidia's GPU is much better for ray tracing.In our 8-game rasterization test suite at 1080p ultra settings, the RTX 4060 Ti offered an impressive frame rate of 101.7 fps while delivering a still-strong 75.5 fps at 1440p with ultra settings. At this price point, don't expect to do much ray tracing, however. The card managed a very-playable 52.8 fps at 1080p and a usable 33.5 fps at 1440p.
Our recommended CPU for this build is the same Core i5-14400F that we are using on the $800 and $1,500 builds. Why spend hundreds more on a faster CPU when we want to put the money into a better GPU at these price points? Similarly, we're sticking with the ASRock B760M-HDV motherboard we used on the cheaper build.
We're sticking with 32GB of DDR4-PC3200 RAM here. There's no real need to go faster or increase the capacity at this price point. Using DDR4 saves us money over DDR5.
For storage, we're stepping up to a faster, higher-capacity SSD: the 2TB version of WD Black SN770. This drive is close to the vaunted Samsung 980 Pro on our tests, but not nearly as costly. The PCIe 4.0 drive also boasts sequential reads and writes of up to 5,150 MBps and 4,850 MBps respectively.
We're going with the Phanteks XT Pro Ultra as our case and what a great value it is. For less than $80 (much less if it's on sale), you get a well-built case with four D-RGB fans and room for up to a 360mm AIO cooler on the top. It also supports back panel motherboards should you get one in the future. If you want to save $20, you can get the Phanteks XT Pro (non-Ultra) which is the same case, but comes with just one, non-RGB fan for the back.
Finally, we've stepped up to a 750-watt power supply and we're going with Corsair CX750M, which is 80+ Bronze certified and semi-modular. You can get a modular PSU or one that's 80+ Gold certified for a bit more, but that's money you don't need to spend at this price point.
Best $1,500 PC Build for Gaming
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As we step up to a build that should be brilliant at 1080p gaming, really strong for 1440p gaming and capable of running ray tracing games well, we're looking at around a $1,500 budget, depending on the current prices on graphics cards. We recommend going with an RTX 4070 at this price point.
At press time, RTX 4070 cards selling for as little as $24. In our GPU benchmarks hierarchy, the 4070 beats the RTX 3080 (10GB) and comes in just a step behind the 3080 (12GB) at non-ray tracing 1080p gaming. On our suite of 8 games, at 1080p ultra settings, the 4070 managed 123.6 fps. At 1440p resolution, it offered a smooth 98.6 fps and, even at 4K, it provided a very-playable 67.2 fps.
With ray tracing enabled, the RTX 4070 delivers 69.4 fps at 1080 ultra and a playable 45.2 fps at 1440p. In some titles, the numbers are much higher. For example, in Spider-Man: Miles Morales at 1440p, the card returned an average frame rate of 69 fps.
We're also upgrading the CPU to Intel's Core i5-14600KF, an overclockable processor that has 6 performance cores, 8 efficiency cores, 20 threads and a boost clock of 5.3 GHz. That's before you attempt to overclock it.
We're going with the Gigabyte Z790 UD AX motherboard, which allows overclocking with a 16+1+1 hybrid phases digital power design. It also comes with three M.2 PCIe slots, built-in Wi-Fi 6E and 2.5 Gbe Ethernet.
Though Intel 13th Gen CPUs can use DDR4 or DDR5 RAM, this motherboard utilizes DDR5 RAM. So we're going with an affordable 32GB kit from Crucial with a top speed of 5600 MT/s.
We're going with one of the best PCIe 4.0 SSDs you can buy, WD's Black SN850X at 2TB. In our tests, it was neck and neck with the other top drives, including the SK hynix Platinum P41 and the Samsung 990 Pro.
Our case for this build is the $99Lian Li Lancool 216. When we reviewed the Lancool 216, we praised its included dual RGB 160mm front and single 140mm exhaust fans, excellent cable management and attractive looks. There's also plenty of room for a top-mounted radiator that's up to 360mm.
Our power supply is a 750-watt Corsair CX750M. This 80 Plus Gold certified PSU packs enough power to support our GPU with plenty of juice to spare. However, it's not fully modular, with some of the wires being built-in.
Best $2000 PC Build for Gaming
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At a current price of $1,970, our high-end gaming PC build should provide enough performance to play games at 1440p ultra settings with strong frame rates, and 4K ultra with playable frame rates. The system gets its GPU muscle from an Nvidia RTX 4070 Ti Super which is currently available for $799. The card is backed by AMD's Ryzen 7 7800X3D, which is the best CPU for gaming if you're able to pay its $439 asking price.
In our tests, the RTX 4070 Ti Super delivered a really-smooth 102.9 fps on our test suite of games at 2K settings without ray tracing. It even managed to hit 73.7 fps at 2K with ray tracing enabled.
The AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D offers a superior experience thanks to its 104MB of 3D cache, along with its 8 cores, 16 threads and 5-GHz boost clock. Yes, AMD makes the Ryzen 9 7950X3D which is even faster overall, but it costs a lot more money and either ties or comes in behind the 7800X3D on many gaming tests.
