Best GPU Servers for Live Streaming on YouTube with Streamlabs

Introduction

With the rise of streaming and live streaming being the most engaging type of content, both businesses and individuals need to adapt their current strategies and prepare for the future of YouTube and live streaming.

Streamlabs is a live streaming software that allows content creators to add a variety of features and customizations to their streams. It offers a range of tools and features to enhance the live streaming experience, including alerts, overlays, chatbots, and more. Streamlabs can be integrated with popular streaming platforms such as Twitch, YouTube, and Facebook, and it also offers its own live streaming platform, Streamlabs Prime.

In this article, you will learn how to use Streamlabs to broadcast live on the YouTube Live platform. For this reason, we have selected a cost-effective GPU dedicated server for testing. The following is our test result sharing.

GPU Servers Recommended by GPUMart

Express GPU - P620

  • 32GB RAM
  • Eight-Core Xeon E5-2670report
  • 120GB + 960GB SSD
  • 100Mbps-1Gbpsreport
  • OS: Windows / Linux
  • GPU: Nvidia Quadro P620
  • Microarchitecture: Pascal
  • Max GPUs: 1
  • CUDA Cores: 512
  • GPU Memory: 2GB GDDR5
  • FP32 Performance: 1.5 TFLOPSreport
1m3m12m24m
59.00/m

Express GPU - P1000

  • 32GB RAM
  • Eight-Core Xeon E5-2690report
  • 120GB + 960GB SSD
  • 100Mbps-1Gbpsreport
  • OS: Windows / Linux
  • GPU: Nvidia Quadro P1000
  • Microarchitecture: Pascal
  • Max GPUs: 1
  • CUDA Cores: 640
  • GPU Memory: 4GB GDDR5
  • FP32 Performance: 1.894 TFLOPSreport
1m3m12m24m
64.00/m
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Basic GPU - T1000

  • 64GB RAM
  • Eight-Core Xeon E5-2690report
  • 120GB + 960GB SSD
  • 100Mbps-1Gbpsreport
  • OS: Windows / Linux
  • GPU: Nvidia Quadro T1000
  • Microarchitecture: Turing
  • Max GPUs: 1
  • CUDA Cores: 896
  • GPU Memory: 8GB GDDR6
  • FP32 Performance: 2.5 TFLOPSreport
1m3m12m24m
Save 20% (Was $99.00)
79.2/m

Basic GPU - GTX 1650

  • 64GB RAM
  • Eight-Core Xeon E5-2667v3report
  • 120GB + 960GB SSD
  • 100Mbps-1Gbpsreport
  • OS: Windows / Linux
  • GPU: Nvidia GeForce GTX 1650
  • Microarchitecture: Turing
  • Max GPUs: 1
  • CUDA Cores: 896
  • GPU Memory: 4GB GDDR5
  • FP32 Performance: 3.0 TFLOPSreport
1m3m12m24m
99.00/m

Download and Install Streamlabs

Test preparation, download and install Streamlabs software
Here we recommend the most cost-effective Express GPU Server with Quadro P620 for our test. First visit the Streamlabs official website to download and install the software, Windows system is recommended. A screenshot of the completed installation is shown in the figure below.
install streamlabs
Start the software, select the Live Streaming mode, click Continue, and then you can import configurations or use new configurations from OBS Studio with one click.
start streamlabs

Streamlabs Live Test Report

We used the express GPU server with Quadro P620 provided by GPUMart to conduct live tests for different resolutions, 1080p, 1440p and 4k.

Test 1 - FHD 1080P 60 fps 10000 kbps Live Streaming

1.Click the Settings button on the lower left side of the main window to open the Settings interface, switch to Video, let us first set the Base Resolution, Output Resolution and FPS Values.
streamlabs video settings
2.Then switch to Output, set Video Bitrate to 10000, Audio Bitrate to 160.
streamlabs output settings
3.Then switch to Stream and set up Stream Service, which is added by YouTube Stream key.
streamlabs stream settings
4.Finally, return to the main interface, click the button on the right side of Sources on the main interface, add a Local Media Source. In order to use the GPU hardware decoding function, you need to check Use hardware decoding when available.
streamlabs add sources
5.Select the FHD Video File we need to broadcast live.
streamlabs add sources, select video file
6.After all the above configurations are completed, you can click Go Live to start the live broadcast.
streamlabs go live
7.During the live broadcast, you can click the histogram button on the bottom left of the main interface to open the performance window and view the live stats information.
streamlabs performance stats
8.During the FHD live broadcast, the GPU usage is about 40%, the CPU usage is about 8%, and the RAM usage is about 23%. Streaming was smooth.
server usage metrics

Test 2 - 2K 1440P 60 fps 2000 kbps Live Streaming

1.Change Media Source, right-click to open the pop-up menu, click Properties, here we use a 4K Video File for testing, file source: https://www.demolandia.net/downloads.html?id=43254366
streamlabs change media source
2.After replacing the Media File, open the settings window and modify the Resolution under the Video feature, as shown in the figure below:
streamlabs update video settings
3.Modify the Video Bitrate under the Output feature to 20000, keep other settings unchanged, and then you can broadcast live.
streamlabs update output settings
4.The live broadcast is still very smooth, the GPU usage is below 60%, and the CPU and RAM usage are both below 25%.
task manager info
5.The performance metrics live stats is as follows.
streamlabs performance metrics live stats

Test 3 - 4K 60 FPS 40000 kbps Live Streaming

1.Slightly different from the above test, this time under Output Feature, select Advanced Mode, set as shown in the figure below, and pay attention to Streaming Preset select Performance Level.
streamlabs update output settings
2.Modify Video Resolution as 3840x2160, FPS to 60
streamlabs update video settings
3.Start a live broadcast and view Performance Metrics
streamlabs performance metrics
4.The GPU usage is close to 80%, the CPU usage is about 15%, and the RAM usage is 23%.
streamlabs live streaming server usage info

Conclusion

In this article, we used the Streamlabs software on the P620 GPU Server to do a Youtube live broadcast test with multiple resolutions. It can be seen that this server is capable of general live broadcast requirements, but it is a little difficult when it is 4K live broadcast.

For streaming in 4K, it's best to for for a powerful GPU server with sufficient vCPUs, memory, and storage. It is recommended to use GPU Servers equipped with graphics cards above GTX 1650. If you need to broadcast while gaming, we recommend Basic GPU Servers.

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