5 Best CPUs for Streaming: 2024 Edition

Whether it’s games, IRL, live podcasts, music, and everything in between, you need a powerful processor that can handle it all. Streaming and gaming can be stressors for your PC, but adding a central processing unit, or CPU, into your setup can help ease the demand on your computer like when it heats up and the fan comes on much to your dismay. With only two major companies that make CPUs, the choice is a little less overwhelming, but it’s still important to choose the right one to keep you and your setup running at full capacity. We’re going to give a detailed rundown of how you can expect each of our selected CPUs to perform and discuss an alternative to CPU-based encoding for live-streaming games.

Top 5 CPUs For Streaming

Most people will typically reach for the most powerful CPU that’s packing more cores and threads than they know what to do with. While this strategy will certainly deliver on your digital demands, you may end up spending way more on advanced features you don’t need. To help you find the best CPU for streaming, we evaluated each CPU based on encoding efficiency, single-core and multi-threading performance, product specifications, operating speed, and budget. 

Best CPU For Streaming

In this article, we’re going to help you find the best CPU for streaming. Here are our top 5 picks.

Choosing the Best CPU for Streaming

In this section, we will tell you everything you need to know to make your streaming dreams come true.

Is this article for single PC (gaming & streaming in one) or dual PC users?

Both, but we’re going to specify the difference between the two use cases now.

Streaming with a GPU encoder (for single-PC streaming and high-quality recording)

A graphics card from AMD and Nvidia comes with built-in video encoders. These can be used to accelerate specific workloads where supported, but most prevalent for this particular use case is using these built-in encoders for streaming your games. By limiting the burden on your CPU, you should be able to maintain roughly the same frame rates that you’re used to since the encoders will have much less of a noticeable performance impact in your games. If you’re looking to buy a GPU, we recommend choosing Nvidia over AMD since their built-in encoder offers superior image quality over AMD’s.

Streaming with a CPU encoder (for dual-PC streaming and super high-quality recording)

While a GPU encoder can undoubtedly do the job for 1080p web content, it’s still not perfect. The best possible image quality can only be achieved with a CPU encoder, but there are a few things are to consider. If you use a CPU encoder, you first need to decide if you’re doing a single-PC or dual-PC setup.

If you’re doing a single-PC setup, you require a high-end processor, ideally a Ryzen 9 or Core i9 processor. These will give you the core count needed for high frame rates in modern games and the extra cores and threads to spare for CPU encoding.

You don’t need to worry as much about raw CPU power if you’re doing a dual-PC setup. One of our budget options should do the job just fine for high-quality recording, but if you plan on recording/streaming at 4K resolution or higher, you should still go with a higher-end CPU.

Why not go Intel? Don’t they have better gaming performance?

They do have better gaming performance, but for the most part, their multi-threaded performance doesn’t stack up to AMD’s. Where it does, the price point isn’t competitive, and Ryzen CPUs are better equipped for simultaneously streaming and playing games.

What are cores?

Once upon a time, CPUs did not include multiple cores. Instead, they had a single physical processing core, which was seen as a single thread by the operating system. When dual and quad-core CPUs were introduced to the market, many considered it the rough equivalent of having 2-4 CPUs on one chip.

Since the early 2000s, multi-core processors have become the standard. Older applications are only built to utilize a core or two at a time, but evolving game engines and software have become significantly better at using multiple cores simultaneously. Live-streaming, video editing, rendering, and high-end modern gaming all benefit from multi-core processors.

What’s a thread?

There are a few different meanings for “threads” in relation to CPUs. When you see this term on a spec sheet or marketing materials, it’s referring to the “thread” seen by the operating system, which you can think of like a virtual core tied to the physical one. For instance, a dual-core processor from the early 2000s will only display two threads to the operating system. For most processors, this means that the ratio of threads to cores will be 1:1.

With a technology called SMT (Simultaneous Multi-Threading, also called Hyper-threading by Intel marketing), the ratio of threads-to-cores now becomes 2:1. This means that every physical core is seen as two threads by the operating system. 

What are clock speeds?

Clock speed refers to the operating speed of a CPU. For example, a quad-core CPU with a base clock speed of 3 GHz will guarantee that all four cores should reach 3 GHz when under load as long as the chip isn’t overheating. To pass that minimum base clock speed, though, you need either a boost clock or an overclock.

What is boost clock and overclocking?

Boost clock speeds are the highest clock speed that the processor is officially rated to handle and often will not apply to every single core on the chip unless you’re using a high-end motherboard and cooling setup. 

An overclock is an increase in clock speed applied by the user instead of the manufacturer. Overclocking is only possible on unlocked processors. Pretty much every modern AMD processor allows overclocking, but Intel overclocking is limited to their K and X series CPUs for the time being.

How much of a difference will overclocking make?

Probably not much, but especially not for streaming purposes. Overclocking is more likely to impact single-core performance than multi-core performance, making it ideal for gamers but not many other users.

For professionals, we don’t recommend CPU overclocking unless you’re already an expert. While overclocking does provide a nice performance boost, it also generates more heat, consumes more power, and makes random system crashes far more likely.

What makes a good streaming CPU?

CPUs for streaming require excellent multi-core performance. Tasks like streaming and video rendering benefit more from multi-core performance than anything else, but gaming is slightly different.

If you’re doing a dual-PC setup, you don’t need to worry about the gaming performance of your streaming machine’s CPU since all its resources can be efficiently allocated to the stream. 

If you’re looking to stream with a single-PC setup, you’ll need to spend a lot more on your CPU. This is because gaming doesn’t scale as well to multiple cores. Modern game engines are getting better in this regard, but until very recently, most games were not built for utilizing more than the first four cores of a processor.

Why not go for a Threadripper, Xeon, or Intel Extreme processor?

In many cases, these processors can be worse for gaming performance. These CPUs having such a high density of cores comes at a cost to per-core power, which is one of the main factors to consider when gaming. Even though modern game engines are well-equipped for multiple cores, they do not scale as high as a Treadripper, and the individual core strength still matters too much to be compromised on.

Step Up your Game

If you are a pro-gamer looking for something that suits your budget or just someone who needs the best CPU for streaming, we hope this review provides you with all the details you need to take your online escapades to the next level. While it’s not necessary to break the bank to get the best setup, it is an investment worth researching so you can make the most informed and confident decision.

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Christopher Harper

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