On our suite of Windows 11 tests, running at 1080p with an RTX 4090 card, the 7800X3D averaged 224 fps, putting it slightly ahead of the Ryzen 9 7950X3D (222 fps) and way ahead of Intel's top-ranked Core i9-13900K (200 fps).
To cool the CPU, we're using an Iceberg Thermal IceFLOE Oasis 360. When we tested the IceFLOE, we were impressed with its low noise output and fantastic cooling output that allowed it to disperse up to 237 watts of heat. It has attractive RGB and you get all of that for a measly $89.
Our motherboard is Gigabyte B650M Aorus Elite AX which is one of the more affordable AM5 motherboards you can buy but it still packs in Wi-Fi 6E radio. AMD Zen 7000 chips require DDR5 RAM so we're going with 32GB of G.Skill Trident Z5. The Trident Z5 kit tops our list of best RAM, thanks to its tight-timings, fast performance and overclocking potential. In our tests, the Z5 also had the lowest memory latency of its competitors.
For the SSD, we're sticking with the WD Black SN850X at 2TB. You really can't do much better without spending a lot more money on a PCIe 5 drive or a 4TB capacity.
Our case is Hyte Y40, which is a great showcase for our components. It has beautiful wraparound glass that extends from the front to the left side. The case is available in three colors but we really like it in red.
To power all these high-end components, we're using a Corsair RM750e PSU which is 80+ Gold certified and fully modular.
Best $4000+ PC Build for Gaming
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For our super-high-end build, we've got a system that's capable of playing high-end games in 4K at ultra settings and delivering smooth ray tracing. This is made possible thanks to the Nvidia RTX 4090 card, which is by far the fastest card on the market and also the most expensive, by an equally large margin.This is our dream machine build, so price is a lesser consideration on parts like the 4090, but the good news is prices are starting to come down. Not long ago, 4090 cards cost over $2,000, even though the Founder's Edition RTX 4090 card carries a $1,599 MSRP. Right now, there's a Gigabyte card for $1689.
On our tests, the RTX 4090 averaged 112 fps playing a suite of games at 4K. That's a huge improvement over the next-best card, the Radeon RX 7900 XTX, which only hit 90 fps.In ray tracing, the gap widens a lot more, with the 4090 averaging 58 fps, the 4080 sits at 41 fps, and the fastest card from AMD, the 7900 XTX, gets just 30 fps.
Our CPU is AMD's Ryzen 9 7950X3D, which offers faster gaming than any Intel CPU on the market, including the Core i9-14900K. It has a whopping 140MB of cache, thanks to AMDs innovative 3D V-Cache and it boasts 16 full-power cores and 32 threads, which is more regular cores than the 13900K's set of 8 (to go with 16 E-Cores).
On our tests, the Ryzen 9 7950X3D beat Intel's flagship, the 14900K by a full 21 fps on our 1440p suite of gaming tests. The cheaper, Ryzen 7 7800X3D is also really good at gaming, but does have as many cores for productivity.
We're using an Asus ROG Strix X670E-E motherboard, which comes with built-in Wi-Fi 6E, four M.2 slots for storage and 18+2 power stages. To cool the Ryzen 9 7950X3D, we're using a 360mm Lian-Li Galahad II Trinity 360mm AIO. When we reviewed the Galahad II, we found that it had the absolute best performance of any all-in-one cooler we've ever tested.
Because we're fattening our budget for this build, we're going with some speedy DRAM in the form of G.Skill's Trident Z5 RGB DDR5 , which operates at up to 6,400 MHz. In our review of the G.Skill Trident Z5, we lauded the kit's strong performance and excellent overclockability. In our table, we are linking to a 32GB kit (2 x 16GB DIMMs as that is the highest capacity it is sold in. However, we recommend buying two of these kits so you can have 64GB of RAM.We're going with a 4TB Samsung 990 Pro, which has plenty of capacity and is the fastest PCIe 4.0 drive you can buy. Sure, we can go up to a PCIe 5.0 drive but we don't see enough performance gains to justify one, even in this high end build right now.
We decided to go with a case that has a unique, premium look in the Fractal Design North XL. With its wood paneled front, this chassis looks more like a mid-century modern piece of furniture than a gaming PC, which is a nice subtle touch. However, it also has a tempered glass side panel which you can use to show off all of your RGB components (or you can buy it with a solid panel and no window). It also has fantastic thermal performance and plenty of room for more drives and fans. The XL model can accommodate up to an E-ATX motherboard, giving you plenty of room for future upgrades.
With these high-end components, we don't want to skimp on the power supply, and having something that's fit for a future graphics card upgrade makes sense. We're going with a full 1000-watts of power and the Corsair HX1000. This power supply is 80+ Platinum certified and fully modular.
Finding Discounts on the Best PC Components
To find savings on components of all types, check out our lists of the best PC hardware deals, along with the latest Newegg promo codes, Corsair coupon codes and Best Buy promo codes.
