Can You Use a Gaming Laptop for Streaming?

Are you hoping to become the next big Twitch star? Maybe you want to become one of the leading gamers on YouTube Gaming? Or perhaps you want to host your own show on Facebook Watch? Whatever platform it is, you’re going to need a decent system to keep everything running smoothly. But, what if you want to use a gaming laptop? Can you use a gaming laptop for streaming? Keep reading to find out…

The answer

Let’s begin by providing the answer you’re here for; yes! You can use a gaming laptop for streaming.

But, there are some important bits of information that you need to know.

Hardware

Laptops have come a long way in recent years, and are equipped with the sort of hardware that was once only available in high-end desktop PCs.

Today’s gaming laptops are available with high-performance AMD and NVIDIA graphics cards, fast multi-core CPUs and high-resolution displays, etc.

But, what exact specs will you need for streaming? When selecting a gaming laptop, it’s important to note that you’ll be expecting it to perform two core tasks – gaming and streaming – which both place very different demands on a laptop.

With that in mind, let’s take a look at the specifications you need in a gaming laptop for streaming.

Graphics card

First of all, there’s the graphics card. If you’re going to be playing high-end games, then you’re going to want a decent graphics card in your gaming laptop.

If budget isn’t a worry, then the best type of graphics card will be one of NVIDIA’s GeForce RTX 3000 series mobile GPUs. These graphics cards will allow your laptop to achieve the higher resolutions and frame rates required by the latest games.

However, it’s not just about gaming performance.

From a streaming perspective, NVIDIA RTX 3000 series GPUs support GPU-NVENC accelerated video recording. This means that when you’re streaming and gaming simultaneously, the load on both your CPU and GPU is reduced.

CPU

The second most important thing to consider when selecting a gaming laptop for streaming is the CPU.

Multi-core CPUs are better able to split the load between gaming and streaming than CPUs with fewer cores.

Some examples of good multi-core CPUs include Intel’s Core i5, i7, and i9 processors and AMD’s Ryzen 5, 7, and 9 processors.

Storage

If you’re going to be recording your streams and saving the footage, then you’re going to want a gaming laptop with plenty of storage.

Ideally, you’re going to want at least 512GB of SSD storage. SSD is the preferred storage tech as it offers fast read and write speeds and is energy efficient.

Should you intend to save vast amounts of your streamed footage, then we’d recommend investing in cloud storage – otherwise, you’ll quickly find that you’ve used up all of the storage space on your laptop.

Those are the main things you need to consider when it comes to a gaming laptop’s hardware. But, there are a few other things you can do to ensure you have a smooth, enjoyable streaming experience.

Gaming laptop streaming tips

Achieving a great streaming experience isn’t just about buying an awesome laptop (although that helps!).

Below are a few tips that’ll help you create the best streaming experience on your gaming laptop.

Don’t run games at very high settings

Sure, you want your games to look good whilst you’re playing them, but if you put the settings too high then you’ll risk affecting the performance of your stream.

Remember, your gaming laptop is having to undertake two intensive tasks at once; gaming and streaming. So, remember to leave some performance capacity for each task.

Don’t boost your game’s settings too high as this comes at the expense of your stream’s quality. You need to achieve a balance.

Play at a suitable frame rate

Just as you shouldn’t try to stream with a game’s settings too high, you shouldn’t try to stream at too high a frame rate.

Most streamers use one of two frame rates; 30fps or 60fps.

Whilst streaming at 60fps will look smoother, it will place a significant load on your system. So, unless you’ve got a truly-powerful, top-of-the-line gaming laptop, we’d recommend streaming at 30fps instead.

Conclusion

Yes, it’s entirely possible to use a gaming laptop for streaming. But, as we’ve outlined above, you need to make sure that you’ve got a sufficiently powerful laptop, with a high-end graphics card, multi-core CPU, and plenty of storage in order to achieve a smooth, enjoyable gaming and streaming experience.